RC lab - Headline lists - lists very long, time consuming

[jackson.b.allan]

I am just going back over the Lab #4 RC on creating headline lists as this is an area I feel I am weak on. In RC I have been spending too much time 3-4 minutes on Short passages and 5-6 minutes on Long passages. I am scoring 37-39 on verbal, so getting mostly difficult passages.

Just going back into the Lab 4 for a second time as I need to get better at churning through these RC passages. It goes into an RC passage - slide 6, and the slide 7 shows the headline list that they created. It is suggested that you read the passage and create a headline list in 2-2.5 minutes. The process suggested; read a sentence, make sense of it, note the headline or dot point under the headline that relates.

I set my timer up and copied the slide 7 headline list word for word as furiously as I could without getting hand cramps. It still took me 2 minutes, 33 seconds. So without even reading a passage, or trying to make sense of what is being said, merely trying to write out a headline list within the recommended time is quite difficult.

I went back to the book and the headline lists created in the RC strategy guide are different to the lab - much briefer and shorter & it is called a skeletal sketch. Is there a difference between the two?

[RonPurewal]

I'd suggest three operative principles here.

1/
Everything in the book is a suggestion. Nothing is gospel.

2/
Experiment; take what works for you; leave what doesn't.

3/
Only take notes that add value to the text.

The first two are self-explanatory. As for #3, I see two main ways in which notes can create "value added":
* They can explicitly spell out relationships that are implicit in the actual passage (e.g., the relationships between different paragraphs).
* They can take ideas from dense, difficult text, and rehprase those ideas into simple language.

If you find yourself copying any text, you're wasting time; they're not going to take the passage away from you.