Although I said 'science passages' in the title, my question is more broadly related to managing passages that I am completely unfamiliar with. When I encounter such passages, my mind gets blank or, I end up retaining barely any details because I am unfamiliar with the topic/jargon and spending too much time in the questions (on top of spending too much in reading the passage). Even when I remember where to locate the details, it takes too much time either because I still have to search within the paragraph or have to re-read to understand again
As a possible solution (I haven't tried yet but I will), I was thinking about the following method, at least when I read those science or detail-oriented passages: Reading one or two paragraphs and then going to questions to see if I can solve any, going back to reading next passages and then looking at the questions to see if I can solve any (based on what I read so far), and so on. How does it sound? And could you give any advice for me? Thanks in advance!:)
As soon as you encounter a passage that is terribly dense with a subject you neither care about nor have any familiarity with, do the following: tell yourself that it doesnt matter whether you are familiar/fond/or interested in what you're about to read, you're going to read it, critically, like a lawyer, you're not going to love it but you'll bang it out cuz you have to, and at the end of each paragraph pause and tell yourself briefly what was just talked about, then keep moving forward. After you finish the entire passage, immediately move to the questions, hit them hard, and dominate each one 