Reading Comprehension Strategy

[ljack4]

Hi,
I find that Reading Comprehension is by far my weakest area. I've tried the ViewSTAMP and think I've analyzed the passage sufficient enough until I get to the questions. I find my self struggling to answers the questions and it taking me longer time to do so. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[Dave Killoran]

Hi L,

Thanks for the question! I have a few questions for you first, starting with: how long does it take you to read the passage? And then, how long would you say it takes to do the questions on average? and how often do you return to the passage during the questions?

If you can help me out with that information, I think I can give you some useful advice or at least some approaches we can try. Thanks!

[ljack4]

Thanks Dave for replying! I normally take about 5 minutes reading the passage and then another 9 minutes answering questions because I'm searching for the answers in the passage. However, even with this method, I still get 2-3 questions wrong for each passage.

[Dave Killoran]

Hey L,

Ok, that's what I wanted to know. Here's what I'm thinking:

One of the things that I sometimes see with ViewStamp is that instead of the mental templating tool it is supposed to be, it gets used more like a fill-in-all-the-spaces kind of tool. I'm not sure that's what's going on here, but 5 minutes reading and then 9 minutes in the questions suggests that too much time is being spent in the reading phase. What ViewStamp is supposed to do is provide you with a basic overview of the info you need to seek while reading. It helps provide a roadmap of sorts of the passage, one that can then be used during the question to either answer them or to help you know where to turn within the passage to gain the info you need quickly. So, try to make it so it is sued that way—read quickly but attempt to gain the big picture of the passage and an overall understanding of the structure and viewpoints. If you could cut just 2 minutes off your reading, that would have a big back-end effect, and reduce the pressure you are feeling during the section.

So, what I'd like to see you do is the same thing I recently recommended to another student on the forum: read through a whole RC section and for each passage try to keep the reading portion to 3 minutes (and minimize your notating and underlining—which everyone should be doing anyway) and while reading simply focus on getting the big picture. What is the author talking about? What's the main point? What's said where in the passage? Who said it (in general, not specific)? In other words, strip away all the stuff around the passage and just focus on the big picture elements. Would you mind trying that? There's no guarantee it would work (and it might make things worse), but then we'd know whether that is a viable avenue to explore for you.

Please let me know if you want to try that. Thanks and good luck!

[ljack4]

Dave,
Thanks for the suggestions. I will try this today and tomorrow and will let you know by Monday how it works out for me. Thanks for all your help!

[ljack4]

Good Morning Dave!
I spent the weekend trying the tips you suggested. I noticed I improved my speed with reading the passage to an avg of 2:40mins. Answering the questions took me about the same 9 minutes as previously. Unfortunately, I am still averaging 2 wrong per passage. I notice that they tend to be must be true questions which leads me to believe I am missing key pieces of information when reading the passage.

Thanks for all your help!

[Dave Killoran]

Hey L,

Thanks for the reply, and for trying that out this weekend!

This is actually fantastic news overall—you just cut off 2 minutes and 20 seconds per passage and yet retained your accuracy. So, that's a huge improvement just from trying one basic change! Going forward, you need to focus on structure and information location; when you continue to miss fact-based questions but still take 9 minutes in the question set, it means you aren't finding what you need quickly enough (and that there are possible issues with your interpretation, but that's a separate issue that should be discussed too). The mental mapping aspect that is the heart of ViewStamp is still not working perfectly for you, and that's where you need to spend some time in the short term. But, if you can cut 2:20 off each passage after just two days of trying it out, I suspect there's a lot more progress we can make here by shaping your approach to better fit your strengths.

Ok, I split out the remainder of your post into a new thread over at http://forum.powerscore.com/lsat/viewto ... f=2&t=7858, just to keep things clean. Please check that out when you can.

Thanks!