THE CHALLENGE
Think of the reading comprehension section as something like a reality TV show where you are dropped in the middle of a jungle with no clues about where you are. You have an essay dropped in front of you where you have no background on it whatsoever. While you are reading the essay you must make sense of it, find your way and ultimately beat the questions.
Imagine reading an essay where:
- You don’t know what the title is.
- You don’t know who the author is.
- You don’t know when or where it was published.
- You can’t see the paragraphs before or after the essay.
- You don’t have enough time to read it properly
- The content is dense, academic, boring, filled with jargon, and covers a topic you have no knowledge about or interest in.
….And your mastery of those 150 to 300 words will determine
your future business school and career. This may seem impossible to
beat, but don't panic! There are techniques to help you systematically
decipher what each passage is really about and then correctly answer
the questions.
To figure out what the essay is and where you are, you have the 800score.com
Five Questions to ask yourself while reading:
FIVE QUESTIONS:
- Question 1. What is the Passage Type?
- Question 2. What is each paragraph about?
- Question 3. What is the Organization?
- Question 4. What is the Big Idea?
- Question 5. What is the author’s purpose?
Now it may sound hard at first to be running through these Five Questions
as you are reading the passage, but as time goes on it will become
second nature and it will make it much easier to answer these questions
while you are reading the passage and once you are finished.
Answering these five questions is a skill that must be learned. We will teach you how to effectively find an author’s point and to effectively avoid all the other verbiage; yet if there is a detail question, you won’t waste too much time finding the answer. Once you can do this, you will find yourself a faster, more effective reader, not just for the GMAT, but for any reading activity.
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