Breaking Down Complex RC's

[pappup5]

Hi Ron/Stacy,

I am trying to enhance my RC skills by following your very helpful material (Thursday's with Ron and Stacy's blog) . However, I have one issue and it might sound strange - I tend to get almost every answer in a scientific passage correct (within the specified time limit - at least that is how it has been up till now ),
but I am absolutely stumped by socio passages like the one in OG 13 involving Q 120-127 . I could answer only 2 questions correct in this one and more so I do not have a clear understanding even after seeing the solution. (I did get the main point of the passage correct .)

Question - Can you suggest a strategy for breaking down these kind of non scientific complex packages? I hope my question is not too weird.

Thanks in advance!

[RonPurewal]

if you're getting almost 100 percent of the questions right on scientific passages, then the answers are already at your fingertips.

ask yourself:
• what am i currently doing on the science passages? (if your performance is as stated, then, in general, these will be things that work.)
• which of these things am i NOT doing on the other passages?

whatever constitutes your answer to the second question is what you should do.

[RonPurewal]

more generally, the content of RC passages is irrelevant to your strategy.
...so, you should have ONE strategy, regardless of whether the passage is about science or law or politics or paleontology or anything else.

there's a reason why the passages deal with such arcane topics—because you're not supposed to understand all the details. (in your initial reading of a passage, you shouldn't even be reading the details in the first place! as soon as you can determine what kind of details they are and why they're there, you should skip the rest of that particular chunk.)

the only factor that should possibly affect your strategy is the length of the passage. not the content.

[pappup5]

Thanks Ron - I have another small question. I read about using topic sentences and how to effectively use them to get the main idea of the passage.
Can the topic sentences also be used effectively to answer other questions? So for example if I get this really long passage and I am unable to make much of it, is there a possibility that I might be able to tackle "inference questions" or "most likely to agree" questions using the topic sentence?

[RonPurewal]

the latter of those isn't a meaningful distinction. 'author would agree' could deal either with the main idea or with details. (that distinction—main idea vs. details—is the ONLY meaningful distinction in RC.)

e.g., look at RC question #64 in the 13th/2015 edition OG (can't reproduce here).
that question is about main ideas—but only because there are no specific keywords for which to search the text. ('the M theory' is not a specific keyword, because the entire passage is about 'the M theory'.)
if you take that exact question and change 'the M theory' to something that actually IS a specific keyword—e.g., 'oxygen 18'—then you have a detail question.

in general, 'topic sentences' will help you answer main-idea questions, but they won't help you answer detail questions (although they may help you find the necessary details).

[RonPurewal]

if I get this really long passage and I am unable to make much of it

the red thing makes me think you didn't read my earlier posts.

THE WHOLE POINT of highly technical RC passages is that you're not supposed to understand all (or even most) of the details.

so, even if you are 'unable to make much of' the passage, you should still be able to answer both types of questions!

[RonPurewal]

in other words, non-understanding of DETAILS is not an issue at all.

an actual issue would only arise if you were unable to understand the words that lend structure to the passage (e.g., However..., An opposing viewpoint is provided by..., Furthermore..., It has long been believed..., etc.)
...but that's very unlikely, since structure is not created by difficult/obscure words.

[pappup5]

Great - Thank you so much Ron. I have a clear understanding now.

[RonPurewal]

you're welcome.