General RC strategies

Question 1

What does Reading comprehension test?

Answer 1

how carefully we’ve read a passage

whether we understand what we’ve read and can accurately interpret the information given

whether we can identify relationships between the ideas that are presented in the passage.

Question 2

Levels of Reading comprehension

Answer 2

From bottom level 1 - top level 5

Level 1- Understanding the exact meanings of words

Level 2- Understanding the exact meanings of sentences

Level 3 - Understanding the connections between sentences

Level 4 - Understanding the main idea of each paragraph

Level 5 - Understanding the connections among paragraphs

Question 3

Things to do that make you an RC expert

Answer 3

1. Our first level of reading comprehension comes from being aware of the words we encounter and understanding the meanings of these words in context.
2. The best readers carefully digest each sentence, taking care to pause at multiple points in a sentence to summarise what the sentence has communicated.
   (People who struggle with Reading Comprehension read sentences without ever gaining a full understanding of what these sentences communicate.)
3. The best readers carefully connect the sentences in a passage. They continuously seek to understand these interrelationships. They ask questions such as “Why is this sentence here?” “Why did the author take the time to include this sentence?” and “What is the role/purpose of this sentence?”
4. The best readers take the time and invest the energy to be sure that they completely understand the main idea of each paragraph they encounter.
5. The best readers seek to understand the purpose of each paragraph. By doing so, they’re able to put all of the pieces together and see how each paragraph fits together into the passage.

Question 4

When you see a passage genre you aren’t well versed in, how do you approach it?

Answer 4

One key Reading Comprehension skill is to be interested and engaged in all of the passages you face, regardless of the information in those passages.

Just like Colten, with gmat 780, did.

Do your best to view GMAT RC passages as opportunities to learn something new!

Question 5

The biggest RC mistake you can make is …

Answer 5

is not becoming interested in the material presented in the passages. Instead, they read simply to “get it done.”

Such an approach does not work.
Lack if interest = lack of comprehension