What's your RC skipping strategy?

youbbyun

any advice for RC skipping strategies?

how long people should spend per question before they skip?

there's the classic 10 in 10, 25 in 25 for LR timing/skipping strategies.

any similar skipping strategy for RC?

or just general advice on how to manage the clock for RC? thanks.

NotMyName

You'll have to time yourself, maybe even record yourself, and get a sense for your own approach. Here's mine:

3.5 minutes to read the passage. (14 minutes)
45 seconds per question. (20.25 minutes)
Total (34.25)

I think this is a pretty balanced approach. Some folks like to spend more time with the passage but fly through the questions. Others read fast and return to the passage frequently. The most important thing to remember is that RC penalizes poor timing much more severely than LR. It's more like LG where each new sub-section will requires a major time investment upfront and bad timing earlier i the section will cause far more misses than comparably bad timing will in LR.

My scores jumped when I got disciplined and accepted the fact that I was not going to go -0 and I should not be trying to do that. I aimed for -4/-5 which meant I could skip 1 question from each passage and still hit my target.

youbbyun

@NotMyName

thanks so much again for everything!

Ohnoeshalpme

I personally think you can get away with spending 4 and a half minutes on the passage as it helps you absorb some of the minor details that you could potentially miss in a quicker read. If you're pressed for time, don't underestimate how much you can get from the passage with just a quick skim. I suggest that you do some practice reading passages in 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes and 5 minutes. See how your overall accuracy compares in all of these different times. If you read in 2 minutes but then it takes you 10 minutes total because you constantly have to go back to the passage you're worse off than if you spend 5 minutes reading the passage and then spend 2 minutes total on the questions. Test to see which one of these markers works the best for you! Also, skipping is crucial in RC when it comes to detail-oriented questions that you know you're going to have to return to the passage for. A good rule here is that if you know where the detail is located in the passage it's ok to return to the passage to find it and answer the question. If you have no idea where this detail might be located in the passage then you need to skip this question and move on. Once you finish all of the questions then you can come back to this question and hunt for the answer in the passage. Hope these tips help! Most of them are common sense and their usefulness will come with diligent repetition and implementation. Knowing the theory of how to improve is great but it means nothing if you don't take the time to implement that theory.

xenonhexafluoro

A turning point in RC timing for me was after passage 2, picking between 3 and 4 which passage to do next. I pick the one that has more questions/looks longer and do that one first.

Adam Hawks

I would move around answer author viewpoint questions or purpose questions first before moving on to the more time-sink questions that involve referring to specific points in the passage. As for skipping or moving around on the test, I don't recommend it because you never know what is the more difficult passage. Most of the time it is the third or fourth passage. It's better to have a better plan of attack and methodology to attack these passages than to run from them.

Louislepauvre

For me the easiest questions that I would never skip are the explicitly stated ones (Which one of the following does the author not mention?). It’s right there in the text and takes seconds to find. Easy points. I actually don’t skip questions in RC really. There are just question types that I think are really hard that I refuse to waste time because I might get it wrong anyway. For instance, those questions that bring up analogous arguments and then ask author or critic POV on it. I don’t really go back and study it for a couple minutes. I just go with my gut. Also, I’ve tried to skip questions and go back to the passage at the end, but that hasn’t worked for me. It only takes me more time to reorient myself in the passage.