Help,reading comprehension approach!

[EnriqueR905]

Hello,i would like to have some help to create a good approach for tackling reading comprehension passages and questions.Usually i tend to get lost in the passage,do not take appropriate notes and end up wasting valuable minutes and not answering the questions correctly which causes my score to fall.Therefore,i would love if someone could help me make a consistent way to approach this,especially the specific detail questions.

I have had 2 different approaches so far:

1)the STOP method from veritas prep which did not help in detail question.

2)tried using the manhattan approach but my notes were not always that consistent and the information needed was never fulfilled on those.

Thank You beforehand for any advice you can provide.Also,what is the best resource to practice this type of questions?.

[tim]

The best resource to practice RC questions is the Official Guide, or equivalently any of the other sources for official GMAT problems (Verbal Review, Prep Pack, etc.). And whatever approach you settle on, be sure to practice it consistently. You may want to check out our Reading Comp strategy guide or our Foundations of Verbal book for some specific approaches, but it sounds like you know what's going wrong and you just need to do things the right way. I always recommend taking notes as a bullet point list of 2-3 word phrases that enumerate major things that you see in the passage; this way your notes look like a table of contents that you can use to identify where in the passage you should look to find the answers to the questions that are asked. Remember, you don't need everything in your notes; instead, you should be going back to the passage for proof of the answers to most questions. One thing that you may find helpful in eradicating bad habits is once you're done answering and reviewing the questions to *immediately* go back to your notes. Ask yourself how helpful your notes were and if there was anything you could have done differently to make them more helpful, then re-read the passage and take notes again, properly this time. Good luck, and let us know how this turns out for you.

[RonPurewal]

this is going to seem obvious enough when i say it—but, when you are taking notes, make sure you are actually taking notes FOR A REASON!

remember that, ultimately, there are only 2 kinds of problems in reading comprehension:
• questions about the ENTIRE PASSAGE
• questions about DETAILS

when you READ the passage, clearly you can't realistically aim for details -- so, READING the passage should be aimed only at gathering ENOUGH UNDERSTANDING TO ANSWER "WHOLE-PASSAGE" QUESTIONS.

if you keep this in mind, then that should be enough to keep you on track, as far as avoiding getting caught up in unnecessary details when you're reading.
in particular, you should COMPLETELY SKIP big chunks of DETAILS... because there's no way that such things could actually help you with "whole passage" questions.

try going through a couple of passages and REALLY ANNOYING YOURSELF by asking yourself this question over and over and over again. "would this help me answer a question about the whole thing?" "would this help me answer a question about the whole thing?" "would this help me answer a question about the whole thing?" etc.
most people take WAY too many notes, so, annoying yourself with this question is a good way to prevent yourself from falling into similar habits.