Kaplan GMAT800 Reading Comprehension Strategies
General Pointers: l Read for the author’s purpose and main idea. l Paraphrase the text l Create an outline, or “roadmap”, of the passage. l Don’t overinvest. Reading passages vary in length from 150—300 words with 2-5 questions. Aim to spend no more than 4 minutes reading even the most difficult passage and spend an average of 1 minute per question. l Read the explanations.
An 800 test taker understands that just like in Critical Reasoning, strengtheners and weakeners in Reading Comp often work by bolstering or damaging the assumptions in an author’s argument.
An 800 test taker doesn’t try to memorize all the details in a passage. He only wades into the details when a question requires him to do so.
An 800 test taker jots down a roadmap for every passage, knowing that it’s difficult and unnecessary to keep all of the key information in her head.
An 800 test taker prephrases answers to questions whenever possible. While Inference questions are not generally friendly to prephrasing, she takes advange of those very specific ones that are.
An 800 test taker reads through all of the answer choices in the Verbal section before making his final choice.
An 800 test taker realizes that with passages including a number of theorists and theories, the test maker are simply testing his ability to keep the various elements of the passage straight.
An 800 test taker does not read the first question before reading the passage.
An 800 test taker does not get sidetracked by the answer choices. Once she knows what she’s looking for, she doesn’t let the answer choices confuse her.
An 800 test taker knows that an inference on the GMAT is something that is directly supported by the Reading Comp passage or Critical Reasoning stimulus. An inference is not just possible; it’s necessarily true based on the passage.
An 800 test taker notes the location and purpose of intricate details, but doesn’t attempt to memorize or even fully understand those details unless a question specifically asks about them. An 800 test taker cuts past jargon, returning to cumbersome technical details only when a question demands it.
An 800 test taker knows when and how to allow the answer choices to guide her to the relevant portions of the text when a question is fairly open-ended.
An 800 test taker recognizes extreme wording that damages the plausibility of certain answer choices, and instinctively stays away from choices that include exaggerated or extreme ideas.
An 800 test taker is ultra sensitive to cause-and-effect relationship, and is not likely to mistake one for the other.
An 800 test taker constantly interrogates the passage and the author until he’s satisfied that he’s nailed down both the author’s main area of concern and purpose in writing the passage.
An 800 test taker knows that the information needed to find the correct answer to questions containing a line reference usually won’t be located very far from the cited line.
An 800 test take doesn’t bend over backwards to justify an answer choice, knowing that if a choice takes that much work to rationalize, it’s almost certainly wrong.
An 800 test taker does not overestimate the amount of “comprehension” that Reading Comprehension requires; she seeks to understand only as much as she needs to pick up points.
An 800 test taker often asks himself, “ where is the answer likely to come from?”
An 800 test taker paraphrases the author’s ideas into the simplest terms possible.
An 800 test taker knows that the information she needs to answer the questions is right there in the passage. She therefore jots down the paragraph topics in her roadmap to help her hunt for the answers later.
An 800 test taker pays very careful attention to the verbs in an answer choices, especially in “ primary purpose” questions.
An 800 test taker is suspicious of choices that attempt to link two or more elements from different parts of the passage.
An 800 test taker pays careful attention to distinctions in passages that compare two or more people, theories, or phenomena.
An 800 test taker pays careful attention to distinctions in passages that compare two or more people, theories, or phenomena.
An 800 test taker first and foremost picks up on what generally occurs in each paragraph.
An 800 test taker stays alert throughout the entire passage since the author’s full main idea may not emerge until the end.
An 800 test taker remains conscious of where in the passage certain ideas are presented, and uses that knowledge to help eliminate choices that deal with material far from the issue in question.
An 800 test taker is not tempted by a choice simply because it contains a true statement. It must, first and foremost, answer the question that was asked. | 
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发表于 2007-3-4 19:50:00
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