feeling beaten down - RC

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  Lime Green Dot Member ⭐

  July 2020 edited July 2020 1384 karma

  Do you tend to get through most passages? Is there a particular type of question you usually miss?

  Although it was kind of odd to me at first, this is a section that I believe must also be drilled and BR'd with rigor. RC is also my biggest area of focus now, and there is quite a lot of different advice out there... What works best varies from person to person. These are not all-inclusive tips, but a few things have been helping me the most these days:

  1) Generally: Always try to find the author's voice and notate it somehow (look for big and subtle wording cues, which will unlock MP and Purpose questions, along with inference questions from the author's POV many times). If the author is "quiet" (on science passages, this can happen a lot), you can still aim to gather the purpose- of a passage broadly and each paragraph or section within a paragraph specifically.

  2) Slow reads: Try several untimed drills from early PTs (before 36 if possible) and do a "slow read," combing through the passage to find that author's voice. Note other POVs too, of course. But keep the author's voice at the fore. BTW, "slow" reading isn't really the point, it's intentional reading that you should be aiming for. By pushing down your pace in the beginning, you have time to internalize and be aware of the process you are using to pick up what you need to as you move through the passage.

  After the slow read, go into the questions, looking only at the question stem, not any of the ACs. Write down or verbalize what the correct answer would be. Yes, even RC can benefit from pre-phrasing!

  This is sometimes a little tricky on a digital format, so I do find that I benefit more from this drill by printing the passage set out and use a sticky note to cover over the answers. Then on the sticky note, I write a shorthand version of what I believe the AC should touch upon.

  After writing down each pre-phrased answer, I peek at each AC and find the one that matches mine best. If something is off kilter and nothing matches, I'd take a critical look at each AC and see which one "feels" right... obviously, this prediction method won't work for every question, like the ones that pose a new situation or analogy. But even then, if you can have a rough idea of the form something should take, then you will be at better odds of picking out the AC that fits that rough shape you had in mind. Plus, when you do a slow read, you're bound to either be able to trust your gut more or unveil gaps of understanding if you do pick the wrong AC eventually. Both are good teachers.

  3) Adding time back in: After you've thoroughly reviewed any AC you might have missed from the above drill, keeping a log of your missed and low-confidence questions and analyses of why you missed them, and doing several rounds of these, try the same drill again, but this time pick up the pace, set a timer, and keep shaving off time as you go until you are comfortably able to give each passage and all questions a fair shot. Or, if timing was not an issue for you, using the remaining time to go through any questions you might have flagged and giving those a fresh evaluation.

  These have definitely been helping me hone in on the section much more than ever. But I'm in this boat with you, and we've gotta keep rowing til August! You can do it! Hope this helped!