5 steps to Master GRE Reading Comprehension

A step by step process for those busy students looking for some quick information on skyrocketing their performance on the Reading Comprehension section.

Here is a step by step process you can deploy, if you want to score high on the reading comprehension section.

1. Read the first paragraph and the first and last sentences in the other paragraphs

When you begin to read the passage, you should not read it in its entirety. Instead, you must employ a smart strategy that will save lots of time. Read only the first and last paragraphs of the passage, making sure you clearly understand what it is that the author is trying to convey. This is because, you should try as much as you can to not come back to read this part once you read the questions. If you did this part right, you should be able to answer questions as soon as you see them.

The first paragraph contains the main idea behind the passage, and the last paragraph contains the conclusion, and will generally give you an idea of the author’s tone and intentions. Now, once you are done with the first and the last paragraphs, move to the others. Even here, you must not read the entire text. Remember to read only the first and the last one or two sentences in the other paragraphs and understand the structure of the paragraph. Repeat the steps for the rest of the paragraphs, and you will be left with an overview of the entire passage in a few sentences.

For example, these must be the thoughts in your mind as you read the entire passage: “Okay. So, the 1st paragraph claims that XYZ is a newly found phenomenon and hence must be welcomed, the 2nd paragraph says it’s must not be necessarily true and that we should be careful about it, because of a few implications [with examples], but the 3rd paragraph says that XYZ is still important to solve majority of cases, and the 4th and the final paragraph concludes that although XYZ works 90% of the time, it is rather foolish to think that it is the only cure.”

2. Make notes as you read

Making notes while reading the passage is a smart student’s way of scoring higher on the Reading Comprehension section. Writing quick notes will keep your brain naturally engaged and help you move through the passage deliberately, while remembering most of the details that you have read. Visual learning is a powerful way of remembering things for a long time, and when you make notes out of the given passage, you are not only doing it to remember it for longer, but you are also making it easy for you to refer to the details later.

It is a lot better strategy spend a few extra seconds jotting down helpful notes than to waste several minutes looking for that sentence later on. There are several techniques to take down notes intelligently. If you really want to save time, you should try and keep the notes as small as possible. Identify the most relevant information, and write down key words or phrases that are most relevant to the topic at hand — things like dates, names, theories, definitions. Replace all the hard sounding words with simple words that you can easily understand.

You can also, use shorthand, or texting lingo, along with various forms of illustrations, symbols, tree diagrams, relationships, arrows, etc. This will significantly shorten the information you need to write, and will maximize efficiency.

3. Identify Key Words and Signal Words

The only way you can solve any reading comprehension question on the GRE, is by understanding key words, and signaling words, and what they mean to the passage. We cannot stress the importance of key words and signaling words any more than this. While skimming through each paragraph, you should scan the entire paragraph for keywords and signaling words used by the author. These are very important, as they more often than not asked in the questions that follow the passage. Plus, when you encounter an inference or a detailed question, you will know exactly where to go in the paragraph.

Every Reading Comprehension passage has a few to many key words and phrases. These are also known as signaling words. Words like “First, second, third, furthermore, on the other hand, for example, namely, for one thing, in addition, nevertheless, for these reasons, proponents believe, critics believe, but, however, whether/if, according to, therefore, consequently, In contrast, claims, goes so far as to claim, others argue”, etc.

As you practice solving more and more Reading Comprehension passages, you will start to think like the test makers, and develop a sense for where the test makers are likely to draw questions from.

4. Recap With a Visual Movie

Once you finish reading the entire passage, and finish writing down notes, you shouldn’t start solving questions right away. Since you are under pressure, there is great chance that you have forgotten some of the details given by the author in passage, by the time you finish answering the first question. Since the first question is most often a main idea question, you can easily answer it, as it is always at the top of your mind.

But in order to answer the remaining questions, you will have to remember all the details perfectly, since you ideally don’t want to go back and search for them in the passage again and again. So, what you need to do is, when you think you are ready to start answering questions, you should stop doing everything else, close your eyes, and play a movie inside your head. This movie must be a visual of the passage that you have just read, and must have a proper sequence. Doing this will not take more than 10-20 seconds, but it will help you cement the entire story in your head. When you can do this successfully, start answering questions, and you will see the difference in how much information from the passage you are able to retain.

5. Start Answering The Questions

Now we have already discussed the various types of questions you will find on the reading comprehension section, it will be easier for you to identify a question type and answer it accordingly, with a proper strategy. Remember that for Multiple Select questions, you don’t get partial credits for getting one or two options right. You will have to choose the entire answer correctly, by selecting all applicable options, and only then will your answer be considered correct.

Also, when answering Multiple Select questions, you should remember to treat each answer option separately. We will discuss more on this later. Now, while answering questions related to the tone of the author or the writing style, you should remember to automatically eliminate answer choices that hint that the author is being completely negative. If an answer choice implies that the author has used drastic or extreme language to criticize the topic he/she writes on, then you should automatically disqualify that answer choice.