Tips for reading stimuli with more focus?

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• 1 Like

  Achen165 Member

  August 2019 656 karma

  This is a hurdle for me. Honestly, it took the passage of time for me to focus more, but I still am not solid. If your mind is wandering while reading the stimuli you have to train yourself to block out thoughts and engage with the stimuli. I still trip up on this...but familiarizing yourself with the pattern of each question type, looking for conclusions, and reading it critically, while mentally summarizing in your own words is the best thing you can do for yourself. Take a section, untimed, and try the memory method with each stimulus. Vocalize what you read aloud without looking back, check, and repeat.
• Omid Sean HV Alum Member

  August 2019 25 karma

  Actively reading. Understanding and dissecting what you're reading rather than just absorbing it pointlessly. For RC I think you need to go back to the syllabus and work on re-learning low-resolution summaries.
• meghansav Alum Member

  August 2019 4 karma

  For me, I have had to force myself to spend less time on social media and more time reading - books, essays, long news articles. It has helped. I think social media trains our brains to thoughtlessly skim and scroll and to lose patience with long passages (tl;dr). It's hard to flip the switch on for practice tests.
• elias7291 Alum Member

  August 2019 269 karma

  I try to visualize in my mind what i'm reading. This is especially helpful for me in RC when I read a passage with unfamiliar subject matter. The Eileen Gray is a good example of me visualizing the work that she did (PT 79, #2).
• 3 Likes

  Lucas Carter Alum Member ⭐

  August 2019 2804 karma

  Read a chunk of text and then turn away from it and try to put it in your own words. This is difficult at first, but trains you to improve your paraphrasing abilities and forces you to engage.