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SHOULD YOU SKIM?
Not at first. You might accidentally skim over the Big Idea. As a beginner, you
should concentrate on the Big Idea and 5 Questions. Somewhat counter-intuitively,
skimming is an advanced skill—you have to distinguish between the significant
and the extraneous. If you skim over the important stuff, you’ll have to
go back, or even worse, you’ll get the questions wrong, due to misreading.
As you get the hang of spotting the Big Idea and mapping the passage, you’ll
approach a point where you can begin skimming. Eventually, the Big Idea will become
so obvious, it will jump off the page, signaled by tone shifts, passage structure,
“slam on the brakes language”, and your understanding of the author.
At that point you will be able to spot important content quickly enough to skim
over everything else. You will save precious time by skimming everything that
isn’t centrally related to the Big Idea or the structure.
THE BENEFITS OF SKIMMING
Time is a precious commodity on the GMAT. Do you want to waste it reading the
extraneous detail of the passages? The GMAT writers want you to do exactly that.
Often, the unimportant information contains the most challenging language--a complicated
technical explanation or strange business jargon.
Remember: The longer you spend reading the passage, the
less time you have to answer the questions, so getting to the questions in the
quickest, most productive way is very useful.
School and work have trained you to strive for Total Understanding
of everything you read, and rightly so. Would you give a presentation
at work on a quarterly sales report without knowing the report inside
and out? Of course not. But this is the GMAT, not real life, and the
rules are different. Your boss won’t like it if you say “hold
it, I need to reread the report to answer that question.” The
GMAT, on the other hand, won’t penalize you for having to reread
part of a passage to answer the one question (if there is one) that
asks about a detail.
The GMAT can test only a fraction of the detail. Don’t waste time
learning the specifics of the specifics. That kind of information is too narrow
to constitute the subject of a question.
Even if you read all the detail carefully, you would immediately forget much of
it. It is like getting a phone number from an operator. If you don’t rehearse
it in your mind over and over, you will probably forget it ten seconds later.
Our brains are good at remembering general ideas, like the Big Idea of a passage.
They are not as good at remembering detail on a first read.
HOW FAST SHOULD YOU READ?
Students often wonder if they are reading too fast or too slowly. Unfortunately,
the answer is that it really depends on the person reading. Clearly, your individual
skill level, the time you have left, and the length of the essay affect how fast
you should read. A difficult or strangely structured essay may take more time.
Or you may hit an essay, that for some reason gives you trouble--perhaps the Big
Idea is hidden.
Use your own performance level to regulate your reading speed. If you can’t
find the topic sentences of paragraphs, or are unclear about the main idea, you
should slow down. If you have no idea if the essay is a Describe, Evaluate, or
Persuade essay, slow down as well.
800score.com Tip:
If, when you finish an essay, your
first thought is “Huh?”, you read it too fast. If you have to
return to the passage for Macro questions, you read it too fast. On the
other hand, if you doing lengthy second and third reads of the entire essay,
you are spending too much time on the reading and should be tackling the
questions by that point. Remember, you can always go back. |
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