The Reading Comprehension Train Rolls On.

By, Yesterday evening and today morning I finished the Study material from Manhattan GMAT and KAplan on RC. The approach of these two are as different as schools of thought from two religions. Both are trying to achieve, and will achieve the same set of correct answers. But there are some major differences in the way each of them tries to cultivate the quick reading strategy. I think I am going to stick to the Manhattan Technique for reading, and use Answering technique from Kaplan. Not because I want to be a nice person, but because I feel this is best suited for me.

Manhattan GMAT, forces you to read in a carefully careless manner. Also the approach is different for Short Vs. Long Passages.

For Long Passages :-

Read the First 3 sentences of the First Para carefully, Then SKIM through the rest of first Paragraph. After finishing the first paragraph Jolt down up to 3 important points from the first Para by giving core importance to first 3 sentences. This will become your Skull section. Box it up.

Next, Read the first two sentences of each of the remaining paragraph very carefully. And SKIM through the rest of the material. Al the end of each paragraph put down in billeted points what you think is important.

At the end of this exercise you will be left with a Skull section, and 2 Bulletted ideas from each paragraph. According to Manhattan, this is enough for you intelligently approach each question.

For Short Passages:-

You can take a more detailed note taking as you go along as long as the time allotted is not exceeded.

That brings the question of how much time should be spent?

For the timing what they suggest is, You will know in advance by looking at the Question header how many total RC questions are going to be based out of the given Material. For example at the first question, header will read as, Question 21 of 21-24. This will tell you that there are 4 questions. So they advocate using 2 x 4 = 8 min total for attacking this RC. You should use a maximum of little less than half of this time to read and prepare the summary. Something like 3min 30 Secs for 4 Question passage, 2 min 30 Second for 3 Question Passage.

That will leave us about a minute to answer each of the questions. These timings are as always rules of thumb. I will be starting to do practice questions today evening. I will update back as to whether these techniques are working for me or not.