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Related Discussions
RC Passage Speed Improvement
Trusttheprocess
Member
Hi 7sagers,
I needed some advice on reading speed for RC.
From my understanding, RC and LG are similar in the manner that if you spend the time upfront, you won't have to look back at the passage (time sinks) when you are doing your questions. Although I am in my early crawling stages of studying - I have noticed to really get the passage down well (meaning: understand it well, used JY's memorization technique, passage annotations, etc.), it takes me between 5-6 mins to do that.
In a real test - this would make me only do 2-3 passages approximately in a given RC section. I know JY and other pro test takers have mentioned your benchmark for reading/breaking down the passage should be 4 minutes and under. Since I am pretty off from this LOL - any recommendations on how I can improve to meet this standard? Has anyone else had a similar problem? If so, how did you deal with it?
Moving forwards, these are somethings I am going to try and improve on to improve my timing:
- Annotation: revise my note taking style. Although it is very similar to what Nicole has done in her webinar - maybe I am spending to much time on this.
- Reading with passion LOL vs. just reading for the heck of it.
- Try to work myself down from with timers of 5:00 mins towards 4 minutes by decreasing my time by 15 sec intervals.
- NOT SURE WHAT ELSE LOL
Thanks for the help in advance 7sage fam!
Comments
This might seem like a silly tip, and it probably won't save a TON of time, but if there is a word that you don't know how to pronounce (this happens to me mostly in science passages), don't try to pronounce it in your head! Just skim over it. Or refer to it in your head as it's initial or something. If you stop to try to figure out how the word sounds you're not only wasting time but also interrupting your reading flow which might make the passage harder to understand.
I'm in the same boat. Taking too long to go through the passages, not having enough time for the last one. I tried the summaries and Nicole's annotation system but those made me take longer. I decided to stop writing anything down (not even underlining a single word) so that I could really focus on reading because this is the strategy I used in my diagnostic when I got my best RC score despite running out of time. Doing this really helped me and instead I just emphasized in my head what I would have notated. I also make myself move on from the 1st passage after 8 min (even if there are questions I didn't answer) and coming back at the end helped me answer them quicker. Something else that I do which you may not want to is that I skip the comparative passages and save that for the end. This way if I'm short on time I peek at the questions, determine if there are some that pertain just to passage A or passage B, then I read that one first to answer as many questions as possible before time runs out. This can also ease the panic that sets in if you get freaked out by the last passage since it usually contains a ton of questions and is sometimes on a difficult topic.
This is what works for me but I think everyone is different, especially when it comes to RC, so take my advice with a grain of salt, but I wanted to contribute since I know RC is a beast to concur.
Thanks for the comments.
@"Victoria." - did you feel Nicole's annotation style helped you or not? How did you transfer from doing notes to no notes at all?
I don't actually think it improved my accuracy, I started off doing okay at RC though, so that might just be a personal thing. But, I did emphasize what I would have notated in my head instead of marking it on the passage itself so you can try that if the system helps you with accuracy and just drains your time. I looked at my best RC score and asked myself why I did so well there and couldn't do as well after that, and all I could think of was that I didn't make any notes, I let myself read and enjoy the passage and the questions came easier. So that's what motivated me to try the same thing the next time I did a whole section of RC. If you want to try this you should start with a few RC sections first to see if it works for you. The notations just clouded my memory so I wasnt relying as much as I should have on remembering what I read, so if you think this might be your situation then not making notes might work. Also, from all the discussion posts I've read on here about RC success, the people who found it said they eventually stopped needing to write summaries or just stopped making notes altogether because they got better at reading the passage, so this might be something to aim for in the future if you're not at that point just yet.
I know it seems counterintuitive, but I would try doing a passage or two without doing any annotations. I tried that myself and not only did my speed increase, but I felt like I remembered the passage better. Play around with markings to see if it helps. I now just write a 1 or 2 word summary by each paragraph and that's it. It greatly increased my speed to do that and I think forced me to rely on memory more, so it really helped a ton.
@"Victoria." I really like your idea about doing comparative passages last! In my experience, at least half of the questions can be answered just after reading passage A, and you can usually narrow down to two or three answers for the other questions.
Otherwise, I am really struggling with this, too. If I read a passage in 4 minutes, I get half of the answers wrong. If I read a passage in 6 minutes, taking about 8.5 minutes total, I get about -2 on the hardest passages. I guess this would be an ok strategy to employ if I can really commit to skipping questions. BR, I can go -0 or -1 on most passages, so it's definitely a timing issue for me.
One thing that I recognized from watching Nicole's video on RC is that I spend too much time trying to understand the details in the passage. Take a look at that issue next time you do a passage, and see if that fits you.
Tonight, my plan is to figure out the best RC strategy for me. I have a pencil, highlighters in two colors, and my phone's stopwatch. (You can use highlighters on the exam.) So far, I have found that highlighting in two colors works better for me than highlighting in one color. When I do that, all of my highlighting doesn't just blend together, and I can actually look at it again. Will the timing work out better than strictly using a pencil? I'll find out soon! I'd rather take an extra 30 seconds to highlight if I get another 2 questions right, you know? It's all about finding patterns.
Another thing I'm trying is scanning the questions (in like 5 seconds) ahead of time to see the references to specific line numbers. I'll write the numbers down near the passage, and make sure that I really understand the lines while I'm reading them. Then, I don't have to reread a few sentences around that line number when I get to the question. Since I'm already reading those sentences anyway, it winds up saving me time.
Literally none of those things may work for you; this is just my trial-and-error process. Print out some of the "harder reading comprehension" problem sets, and see what works best for you!
Update: just got -0 on a 5/5 difficulty passage in <9 min using two highlighters and a pencil. That being said, that's how I'm going to continue-- assuming nothing changes. I worked out a highlighting strategy that cut my timing down from 12-15 min per passage to 8-9 min. I'm sure it sounds like an awful idea to a lot of people, but it's working for me.
instead of trying to understand details about what the author is saying. focus on the reading structure of the passage for your initial read. You don't have to understand the technicalities as long as you know what role those technicalities play in the overall structure of the passage. Is it a premise? main point? example? or any other relevant structural role that is appropriate. Of course if there is a question about the specifics of those technicalities, then you'll have to read it again. but in my experience I've been much quicker by focusing on structure for the initial read.
Thanks for all the comments everyone.
I guess I have to play around with works with me. One thing I know for sure is me understanding the passage means in the hardest passages I have noticed that I have got the most of -2.
Moving forward, most probably going to work on my notation skills - see if I cut them down and see if that improves my speed. @"samantha.ashley92" - very much agree that the annotation style that Nicole remends which is great - takes up time just focusing on annotation during the reading. I have definitely a lot more of a rigorous method LOL of annotation - which is detail oriented but it helps to destroy the questions (meaning that it gives me a strong understanding of the passage in my first go).
Will post back here with helpful tips if I figure out any.
I agree that it's pretty time consuming. That's why I went for the colors haha. However, I do like her idea of brackets, underlines, and boxes serving separate purposes.
I have been REALLY struggling with RC too!
I scored a 166 last September AND TWO THIRDS OF THE QUESTIONS I GOT WRONG were from RC......
Recently I bought a copy of the LSAT trainer, and I found that to be really helpful !!!!!
I thought it compliments the 7 sage strategy really well
disclaimer, I have not watched Nicole's videos (yet)