comparative passage strategy

[tw4jp]

I recently wrote pt 81 passage 4, missed questions 22, 23,25. I also wrote pt 82 passage 3 and missed 16,17,20. Both passages are law-related and have abstract legal terms. I realized I have a hard time dealing with detail questions about similarity and differences b/w passage A and B. Can someone please offer me a better strategy for comparative passages? I was thinking just read passage A and answer the questions. Is that a good idea?

[ohthatpatrick]

I think you might be reading too much into your downfall being specifically about COMPARATIVE passages.

Q25 on PT81, for example, is just asking for the meaning-in-context of "crucible". Getting that question correct is only about correctly interpreting the meaning of that sentence (and maybe the one before or after it).

You can experiment with going to the questions after having only read one psg, but for most people it feels like a questionable use of time.

If you want to try that route, here is what I would recommend:

1. Scan the Q's to see if there are any that about JUST-A or JUST-B.
(in PT81, there was one about JUST-B ... and in PT82, there was one about JUST-B)

2. Whichever passage had more "JUST-this passage" questions, read that one first.

3. Answer the "JUST-this passage" question(s)

4. Eliminate wrong answers on questions that ask what is true / supported by BOTH passages. You're not expecting to get to a correct answer, but you should be able to hear a couple answers that sound crazy (because you haven't read the other psg yet, so the wording they're referring to is totally unfamiliar to you).

5. Then go read the other passage and attempt/finish all the remaining questions.

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When questions ask about THE RELATIONSHIP of one passage to another, you can't do them until you've read both passages.

But questions that ask, "Which of these answer choices is (applicable to / supported by) BOTH passages" are always going to have trap answers that are "true for one of the psgs, ??? for the other psg". Those are more tempting once we've read both passages. If you've only read one of the passages, the ones that are grabbing ideas from the other passage will sound alien.

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Once you've read both passages, ask yourself how they relate:
COMPLEMENTARY vs. ADVERSARIAL?
Are they same/different in terms of
TOPIC?
PURPOSE?
MAIN POINT?
SCOPE?
TONE?
EVIDENCE?

And then you just do your best on the questions, some of which tend to be really, really hard. There's no strategy or approach that solves those tough moments of realtime judgment concerning whether the meaning of a given answer choice is sufficiently equivalent to the meaning of the passage(s).

[tw4jp]

Thanks Patrick, those are really good advice! I think you are right about me reading too much into my comparative passage reading skills. I just wrote pt 83 today and still missed 5 in total ( the same amount I missed on pt 82 and 81), but this time I didn't miss any question in passage 3. I think the reason is that I invested more time in passage 3 and rushed through passage 4. I realize either way I might miss ~5 questions is the upcoming Feb test. Maybe I could focus more on the time management, but I doubt it might be that helpful since there are only 10 days left.