GmatPrep Question CR when reading carefully taking time

[saha.sanjib]

Teachers,

I have bought GmatPrep Question Pack 1 and is practising. In CR I have found that when I am trying the medium hard and hard questions I am taking some good amount of time (2 min - 2:30 min) to understand the logic behind them. Plus reading the options takes some 1 min more but after spending around 3:30 min - 4 min I am able to answer most of them successfully. Now that is a big time in GMAT and I know I should be able to figure about the answer in 2:30 min or else I should move on to the next question. I have also seen that if I try to spend less amount of time and try to hurry and finish identifying the correct answer in around 2:30 min I am choosing the wrong answer. This is happening only for the hard and medium hard questions and for the easy ones I am able to identify the logic and eliminate the errors and choose the right answer well within 2 min. How to overcome this?

The good thing is that I am able to grasp the CR logic but the bad thing is that it is taking time for me to solve it. This is happening for assumption, strengthen, weaken and 'if true' strengthen questions. How to improve this timing thing?

-Sanjib

[StaceyKoprince]

Do you have a slower reading speed when reading other things as well? How much time do you take on RC? Or do you find that you're really only slowed down by CR?

If your general reading speed is slower, then this will take longer to remedy and part of the fix will be reading things that have nothing to do with the GMAT, just to get better at reading, deciphering sentence structure, building vocabulary, etc.

Here are some ideas:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... rehension/

If you find that your reading speed is typically fine except for CR, then you need to spend more time understanding how CR arguments are structured in particular, what the common building blocks are, what kinds of logic are typically used, etc. The most comprehensive source for that is our CR book, but start with these articles:

http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... g-problem/

Question types:
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... e-Problem/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... -problems/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... n-problem/
http://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/index ... n-problem/

If you think this kind of thinking will help, then you may want to look into getting our 5th edition CR book, which goes into much greater detail on all of this.

[saha.sanjib]

Stacey, thank you so much for the valuable suggestions. My reading speed is on the slower side and I am trying to improve it since long. Another point. On easy and on mosr medium complexity assumption, strengthen and weaken questions I can solve the easy problems without creating the T-bar diagram as suggested on the MGMAT guides. But on the harder CR problems I am spending a lot of time and probably not doing these T-bar diagrams is building up to the complexity and I am doing these wrong. Do you suggest T-bar and flow diagrams on the harder ones to nail them down? Or just apply the strategy for all the CR questions?

[StaceyKoprince]

I do take notes on CR but I don't use the T-diagram. I find that it's better / easier for me to write things in the order in which I see them and then use arrows to understand the flow.

On easier / shorter arguments, I sometimes don't write anything down or write down only a couple of words. On longer / more convoluted arguments, I write more down, but I'm again trying to keep it as simple as I can.

The key with the notes is this: I'm actually using them to help arrange my thinking about the argument. What is so important that it's worth a note vs. what's just background? That focuses my attention on the most important points. What's the actual logical thinking here - what leads to what - and can I think of any obvious flaws in the reasoning? That helps me to be thinking actively about what I'm reading. And so on.

This also helps me, by the way, to know when a question is likely just too hard. If I can't even figure out how to organize my notes, that means my thinking isn't all that clear - and I should probably move to more aggressive answer elimination based on the odds, pick something, and move on.

[saha.sanjib]

Stacey, you bet this sure helps me. I also follow the same strategy. Thanks again.

[StaceyKoprince]

you're welcome!