How do I get better at R.C???

jegosi215

Any tips for getting faster at R.C? I've been stuck with only getting through 2/4 passages for a few months now. I started reading the Economist, and it's helped, but I still feel like there's something that's holding me back from getting through this section.

Ellegoals

Obviously a lot of factors are at play, but personally for me the only thing that made me go faster was forcing myself to do all 4 passages. Early in my studying, I would let myself take as long as I wanted for each passage, I would even make excuses and tell myself that I knew I couldn't get through all 4 passages so I shouldn't even try. For a while I thought that it would be better to get all questions right for 3 passages then rush through 4. I was very wrong though. I started to MAKE myself only take 3-4.5 minutes per passage. At first, it's going to seem really really tough, but once you begin to internalize the really fast pace, you'll see great gains. Nobody wants to rush through reading the passages and EVERYONE probably wishes they could take as long as they want to, but the reality is you really only have a certain amount of time per passage. I would focus on pushing the pace and getting to 3 passages first, and then pushing even harder to get to the fourth passage. You can do it!

jegosi215

@Ellegoals Hey, thank you. I agree that it's important to start forcing myself to get through the whole section at some point in order get used to it.

open ears

The number one tip I would recommend practice wise is to do more loosely timed RC sections by making problem sets of the four passages from a PT and setting it to 50% or 100% more time. That way you can get more comfortable with the section, which would hopefully lead to you reading/answering questions faster, and there's still a time limit to sharpen your time management skills.

Also, it may be worth making problem sets of easier/easiest passages from a mix of PTs. I would think getting better and faster at doing those passages (which are usually the first two passages of the section) would help you get to the later passages––and get better at recognizing common passage structures/question types in the process.

JaBoiLunchbox

The single most helpful thing for me is optimizing my note-taking and passage marking strategies. Figure out what you want to use the highlighting/underline tools for or if you want to rely mostly on taking notes. If you are a slow reader, I would try and outline the passages and write down the important details and break down the ‘big ideas’. Then you don’t have to spend a lot of time looking back at the passage when you get to the questions. Don’t worry about your reading speed as much as what it is you are doing with the time you need to read.

jegosi215

thank you