Diagramming - Waste of time ?

[cgarre]

Most often the mgmat book for CR talks about diagramming etc as the best technique. But i guess
1. It cannot be done for every question. If you know which question you have to do, then you end up wasting time first reading then thinking if you need to diagram ? Instead it would be better to diagram everything!

2. Diagramming involved writing and marking. Writing the whole think in short forms etc is still ok, but it says mark and number .. but how can you mark on online tests , on the monitor ??

I guess online tests are different from offline tests, and there should be effecting tricks that help in both. I would rather do something that will help me in online and not offline tests. Most offline tests are practice tests and whats the use of scoring good in practice and bad in online.

[steve.westberg]

Most often the mgmat book for CR talks about diagramming etc as the best technique. But i guess
1. It cannot be done for every question. If you know which question you have to do, then you end up wasting time first reading then thinking if you need to diagram ? Instead it would be better to diagram everything!

2. Diagramming involved writing and marking. Writing the whole think in short forms etc is still ok, but it says mark and number .. but how can you mark on online tests , on the monitor ??

I guess online tests are different from offline tests, and there should be effecting tricks that help in both. I would rather do something that will help me in online and not offline tests. Most offline tests are practice tests and whats the use of scoring good in practice and bad in online.

I personally found digramming and scatch of paragraph as impractical and a hurdle while you are trying to maintain a speed. Now think about it a paragraph blended in Geology, talking with 37 geological and Oil & gas related terms how much you can devote in drawing sketch? I feel that shorthand style symbols may prove useful like if a specific person said something so put his name on paper and his statement as one word symbol. Let's say topic is about law of gravity and contains a long complex statement/defnition from issac newton then just put:- Newton - Gravitiy line 32 para 4 on scratch paper. This small group of words tells you the location like, line 32 para 4 and rest thing can be read from line 32. I found this method less time consuming than drawing a complete sketch etc. The complex para contains sentence like this "However Fowler, The german scientist, in 1887, didn't agree with Newton's law of gravity" so for this type complex sentence just write:- 1887- Fowler disagreed- line 44 Now this small group of words tells that where is the twist of disagreement and where this twist is located. I find this method less wordy and each group of words tells you the twist and folds with thier location in the structures of sentence in complex passage.

[winstonhu]

i usually just write down..

1. Main point/argument
2. Structure of the passage
3. Mood/Tone

This is usually done right after reading the passage..

[esledge]

I think people are talking about two different things in this thread: diagramming on CR and sketching on RC. My discussion is about CR, as that was the question raised by the original poster.

Waste of time? I think it depends on your goal.

If the goal is to learn how to...
--think like the GMAT writers,
--quickly identify the argument components (premises, conclusions, and assumptions) and their logical order (which may be different from written order) on the first read,
--anticipate the correct answer before reading the choices,
--identify the patterns (in arg. structure, in choices, in traps) from one question to the next.
--prevent your "feelings" from dictating your choice of answer, and avoid picking answers just because they "seem" right.
...then I think diagramming is quite useful.

If the goal is to answer under timed conditions, then obviously diagramming takes some time.

What I tell my students is "If you really dislike diagramming, do more of it now while you are studying, so that by test day, your brain has been trained to 'diagram' internally."

On the actual test, I only diagram 1 or 2 CR (of the usual 11-13 encountered). I do it when there's some question in my mind about which sentence is the conclusion, or when a verbose argument is hiding the essential "kernel" that I am forced to find when I write.