In daily life, most people read to learn something or to pass the time pleasantly. Neither of these goals has much to do with the GMAT. On Test Day, you have a very specific goal—to get as many right answers as you can. So your reading needs to be tailored to that goal. There are really only two things a Reading Comp question can ask you about: the “big picture” of the passage or its “little details.”
Since the passage is right there on the screen, you don’t need to worry much about the little details as you read. (In fact, doing so may hinder your ability to answer questions, as you’ll soon see.) So your main goal as you read is to prepare yourself to get the big-picture questions right, while leaving yourself as much time as possible to find the answers to the little-detail questions.
Here are the four basic principles you need to follow to accomplish this goal.
Think of the topic as the first big idea that comes along. Almost always, it will be right there in the first sentence. It will be something broad, far too big to discuss in the 150–350 words that most GMAT passages contain. Here’s an example of how a passage might begin:
The great migration of European intellectuals to the United States in the second quarter of the 20th century prompted a transmutation in the character of Western social thought.
What’s the topic? The migration of European intellectuals to the United States in the second quarter of the 20th century. It would also be okay to say that the topic is the effects of that migration on Western social thought. Topic is a very broad concept, so you really don’t need to worry about how exactly you word it. You just need to get a good idea of what the passage is talking about so you feel more comfortable reading.
Now consider scope. Think of scope as a narrowing of the topic. You’re looking for an idea that the author might reasonably focus on for the length of a GMAT passage. If the topic is the “migration of European intellectuals to the United States in the second quarter of the 20th century,” then perhaps the scope will be some of the effects of that migration upon Western social thought. It will likely be even more specific: one aspect of Western social thought affected by the migration. But perhaps something unexpected will come along. Might the passage compare two different migrations? Or contrast two different effects? Think critically about what’s coming and look for clues in the text that let you know on what specific subject(s) the author intends to focus.
Finding the scope is critically important to doing well on Reading Comp. Many Reading Comp wrong answers are wrong because the information that would be needed to support them is simply not present in the passage. It’s highly unlikely that there will be a topic sentence that lays out plainly what the author intends to write about—but the first paragraph probably will give some indication of the focus of the rest of the passage.
Note that some passages are only one paragraph long. In these cases, the topic can still appear in the first sentence. The passage will probably (but not necessarily) narrow in scope somewhere in the first third of the paragraph, as the author doesn’t have much text to work with and needs to get down to business quickly.
The paragraph is the main structural unit of any passage. At first, you don’t yet know the topic or scope, so you have to read the first paragraph pretty closely. But once you get a sense of where the passage is going, all you need to do is understand what role each new paragraph plays. Ask yourself the following:
Notice that last question—don’t ask yourself, “What does this mean?” but rather, “Why is it here?” Many GMAT passages try to swamp you with tedious, dense, and sometimes confusing details. Consider this paragraph, which might appear as part of a difficult science-based passage:
The Burgess Shale yielded a surprisingly varied array of fossils. Early chordates were very rare, but there were prodigious numbers of complex forms not seen since. Hallucigenia, so named for a structure so bizarre that scientists did not know which was the dorsal and which the ventral side, had fourteen legs. Opabinia had five eyes and a long proboscis. This amazing diversity led Gould to believe that it was highly unlikely that the eventual success of chordates was a predictable outcome.
This is pretty dense stuff. But if you don’t worry about understanding all of the science jargon and instead focus on the gist of the paragraph and why the details are there, things get easier. The first sentence isn’t that bad:
The Burgess Shale yielded a surprisingly varied array of fossils.
A quick paraphrase is that the “Burgess Shale,” whatever that is, had a lot of different kinds of fossils. The passage continues:
Early chordates were very rare, but there were prodigious numbers of complex forms not seen since. Hallucigenia, so named for a structure so bizarre that scientists did not know which was the dorsal and which the ventral side, had fourteen legs. Opabinia had five eyes and a long proboscis.
When you read this part of the passage strategically, asking what its purpose is in context, you see that this is just a list of the different kinds of fossils and some facts about them. There were not a lot of “chordates,” whatever they are, but there was lots of other stuff.
This amazing diversity led Gould to believe that it was highly unlikely that the eventual success of chordates was a predictable outcome.
Notice that the beginning of this sentence tells us why those intimidatingly dense details are there; they are the facts that led Gould to a belief—namely that the rise of “chordates” couldn’t have been predicted. So, on your noteboard, you’d jot down something like this:
Evidence for Gould’s belief—chordate success not predictable.
Notice that you don’t have to know what any of these scientific terms mean in order to know why the author brings them up. Taking apart every paragraph like this allows you to create a map of the passage’s overall structure. We’ll call this a passage map from here on—we’ll discuss passage mapping in detail later in this chapter. Making a passage map will help you acquire a clear understanding of the big picture. It will give you a sense of mastery over the passage, even when it deals with a subject you don’t know anything about.
To break down paragraphs and understand the structural function of each part, look for key words, or structural words or phrases that link ideas to one another. You got an overview of the categories of key words in the Verbal Section Overview chapter of this book. Let’s now dig a little deeper into how key words can help you distinguish the important things (such as opinions) from the unimportant (such as supporting examples) and to understand why the author wrote each sentence.
Types of key words:
As you might have guessed, reading the passage strategically doesn’t mean simply going on a scavenger hunt for key words. Rather, it means using those key words to identify the important parts of the passage—its opinions and structure—so you can focus on them and not on little details. Key words also help you predict the function of the text that follows. Let’s see how this works by taking a look at a simple example. Say you saw a passage with the following structure on Test Day. What kinds of details can you anticipate would fill each of the blanks?
Kelley is eagerly awaiting
the release of the new season of her favorite show
because .
Furthermore,.
Moreover,. However,.
You learn about Kelley’s attitude toward the upcoming release through the words “eagerly” and “favorite,” which are emphasis key words. After “because” (a logic key word) will be a reason that Kelley enjoys the show. After “[f]urthermore” and “[m]oreover” (continuation key words) will be additional reasons or elaborations of the reason in the first sentence. After “[h]owever,” you’ll read about some drawback or counterexample that undermines the previous string of good things about the show. You can’t predict the exact details that fill the blanks, but you can predict the tone and purpose of the details. Reading this way is valuable because the GMAT test makers are more likely to ask you why the author put the details in, not what’s true about them.
Reading for key words seems straightforward when the passage deals with subject matter that’s familiar or easy to understand. But what if you were to see the following passage about a less familiar topic? How can you decode the structure of the following paragraph?
Quantum-enabled
communication systems—communication systems based on the principles of quantum
mechanics—are theoretically impervious to hacking
because. Furthermore,.
Moreover,. However,.
Here, the emphasis key phrase “impervious to hacking” lets you know why the author cares about quantum-enabled communication systems: they’re tough to undermine. The details that would fill these blanks are probably dense and intimidating for the non-physicist, but the strategic reader will still be able to understand the passage well enough to answer GMAT questions correctly. Notice that the structure is identical to that of the paragraph about Kelley, so the details that fill the blanks will serve the same purpose as those you predicted previously. You can anticipate what they will be and why the author is including them. Reading strategically allows you to take control of the passage; you will know where the author is going and what the GMAT will consider important, even if you know nothing about the subject matter of the passage.
An important part of strategic reading is distinguishing between factual assertions and opinions or interpretations. It’s the opinions and interpretations that Reading Comp questions are most often based on, so you should pay the most attention to them. Let’s say you come upon a paragraph that reads:
The coral polyps secrete calcareous exoskeletons, which cement themselves into an underlayer of rock, while the algae deposit still more calcium carbonate, which reacts with sea salt to create an even tougher limestone layer. All of this accounts for the amazing renewability of the coral reefs despite the endless erosion caused by wave activity.
In a sense, this is just like the Burgess Shale paragraph; it begins with a lot of scientific jargon and later tells us why that jargon is there. In this case, it shows us how coral reefs renew themselves. But notice a big difference—the author doesn’t tell us how someone else interprets these facts. He could have written “scientists believe that these polyps account for . . . ,” but he didn’t. This is the author’s own interpretation.
It’s important to differentiate between the author’s own voice and other people’s opinions. GMAT authors may disagree with other people but won’t contradict themselves. So the author of the Burgess Shale passage might well disagree with Gould in the next paragraph. But the author of the Coral Reef passage has laid his cards on the table—he definitely thinks that coral polyps and algae are responsible for the renewability of coral reefs.
Spotting the opinions and theories also helps you to accomplish the goal of reading for structure. Once you spot an idea, you can step back from the barrage of words and use Critical Thinking to dissect the passage, asking, “Why is the author citing this opinion? Where’s the support for this idea? Does the author agree or disagree?”
Consider how you would read the following paragraph strategically:
Abraham Lincoln is traditionally viewed as an advocate of freedom because he issued the Emancipation Proclamation and championed the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended legal slavery in the United States. And indeed this achievement cannot be denied. But he also set uncomfortable precedents for the curtailing of civil liberties.
A strategic reader will zero in on the passage’s key words and analyze what each one reveals about the structure of the passage and the author’s point of view. Here, the key word “traditionally” lets you know how people usually think about Lincoln. You might already anticipate that the author is setting up a contrast between the traditional view and her own. Sure enough, the key word “but” makes the contrast clear: the author asserts that despite his other accomplishments, Lincoln in fact restricted civil liberties. And the word “uncomfortable” is an opinion key word indicating that the author is not at all pleased with Lincoln because of it. However, the author already tempered her criticism with the phrase “this achievement cannot be denied,” meaning that she won’t go so far as to say that Lincoln was an enemy of freedom.
At this point, the strategic reader can anticipate where the passage’s structure will lead. Given how this opening paragraph ends, you can predict that the author will spend at least one paragraph describing these “uncomfortable precedents” and how they restricted civil liberties. It might even be possible, since she uses the word “precedents,” that she goes on to describe how later governments or leaders used Lincoln’s actions as justification for their own restrictions.
This is the power of predictive, strategic reading: by using key words to anticipate where the author is heading, you will not only stay more engaged as you read, but you’ll also develop a better understanding of the structure of the passage and the author’s point of view—the very things that pay off in a higher GMAT score.
Put together, the passage’s structure and the opinions and theories it contains will lead you to understand the author’s primary purpose in writing the passage. This is critical, as most GMAT passages have a question that directly asks for that purpose. For the Lincoln passage, you might get a question like this:
Just from a strategic reading of the first few sentences, you could eliminate (A) as being a distortion of the first and third sentences, (C) as being too extreme because of the “cannot be denied” phrase, (D) as irrelevant—either too narrow or just not present in the passage at all, and (E) as missing the author’s big point—that Lincoln helped restrict civil liberties. And just like that, you can choose (B) as the right answer and increase your score.
On the GMAT, you’ll need to read only for short-term—as opposed to long-term—retention. When you finish the questions about a certain passage, that passage is over and done with. You’re promptly free to forget everything about it.
What’s more, there’s certainly no need to memorize—or even fully comprehend—details. You do need to know why they are there so that you can answer big-picture questions, but you can always go back and reread them in greater depth if you’re asked a question that hinges on a detail. And you’ll find that if you have a good sense of the passage’s scope and structure, the ideas and opinions in the passage, and the author’s purpose, then you’ll have little problem navigating through the text as the need arises.
Furthermore, you can even hurt your score by reading the details too closely. Here’s how:
Here’s a great trick for cutting through confusing, detail-laden sentences: focus on the subjects and verbs first, throwing away modifying phrases, and don’t worry about fancy terminology. Let’s revisit some dense text from before:
The coral polyps secrete calcareous exoskeletons, which cement themselves into an underlayer of rock, while the algae deposit still more calcium carbonate, which reacts with sea salt to create an even tougher limestone layer. All of this accounts for the amazing renewability of the coral reefs despite the endless erosion caused by wave activity.
Now look at what happens if you paraphrase these sentences, distilling them to main subjects and verbs, ignoring modifiers, and not worrying about words you don’t understand:
Coral polyps (whatever they are) secrete something . . . and algae deposit something. This accounts for the amazing renewability of the coral reefs.
The structure of this paragraph has suddenly become a lot more transparent. Now the bulkiness of that first sentence won’t slow you down, so you can understand its role in the big picture.
Let’s now put all these basic principles together to analyze a passage similar to one you may see on Test Day. However, unlike passages you’ll see on Test Day, the following text has been formatted to approximate the way a strategic reader might see it—important key words and phrases are in bold, the main ideas are in normal type, and the supporting details are grayed out. Take a moment to read only the bold and regular text: identify what the key words tell you about the structure, paraphrase the crucial text, and practice predicting what the grayed-out portions contain.
This passage starts with a neutral, factual tone as it describes the major functions of the FAA. The contrast key word “[h]owever” in line 5 offers the first indication of a potential conflict within the FAA’s list of responsibilities, and the next sentence offers an opinion related to it: some believe that two of the FAA’s missions—regulating safety and promoting civil aviation—are incompatible. Note that the author attributes this viewpoint to the “critics,” so you don’t yet know whether the author agrees with it. As you continue to read the passage, be on the lookout for key words that indicate the author’s opinion.
On Test Day, you would take some brief notes on your notepad about the main idea of the first paragraph before moving on:
¶1: Critics: FAA has incompatible duties of safety and promotion
At the beginning of the next paragraph, the phrase “critics’ concern” indicates that the author will now provide further information about the critics’ point of view. Since you already know the critics’ core position from the first paragraph, you don’t need to get too invested in the additional explanation here. Read the second paragraph briskly and jot down a quick note before moving on:
¶2: Explanation of critics’ position; example
In the third paragraph, the author finally gives her opinion. While the author says that the critics claim has some “merit,” the use “[h]owever” and “fundamentally misunderstand” in the second sentence indicates that the author essentially disagrees with the critics’ position. Indeed, the rest of the paragraph explains why the author believes that the FAA’s responsibilities are not incompatible. Again, you don’t need to worry about the details; just focus on the broad strokes in your notes:
¶3: Author: FAA’s duties are not incompatible
Just from this quick analysis, notice how much you already understand about the structure of the passage and the author’s point of view. You effectively know what the grayed-out parts of the passage accomplish, even though you can’t recite the details they contain. You are now in a strong position to approach the questions that accompany this passage, knowing that you can always return to the passage to clarify your understanding of any relevant details. Let’s look at this first question:
This question asks for the author’s main idea. Fortunately, you already have information about the author’s position in your notes, so there’s no need to go back to the passage itself to answer this question. In the third paragraph, the author rebuts the critics’ claim and asserts that the FAA’s duties are not fundamentally incompatible. (D) matches this prediction and is the correct answer.
If you weren’t sure about the answer, you could eliminate incorrect answer choices by finding the specific faults they contain. (A) is the critics’ position, not the author’s, so it cannot be correct. (B) is incorrect because the author’s main idea is not to describe the FAA but to give her opinion about whether or not the FAA has incompatible responsibilities. (C) is incorrect because this is a belief held by some of the critics, not by the author. Finally, while the author would agree with the statement in (E), it is included as an example that supports the author’s reasoning, not as the author’s main idea.
Let’s look at one more question about this passage:
This question asks why the author discusses the FAA’s “cost-benefit analysis,” and the line reference places this quoted text in the third paragraph. Once again, this question does not require any additional research beyond the notes you’ve already taken. According to your notes, the third paragraph introduces and explains the author’s position, which is that the FAA’s duties are not incompatible. Because this is a defense of the FAA against the critics who claim that the agency is incapable of managing its competing responsibilities, (E) is the correct answer.
(A) is incorrect because the author’s summary of the FAA’s responsibilities is in the first paragraph, not the third. (B) is incorrect because the author’s primary concern in the third paragraph is to defend the FAA, not merely to explain a lone policy decision. While the author offers a justification for the FAA’s position on lap children, she does so in order to support her broader point, which is that the agency is able to balance its responsibilities. (C) and (D) are incorrect because the author does not “question” or “criticize” the FAA in the third paragraph. Those characterizations are more closely aligned with the critics, whose opinions are discussed in the first and second paragraphs.