The Veritas Prep (VP) approach for excelling at reading comprehension questions has helped me a lot since I started to practice it. We all know that the better you're doing, the harder the questions become, which means that if I am doing well, some of the later reading comprehension passages I am given turn really dry and abstract in terms of content. Going through those passages is like a brutal punishment and an obvious test of whether I can stay true to the task at hand. This is my problem! I end up getting RC passages about (for example) different ways to replicate the double helix in DNA and the history behind those contrasting approaches. I stay true to the VP method for breaking down these passages, but the content is so convoluted at its core that I inevitably find myself wasting time to go back and re-read entire paragraphs because I simply did not understand them at all the first time. Please help me figure this out! How can I keep a balanced VP approach to these difficult reading comprehension problems? How can I get myself to stay as engaged with reading material that makes me want to gouge my eyes out? Thanks in advance for your advice!

I feel your pain! Yes, some of the passages are dry, dry, dry, and you're right that this is intentional.

Keep in mind that the technical jargon in these passages is not usually as important as the general ideas contained therein. Focus on the basic idea of the paragraphs rather than attempting to understand the intricacies of the ideas, and in particular, the language they use.

Break the passage into smaller bits. Remember that the intro paragraph is, for example, about historical approach for replicating DNA #1. The second paragraph is about the second historical approach, and the third paragraph is about where we're going next, or what's wrong with the two historical approaches. Understanding the actual way they replicated the DNA probably isn't as important. You can always go back the passage to get specific / explicit information as you run across questions that need it, especially if you know roughly where to look.

The other thing is to practice, practice, practice. And don't gouge your eyes out.

I generally recommend students throw in an RC passage with other homework throughout the last half of the course -- i.e. do a handful of math problems, and then go do 1 or 2 passages. This tends to make them slightly less painful (or at least less numerous, so the pain is shorter-lived.)

Hope this helps --

Veritas Help