Keep making stupid mistakes from not reading carefully enough. What to do?

acb335

So I'm pretty good at the logic games section, and LR. Unfortunately, with logical reasoning, I see my mistakes but just...didn't pick the right answer, when I knew how to get there? I'm missing probably 5 on that section, 4 of which were dumb and I guess I "could have" gotten them right.

For reading comprehension I have the information I need to answer the questions, but still miss too many from just poor judgment. Any advice?

gogo180

I used to have a similar problem and what helped me was really scrutinizing the answer choices; some of them "looked right" at first glance but when I really understood what it was saying it was garbage

ksohaima

had this problem. You need to read slower

brookegojazz

Yup! I have/had the same problem. Read slower (especially on RC) and ask yourself, "does this say what I think it says?" for the answer choices

LegallyBrunettte

I struggle with this to! When I'm doing a difficult LR or RC passage I'll put my cursor under each word I read which causes you to read a bit slower but has helped with my accuracy. Same way you would do if you were taking a paper version and using your pencil to read along.

BenjaminSaka

I have this same issue and I've come to the conclusion that it's a time issue. If I feel pressured, then I'm going to gloss over details and make a reading error. Teaching myself to remain calm, as if I'm reading for my own personal enjoyment has helped me cut down on the silly mistakes a bit.

karko2525

Sometimes you just need to slow down a bit to better absorb the information you're reading. I had a similar problem for LR and RC which resulted in really stupid avoidable mistakes. Once I slowed down and stopped rushing, I was better at avoiding misreads. Specifically for RC, it helped me a ton when I spent more time on the passage initially instead of skimming and rushing to the questions. That way, I was able to have a more accurate understanding of the passage itself and attacked the questions much quicker. I will say that I have noticed a lot of tricky ACs in RC and I think those are mainly avoidable by remembering one thing "it must be supported by the passage". Often times, there are RC answer choices that seem very appealing because it matches the gist of the passage... but once there's no support from the passage, you can knock it out. Hope this helps a bit!

Also, always read for structure in RC if you're not already doing that!! Helps a ton. Filters out extraneous details as well. As for LR, skip/flag the ones that bog you down and return to them once you've completed all the other questions.

m_takes_a_test

I think reading for clear comprehension is a skill that deserves its own set of practices. I suggest the Basic Translation Drill that I learned from Ellen Cassidy's Loophole to LR book. Basically, you take a blank LR section. You just read the stim, cover it up, and then write out what you just read. When you're done, uncover the stim and see if you got it right. This will give you an idea of how well you're comprehending. Do not attempt the answer choices---this is just reading practice. I think this drill will help with RC too. Good luck!