HOW TO DESTROY READING COMPREHENSION PASSAGES BY RHYME

There is a magic bullet for RC passages.

What? There's a magic bullet? Surely you lie rhyme!

I do not. Here it is: Don't read the passage.

Suprised? It works. The primary purpose of the RC passages are not to test your knowledge of
grammar or theories or anything like that - they test your ability to RETAIN INFORMATION. Problem
is, you've got a few minutes to read a passage on some of the most boring crap ever, and you
somehow have to remember it? It can't be done.

So, how do you beat the RC down to it's knees and kick it in the groin?

You only read parts of it.

Lets try this with a long passage attached. (DONT READ IT YET!!)

Oh good god, thats atrociously long! So what do you do?

Step 1: Read the first paragraph and rewrite the key points. Rewrite in your own words.
Step 2: Read the first sentence of each subsequent paragraph. Rewrite in your own words.
Step 2a: SKIM the paragraph looking for key words - names, dates, key words. Write these down
underneath the key sentence you wrote for each paragraph.
Step 3: Answer the questions.

NOW TRY THIS ON THE ATTACHED PASSAGE BEFORE YOU READ MY NOTES BELOW

What did your notes look like?

My notes might look something like this:

Black Death severe epidemic, ravaged 14th cent Europe. Intrigured scholars since Gasquet 1893
study. Gasquet contends epidemic intensified political / religious upheaval that ended middle ages.
Later, Coulton agreed but oddly attributed a good thing to the BD - propersity as a result of less
competition for food, shelter and crap.

1930s, Evgeny Kosminksy claimed epedemic as not a key player.

World War, Marxist, fedualism

Role of BD also challenged in other way.

Twigg, Sherwburry, trade ship, havoc, bubonic, nile, 1912
Although Twigg cites conditions needed for BD, he ignores too much and is faulty in his logic.
Speculation, fault, trade ship, rodents, animals, europe

..........................

Now I've boiled the entire thing down to a few sentences. Try re-reading the first sentences now if
you are confused about the point of the passage. Whats the passage saying? DB was bad, lots of
people have studied it, one guy argues it helped end the middle ages, some other guy said it helped
foster prosperity, someone else argued against that, some other guys cahllenged it too, some guy
named Twig is wrong. Ok, so the authors talking about the DB, and specifically some different
theories about it. No problem.

What happens though when you get the question:

"Which of the following statements is most compatible with Kosminksy's approach to history as it is
presented in the passage?"

Easy. Find Kosminsky in your notes. Oh, there he is, in the second paragraph. Ok, now go look back
at the second paragraph. Find his name. Read ONE sentence around his name. If you don't see the
answer, read TWO sentences. If it's not in either of those sentences, see if his name comes up
somewhere else in the passage. The answers to the specific questions become REALLY REALLY EASY
if you use this method. Why? The GMAT LOVES to test your ability to remember the impossible.

What are the answer choices for this question?

Quote:

(a) The middle ages were ended primarily by the religious and political upheaval in fourteen century
europe
(b) The economic consequences of the BD included increased competition for food, shelter and
work.
(c) European history cannot be studied in isolation from that of hte rest of hte world
(d) The number of deaths in the fourtheenth century has been exaggerated
(e) The significance of the black death is best explained within the context of evolving economic
systems.

Do you see the GMAT's trap? They do this ALL the time with specific questions like this one. "OOOH
OOH I REMEMBER READING ABOUT HOW THE MIDDLE AGES WERE ENDED BY RELIGIOUS
UPHEAVAL... ILL PICK THAT." Or, maybe you don't remember that and you pick B becuase IT LOOKS
FAMILIAR AND YOU REMEMBER IT. How many names came up in this passage? A half dozen?
Evgency, Coulton, Gasquet, Twigg, Shrewsbury! The gmat is trying to trick you to do one of two
things - either (A) pick based on what you remember or (B) worse, make you go back and re-read
half the Oops passage.
You will do neither of these.

Now, go back and read only two sentences around the word Evgeny Kosminsky. Do you see the
answer? There's only one possible answer that even COMES CLOSE. Lets say you have no FRICKING
CLUE what the hell Kosminsky is trying to say, even if you HAVE NO Oops CLUE, there's only one
option that has a very similar word to those two sentences. "economic" and "economically". How
easy did that become?

Now what if they asked you a general question?

Quote:

The passage is primarily concerned with:

A) Demonstrating the relationship with the bubonic plague and the black death
B) Interpreting historical and scientific works on the black death
C) Employing the black death as a case study of disease transmission in medieval Europe
D) Presenting aspects of past and current debate on teh historical importance of the black death
e) Analyzing differences between capitalist and marxist interpretations of the historical signficance
of the black death

No !@(*!(#@ problem. Remember how you broke down the passage in to a few sentences? What
did it say? Did you write bubonic plague anywhere? No, not in any of your key sentences. Eliminate
A. Is there any mention of case studies anywhere? No not really, so eliminate C. Did you write down
anything about capitalists? No, eliminate E. Ok, so you are down to B and D. Look back at your
sentences - is the author interpreting things for you or just telling you that there are different views?
In other words, is he interpreting or presenting? He's presenting. Answer is D.

Did you get both these questions right? Hopefully you did. Did you notice how you never actually
read the !@(#!(@ passage?. Cool eh?

I really hope that made some sense. In my mind, this is the fullproof way of DESTROYING the RC on
the GMAT. You can obliterate it if you take the time to do this stuff. Oh and don't forget, its much
faster to read twelve sentences than to read 70.

Someone pointed out a stickied verbal thread called "USeful verbal documents" or something like
that. In there, it says this about RC:

Quote:

Try to read the whole text of the passage once, if possible. Many people think you should just skim
the passage or read the first lines of every paragraph, and not to read the passage. We believe this is
an error: if you misunderstand the main idea of the passage, you will certainly get at least some of
the questions wrong. Give the passage one good read, taking no more than 3 minutes to read all of
the text. Do not read the passage more than once – that wastes too much time. If you have not
understood it completely, try to answer the questions anyway.

A few comments. First, I'm not advocating you skim the passage. I'm advocating you read the entire
first paragraph and the first sentence of each subsequent one, and then skim. What I find shocking in
the advice above are two things:

1) "If you don't the main idea of the passage you will certainly get at least some of the questions
wrong."

Not necessarily. This is only true if you get a bunch of general questions, but you are EQUALLY likely
to get a bunch of specific questions - where your understanding of the whole passage is not
important.

2) "Do not read the passage more than once – that wastes too much time. If you have not
understood it completely, try to answer the questions anyway."

Good Lord. Who came up with this strategy? Read the whole thing once, if you don't understand it,
try anyway! You want to talk about a sure fire way of NOT getting things right? Think about it... the
whole POINT of RC is to test your ability to retain information, the whole POINT of the questions is to
try and force you to go back multiple times and re-read sections again and again. According to the
strategy posted in the word doc in that thread, you should just read it once and then "do your best"?
Sorry, but this has got to be some of the worst advice I could imagine.

Reading the whole passage once will do a few things:

(1) It will take more time than my method, AND you won't have any notes at the end!
(2) You will GUARANTEE confusion. There is a reason the GMAT picks dry scientific passages and not
passages from some Tom Clancy novel. (Even though those suck too). It's because they are PACKED
with information, often TERTIARY information - it's meant to be hard to digest this stuff. On top of it,
they suggest 3 minutes to read AND understand the text?

The advice they give sounds familiar. It sounds like Kaplan. Read the whole thing! Then take notes!
Then answer questions! HAY GUYZ, ITS 75 MINUTES YOU KNOW? It's crazy advice.

Theres one more thing I want to say about RC.

You know those questions about "The author infers....." or "It can be inferred...." ?
ONE MORE PRACTICE RC WITH RHYME:
We'll do one more together.

I'll time myself and try to write down details of what I read and did not read.

It's attached at the bottom.

First paragraph:
Time taken to read and take notes: 1 minute 20 seconds

My notes: Solar ponds circulation incomplete + high salt concentration that increase w/ depth. This
traps heat. Low water traps heat, higher water insulate. Heat thus retained at depth.

Second paragraph:
Time taken to read first sentence and paraphrase: 27 seconds.

My notes: Artificial pond made in dead sea to test its ability to convert heat to electricity. 

Second paragraph SKIMMING:

Time taken to SKIM and write down key words: 17 seconds.

My notes: water. solar ponds, chemicals, penetration, algae

(NOTE how quickly that was done. SKIM SKIM SKIM)

Third paragraph: 
Time taken to read first sentence and paraphrase: 9 seconds.

My notes: Algicide proposed to control algea.

Third paragraph SKIMMING: 16 seconds.

My Notes: Dead sea, chemcials, lucrative, tourist, contaminated. 

Fourth paragraph first sentence: 15 seconds.

My notes: Recent exp more promising for controlling algea

Fourth paragraph skim: 24 seconds.

My notes: repress, distortion, bouyancy, storage layer, destroyed , evaporation, diluted, algea.

Total time taken: 3 MINUTES 20 SECONDS

Thats pretty decent, maybe even a bit slow - but notice how quickly I ate up the remaining
paragraphs. I skimmed paragraphs 3 and 4 in under a minute....

Its not about READING the paragraphs. Just skimming. You may have noticed that my skim notes are
out of order - words that come later are first... the reason this is the case is because I let my eyes see
a word, write it down, if it then sees another word that I didnt see, even if its before, i write it down.
I know that finding the word again will take me a few seconds - if you can write them in order, all the
better. I found that I can be much faster if I just glance and write - even if its out of order. 
How did I do it so fast? I have not read a single sentence (other than the first sentence) in paragraph
2,3 or 4. I have no idea what details are in there - but I do know what they generally talk about
BECAUSE I WROTE DOWN THE FIRST SENTENCE, WHICH ALWAYS INTRODUCES THE PARAGRAPH'S
TOPIC. That's all I need to know to answer a question like:

"What is the author primarily concerned with?"

Well, without even looking at answer choices, I know he's primarily concerned with salt water ponds
and their suitability to generate electricity. 

I know this because he introduces them in the first paragraph, mentions an expirement in #2, cites a
possible solution to some problem in #3, and then says theres a better solution in paragraph #4. I
know all this just by reading hte first setnence of each paragraph. I do NOT know WHY or WHAT the
better solution is - but if I get asked, I know where to look. (It'll be somewhere in paragraph #4)

QUESTION: The primary purpose of the passage is to:

(a) discuss ways of solving a problem that threatens to limit the usefullness of an energy source.
(b) explain the mechanisms by which solar heat may be converted into energy
(c) detail the processes by which algae colonize highly saline bodies of water
(d) report the results of an experiment designed to clean contaminated bodies of water
(e) describe the unique properties of solar ponds in the dead sea.

Can you see which one it is?

Look again at the first sentences and the first paragraph.

(1) Solar ponds retain heat

(2) Artificial pond made in dead sea to test its ability to convert heat to electricity.
(3) Algicide proposed to control algea.
(4) Recent exp more promising for controlling algea

What story is this telling? There are some ponds, there's one in the dead sea, theres some problem
with it, algicide is one solution, but there is a better one. Look again at the answer choices. 

Do you see it? 

(b) explain the mechanisms by which solar heat may be converted into energy ------- Well no, that
doesnt really jibe with the topic sentences... He mentions it, but the topic sentences aren't
describing a mechanism, they decribe a problem.

(c) detail the processes by which algae colonize highly saline bodies of water ---- No, again, theres
not much discussion of processes in the topic sentences. The guys talking about a problem.
(d) report the results of an experiment designed to clean contaminated bodies of water --- Possibly,
but this is really only part of the passage probably. I dont know for sure, because I haven't read it,
but again if you look back at the notes, he's not so much reporting as much as suggesting something.

(e) describe the unique properties of solar ponds in the dead sea. - Well, definetly not. For starters, i
dont remember it saying solar ponds in the dead sea were the only ones that existed, plus, again, the
word Dead Sea doesnt come up much in the topic sentences.

(a) discuss ways of solving a problem that threatens to limit the usefullness of an energy source. -
Hmm ok, that makes sense. There is a pond, there is an experiment to check it as an energy source,
there are some solutions to that problem, but one solution is better. Yea, thats exactly what he's
saying.

Now say you got a specific question:

"According to the passage, the growth of algae was considered a threat to the sucess of the
artificial pond near the dead sea beacuse the algae..."

(a) produce excess oxygen that lowers water temperature

(b) restrict the circulation of the pond
(c) enable heat to escape through the upper level of the pound
(d) prevent light from penetrating to the lowest level of hte pond
(e) prevent accurate measurement of the heat collected in the pond.

How do you solve this given that YOU HAVENT EVEN READ THE PASSAGE?

Just find where Algae and Dead sea come up. Dead sea comes up first in the second paragraph - we
know this because I wrote it in my SKIM NOTES for the second passage. 

Did the word algae come up? 

Lets go look at what I wrote as my SKIM notes for paragraph two.

My notes: water. solar ponds, chemicals, penetration, algae

Yea, there it is. If your notes are lucky, you might notice that I wrote down the words algae and
penetration... gives you a pretty huge hint what it might be, but thats kind of dumb luck... so lets
pretend I didnt write that down. 

How do we find the answer? 

Find the sentence with algae in the second paragraph, because that's where we first saw Dead Sea.

"An immediate threat to the sucess of the venture was the growth of algae".
Ok, that doesnt give us the answer, what about the sentence right next to it. 

"Water in solar ponds must be kept maximally transparent to allow penetration of light to the
deep storage area."

Ok, look back at the answer choices.

The answer should jump out at you now. It's D. 

It's not A because theres NO MENTION of oxygen.

Its not B becuase theres NO MENTION of circulation.
It's not C becuase theres NO MENTION of heat 
Its not E because theres NO MENTION of measurement.

The only answer that even has words that match words in that sentence is D.

Now how much did you read to answer that? TWO SENTENCES.

How long did it take you to find them? 10, maybe 20 seconds. Tops. 20 more seconds to read them.
You've answered the question in under a minute. 

How long do you think it would have taken to find that answer otherwise? I mean, all the other
options SOUND reasonable right? Circulation was mentioned in paragraph 1, heat definetly came up
somehwere, and there might even be a mention of oxygen somewhere I missed.

the point is this:

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO READ THE PARAGRAPHS TO GET THESE RIGHT. ONLY READ THE FIRST
PARAGRAPH AND FIRST SENTENCE. SKIM THE REST. AND BY SKIM, I MEAN 20 SECONDS, KEY WORDS,
DONT EVEN READ THE SENTENCES, JUST WRITE DOWN SCRIBBLES.

With time, you can get really really fast at it.