Suck @ science passages in RC

by **Guest** Mon Apr 28, 2008 11:15 pm

I noticed that science passages are hurting me a lot. I am doing fairly well above 85% on social & business passages

Any suggestions to improve science passages.

They seem to be dry and have shit load of info compared to others

Or is my comprehension just bad for science passages

by **StaceyKoprince** Tue Apr 29, 2008 12:37 am

Chances are you like social science and business better than you like science in general. :)

Everybody has some RC topic they don't like. Keep yourself at a high level - just look at the overall info (main message, topic sentences, purpose of each paragraph) and don't get sucked into all the tough detail. Chances are pretty good that you'll have only 1 science passage on the test. 1 of the questions will probably be a main idea question. And, of the other 2-3 questions, probably only 1 or 2 will get into the really nasty detail of that passage. Only try to learn detail once you've gotten a question about that detail (remember that they write about twice as many questions for a passage as they'll actually give you - so you WON'T get questions on all of the detail sitting in front of you). And if that particular detail is too complex, move to POE - find a way to eliminate some choices, guess from among the remaining choices, and move on!

by **Guest** Tue Apr 29, 2008 11:25 am

Chances are pretty good that you'll have only 1 science passage on the test

How can we say this? I remember some one saying that GMAT is now preferring the short passages than the longer ones. If thats the case, and one ends up with 3 short and 1 long passage ( 3X3 + 4X1 ), there could be a total of 6-7 science passage Q's. That means half of my RC questions are science passage. Then there is no easy way out. Sounds dreadful :)

What are other possible ways of improving comprehension for science passages? Is there any source for science passages on the internet? I know that they would probably be coarse compared to GMAT passages which are condensed and skimmed. I would like to give it a short reading some science passages and see if I develop any love consciously or unconsciously.

Thanks

by **Guest** Fri May 02, 2008 10:20 am

Ended up on this review from Amazon about the book "How to read better and faster". The reviewer claims that it has helped improve his RC skills in GRE when he took the test in 1989. The book itself was published in 1970 or so. I grabbed the book from library thinking it would be a 60/70 page book. turns out its approximately 300 pages. Any one here read this book and improved RC? I have 2 months for the test and I am doing 75-80% on OG RC Questions over all.

Thanks

by **StaceyKoprince** Tue May 06, 2008 1:23 am

There are three main categories of passages: physical science, social science, and business. You'll most likely have one of each and then, if you have four passages, you'll have a second one of one of the types. So you have about a 1/3 chance of getting two science passages.

The worst science passages are the long ones; short ones are not usually too bad simply because there's not a lot there. Go take a look at OG and see if you're struggling just as much on ALL science passages or mostly the long ones. If so, you've got a pretty decent chance that your long passage won't be a science passage. (Though, if you get two long passages, your odds get worse, obviously.)

You might try Scientific American for a source of denser science reading material.

Also, spend some more time actually studying the questions from those science passages that are driving you nuts. You'll find that, on at least half of them, you actually don't need to know more than about a sentence's worth of material in the passage. If you can at least identify the TYPE of information in each paragraph, even if you don't understand it all, then you can use that outline to know which paragraph to look at for a particular question. Narrow down to one or two sentences in that paragraph (use keywords / content from the question). Figure out whatever you can figure out just about those one or two sentences, even if there's still lots of stuff that you don't get in the rest of the passage. Complete comprehension isn't necessary.

Also study wrong answer choices. How do they tend to tempt you on RC science wrong answers? What kinds of traps do you tend to fall into? Each wrong answer identified gets you closer to the right one.

by ak Wed Jul 02, 2008 1:34 am

Hi,

Can anyone suggest some sources for business ,social and science topics.
I have noticed that the social topics are mainly about women and black Americans.

by **StaceyKoprince** Wed Jul 30, 2008 11:29 pm

They can be yes (about various categories of minorities), but not always. :)

One of my fellow teachers recently sent an email about this very topic. He spent a few hours researching various sites and concluded this:

"The best sources I could find are a couple of alumni magazines and Scientific American. These describe scholarly research in relatively formal prose, with the aim of making the research intelligible to educated non-specialists:

* http://magazine.uchicago.edu/ - particularly articles in the "Investigations" tab
* http://harvardmagazine.com/
* http://sciam.com/ (This can get a bit too casual for the GMAT, but it's probably worth including because so many of our students get freaked out by science passages on the GMAT.)"

Thanks, Jad, for the great advice!