Many people are very scared of Reading Comprehension and always ask for some suggestions to tackle this section of the GMAT. The GMAT is now GMATCAT, that is, Computer Adaptive Test. Reading Comprehension is a part of the Verbal Section of GMATCAT. Here are a few questions commonly asked by students and people in general:
Q. How many reading passages will I be receiving on the GMAT?
You can expect around 4 reading passages on the GMAT, each having a length of 150 to 325 words.
Q. What type of passages should I be receiving?
The passage can be on any topic related to humanities, social sciences, natural sciences or any other topic.
Q. How will the reading passages look like on the computer screen?
For the reading comprehension test, the passage will appear on the left and the questions on the right. The lines of the passage will be marked after every 5 lines: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and so forth. Line numbering is done as it is used in the questions to refer to any phrase or line in the passage.
Q. GMAT CAT versus the earlier GMAT Paper-based test - Does it make a difference with respect to the ease of taking the reading comprehension test?
Yes, to some extent. There are three problems with GMAT CAT:
Reading text on the computer screen puts strain on eyes.
You have to scroll up and down the passage to refer back and forth.
You are unable to annotate directly on the text.
The GMAC testing panel have tried to prevent some of the problems.:
The passages have been made shorter in the GMAT CAT than those on the paper-based GMAT tests. The entire CAT has been made shorter than the paper-based test to compensate for the eye fatigue problem.
Q. How can I take notes for my reference?
It is quite obvious that you cannot annotate the text on the screen. But you would be provided scratch paper where you can jot down points or form outline of the passage. Write down noteworthy points as you read the passage – For example key names, key ideas, etc. While taking notes, mark it paragraph-wise. So if you need to go back to the passage to respond to a particular question, your notes will help you identify where to look.
Q. How do I prepare for the Reading Comprehension part of the GMAT if I have just a few weeks in hand?
Practice, practice and practice. The best way to practice is to read a lot. To succeed in reading comprehension, you must take interest in reading. Make a habit of reading everything that comes across. For example, your monthly magazine, your daily newspaper, blogs, articles of your interest on the web, etc. Most people find that their overall comprehension actually improves as they quicken their reading speed.
Q. How much time should I allot to each Reading Comprehension question?
Reading Comprehension is much different from other sections because you need to read the whole passage, assimilate what is written, take notes and find answers to the questions. There are around 41 questions in the verbal section and 75 minutes to solve them. So you get 75/41=1.82 minutes for each question. But since the sentence correction and critical reasoning questions take lesser time than the reading comprehension question, it would be alright if you take 2 minutes for each reading comprehension question.
Q. Should I should adopt techniques like speed-reading and skimming?
Speed reading means reading the entire passage too quickly whereas skimming refers to selective reading, that is reading in portions. The best thing to do would be to read the passage at your normal pace while taking down short notes on the scratch paper. This would not take much time. But if you do speed reading or skimming, you may (or may not) miss out some information which could be crucial for answering the questions. So you cannot be sure if these techniques are really going to help or not. But you must readily follow these techniques if you experience too much shortage of time during the test.
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