Hard to comprehend RC passage and RC argument

[ronnyr394]

Hello ManPrep Instructor!
My name is Ronny and I have studied GMAT with your online Interact for 2 months long.

I notice that when I try to read and comprehend the meaning of RC and CR questions, I find it is hard to set my time limit to under 2 minutes.

Following time constraint 2 min for CR and RC, I often answering RC and CR with wild guess because I don't finish reading and understand what question asked for (FYI : I am not native speaker of English). I already use 'passage map' for RC or 'breakdown the argument' for CR and write it down in my scratch paper.

When I do review with GMAT Navigator, I am just realized what is the missing part or some misunderstanding in my comprehension.
I have tried to slow down to understand, but it takes me average of 4 minutes to answer CR and 5 minutes for RC which is very bad if in real test condition.

Do you have any tips or insight to improve my effectiveness in comprehend RC and CR passage? and how to make it under 2 min constraint?

Thank you for your answer!

[StaceyKoprince]

This is a tough one - you can improve, but it's going to take some time and concerted effort.

Essentially, for someone who is a non-native speaker and who never spent much time reading in English at an academic level, what you need to do is take a step back from studying how to do this for the GMAT. The GMAT requires you to read at that level

quickly

. You need to learn how to read at an academic level

in the first place

. Then you can learn how to do so more quickly.

The good news is that this will help you when you get to business school, too, since you will be reading a large volume of academic material on a daily basis.

So, set aside your RC and CR studies for about 2-3 months (you can continue with your other studies) and start reading. You're going to be reading all kinds of things:

Academic:
http://magazine.uchicago.edu/
http://harvardmagazine.com/

Business and Science: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Economist, Scientific American. Look for longer / feature articles, especially in the week-end "Magazine" section for the first two.

If you can, find a friend who's a native speaker and strong reader and who's willing to help. Once or twice a week, read the same article. Then, give your friend a summary of the main messages of the article (sometimes do this on the phone or over coffee, sometimes do this via email). Ask your friend to critique your understanding - point out messages you may have misinterpreted or missed entirely and show you how s/he knew what this message really was (literally, but quoting from the article!).

Also, start reading novels and non-fiction! I'm a fan of the authors Doris Lessing (fiction), John McPhee (non-fiction), Pearl Buck (fiction), William Manchester (non-fiction), Thornton Wilder (fiction). I also love Agatha Christie (mystery novelist) - the books are on the shorter side and a bit "lighter," but she's always grammatically correct and on the somewhat more formal side, writing-wise, so it's good practice for language skills. Ask your friends who love to read to recommend other books.

When you start to feel more comfortable doing this type of reading in the first place, then you can start to work on reading more quickly.

[ronnyr394]

Hi Stacey, sorry for late reply. Thank you for your suggestion to read science or business articles. Now, I read Scientific American print everyday because I think my reading skill in science topic is pretty shaky than the others. I usually choose some articles which I find interesting and try to find each "simple story" on 3-4 minutes.

Maybe my mistake from the first time of my study is that I ignore "Foundations of Verbal" which turns out helps me to understand and comprehend verbal question better than before. ( I am too confident to directly start studying Verbal Strategy Guides I think)

Recently I took GMAT test and I want to ask you some question about my performance in taking exams. Should I make new post (to prevent OOT) or I can continue writing those questions in this post?

Best,

Ronny

[StaceyKoprince]

Good, I'm glad Foundations of Verbal is helping - that's a good resource!

You can post here - it's better, actually, because then we can keep all of your history in one place.

[ronnyr394]

From my 3 last CAT and one GMAT exam, I've always get verbal score around 30 - 31 while my quant score increases from average 32 in CAT exams to 46 in real GMAT.
I've tried to list bucket 2 topics on Verbal and stick to practice those topics for probably 2 months. It seems those topic is always be my weakness.

my question is:
Should I keep practicing bucket 2 list ,
or hone my skill in bucket 1 area and just move bucket 2 into bucket 3 list?

My Bucket 2 Verbal :
1. CR [ Assumption, Strengthen, Weaken]
2. RC [Specific Idea; Inference]
3. SC [Modifier and Verbs]

[StaceyKoprince]

Those categories are common enough, unfortunately, that you can't afford to move them to bucket 3. At least half of your CR questions will be those three types. Ditto RC. Modifiers are also very common on SC. You could maybe let verbs go for now - but that's it.

How has your study with Foundations of Verbal been going?

And one other question: are you going to have to take the TOEFL? (If you did your undergrad studies in a language other than English, then you may have to take the TOEFL - check the requirements at the schools to which you plan to apply.)

Your English is good, but I can see certain errors in your writing that indicate that you might benefit by doing your TOEFL studies first (if you need to take that test) and then returning to your GMAT studies. TOEFL materials will get you more into some of the underlying language topics that most GMAT materials assume you already know.

Then, if you can lift your underlying language skills / structure, you may find that it's easier to improve your bucket 2 areas when you come back to the GMAT.

If you don't have to take the TOEFL, you may still want to do some studying for it, or take some English-language grammar classes at a local college / university. Try to find a program that's designed specifically for English-as-a-second-language students (search for "continuing studies" or "continuing education" programs).

[ronnyr394]

I have read SC and RC part in Foundation of Verbal and I am now on CR part.

On RC part, I am a little bit confuse because every instructor has different approach to write down the passage.
For me, Tommy's approach on write down only main idea and purpose of every paragraph suits me. So I just follow his approach.

On SC part, I think FoV gives me enough foundation such as sentence structure (verb, adverb, adjective, etc) which helps me analyze splits in SC questions.

CR part helps me to understand many type of gaps that I don't even know. It helps me to anticipate answer before looking for wrong answer.
It is hard for me to anticipate the answer on CR before jump into ABCDE answer list.
Do you have any advice on how to practice "anticipate answer" before selecting wrong answer on CR ?

I will take IELTS test before next GMAT exam. I choose IELTS because I am more familiar with IELTS exam format than TOEFL.

[StaceyKoprince]

Oh, right, I forgot about IELTS - thanks for reminding me. Yes, the same advice applies for that.

I'm glad that the SC foundations material helped you.

For RC notes, yes, there are multiple methods and different things work for different people - we think in different ways. If Tommy's method works for you, then use it!

Anticipating / predicting the answer can work very well on RC but CR is different. There are only a few CR question types on which that can work well (describe the role / boldface, describe the argument). On some types, it can "half" work. For example, you MIGHT be able to anticipate the answer on an assumption or inference question. But it is also possible that what you anticipate will not be the specific assumption or inference that the answer choice addresses - there are usually multiple possibilities and you don't have time to brainstorm them all.

And anticipating the answer really doesn't work on Strengthen, Weaken, or Discrepancy because each of those types introduces new information in the answer. There's no way to guess what that might be.

I did write a CR article recently that might help you. Take a look at this and tell me what you think:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2015/12/ ... stion-type