Reading Comprehension Improvement Strategies and Patterns

FutureLawyer007

I was wondering what have people done to improve their scores on the reading comprehension section. Ive heard the more sections you go through the more patterns one will learn. Has anything noticed some patterns in this section that seem to be reoccurring? I am still avg. -10 on this section and can't seem to improve my score. I am just not a fast enough reader and once i get to the last passage i feel like i am rushing to complete the questions. Please Help!

MissChanandler

Is your BR score closer to zero? I think that getting faster is partly just a matter of practice and partly strategy. If your BR is pretty close to zero then that would suggest that you understand what's going on and you just need to speed up. If this is the case, try doing less notation and spending less time on easier questions.

FutureLawyer007

@MissChanandler My BR is avg -5. What is your strategy and what's worked for you?

MissChanandler

I've always been a super fast reader (on my diagnostic I had no problem getting through every passage with time to spare), which obviously helps, but there are a few things that I've found help. 1) I don't write anything on the passage. In fact, I usually put my pencil down when I read it. 2) if there's a word you don't understand, just keep reading. Usually it'll either be explained (directly or through context) or it just won't matter very much. I think that maybe you should be skipping the hardest questions. Let's say you skip one question in each of the first three passages (ones that you were likely to get wrong anyway). That gives you more time to correctly answer the other questions for those passages and get to the last one. Assuming this helps you nail the rest of the questions on the passage, you could still miss a couple of problems on the last passage and bring your score to a -5. If you guessed on the questions you skip and on one or two on the last passage, you'll probably get one right (especially if you can make educated guesses). Is there a particular type of question that you always miss? Check out your analytics and figure out if you have one or two standout problem types. If so, try doing a section where you skip that type of question and see how it goes.