Going back to passage

[ericha3535]

Just a quick question that I have about RC.
More and more I spend time on RC, more and more I realize how accurate to describe RC as a puzzle game:

Every answer you look for is in the passage. All you've got to do is go back and check your answer.

At first I was like... Psh.... I knew that... but I didn't. And now, I do.

Now, having said that, questions that ask you for a broad concept especially questions like "which are the following things that the author most agrees with," or "the passage most strongly implies that..." these give me a headache!

They don't give you any kinds of boundary... it's like here go fetch a ball but I am not telling you where it is.

Someone once told me that if I ever go back to the passage, it means that I didn't really "read" it. Of course, you have to go back for those specific line reference number questions.

I realize that if you go back to passage every time when you tackle a question, there is no way you would get any incorrect answers... it's just that you do it at the expense of time constraint.

My real question is: does anyone actually refer back to passage every time when you tackle a question (inference questions especially) like mentioned above and still be able to solve through all four passages?

Or can someone give me advice on how to tackle inference questions?

[bbirdwell]

I can, and do, talk about this for hours! Here's a quick idea:

We think of the questions as coming in two basic flavors: general and specific. For specific questions, you'll have to go back to the passage.

For general questions, like Author Agreement questions and Main Point questions, you should be able to use your broad understanding of the underlying structure of the passage to answer (ie the Scale: the 2 sides of the argument and the author's position on the issue).

If you must go back to the passage, use your knowledge of the broad structure to quickly eliminate 2 or 3 answers before going to dig around in the details. You should even use your general knowledge of the passage's structure to eliminate answers on specific questions! Then, going back to the passage takes less time because you aren't trying to actually check 5 answers every time.