Hello, everyone:

A blog series that we've contributed to a partner website has gotten quite a bit of attention over there, so I thought I'd share it here so that you can check it out. Some of it is pretty similar to what's in the Reading Comprehension lesson that you're going through in class, but there may be some additional strategy or tips that you find valuable. Part One:


A Blueprint For Reading Comprehension Success

Admit it: you’ve reached that point during a practice test or study session at which the Reading Comprehension passage in front of you might as well be written in a foreign language. The topic matter – botany, astronomy, poetry, whatever – doesn’t appeal to you; the terminology seems technical and involved; the rest of the test’s questions, or day’s events, are so entrenched in the forefront of your mind that you’re only looking at the words on the screen, but you’re certainly not reading them. Athletes call this a bonk – your body has involuntarily shut down, and you’re helpless against it. Right?

The biggest mistake that GMAT readers make in these situations is that they try to understand the entire passage at once, which can often be a monumental task. When you’re at your most tired – Reading Comprehension passages come at various times of the verbal section, after you’ve been testing in some cases for over three hours already – it can be nearly impossible to process and understand a new, technical subject. How can you combat this? By reading for a blueprint, giving yourself an architectural understanding of the passage before you get to the subject-matter “decoration” that rests upon it.

Consider this paragraph of a dense, technical passage:

The encounter hypothesis explained the phenomenon sufficiently enough that it allowed scientists to focus on more immediately rewarding topics in physics and astronomy for most of the first half of the 20th century. Closer investigation, however, found several significant problems with the encounter hypothesis, most notably that the hot gas pulled from the sun would not condense to form dense planets, but rather would expand in the absence of a central, gravitational force. Furthermore, the statistical unlikelihood of a star passing in the (astronomically speaking) short time of the sun’s existence required scientists to abandon the encounter hypothesis in search of a new explanation. Soon after, astronomers formed a second theory, the nebular hypothesis, which submits that the solar system began as a large cloud of gas containing the matter that would form the sun and its orbiting planets. The nebular hypothesis suggests that when the cloud reached a critical mass, it collapsed under its own gravity. The resulting angular momentum would have morphed the nebula into a protoplanetary disc, with a dense center that generated intense heat and pressure, and a cooler, thinner mass that revolved around it. The central mass would have continued to build in density and heat, forming the sun, while the centrifugal force around the disc’s edge kept smaller masses from being pulled in to the sun; those masses, upon cooling, would break off to become planets held in orbit by the competing gravitational force of the sun and centrifugal force of their orbital inertia.

On its own, this paragraph is horrifically detailed, complete with at least a handful of words so scientifically technical that Microsoft Word’s spell check won’t recognize them. Business schools aren’t too concerned, however, with your ability to outwit Carl Sagan regarding the origins of the solar system; they’d much rather know that you can analyze the way that someone like Sagan constructs an argument. Accordingly, you’re much better served to ignore the scientific jargon when it starts to confuse, intimidate, or fatigue you, and focus on GMAT jargon instead:

The encounter hypothesis explained the phenomenon sufficiently enough that it allowed scientists to focus on more immediately rewarding topics in physics and astronomy for most of the first half of the 20th century. Closer investigation, HOWEVER, found several significant problems with the encounter hypothesis, most notably that the hot gas pulled from the sun would not condense to form dense planets, but rather would expand in the absence of a central, gravitational force. FURTHERMORE, the statistical unlikelihood of a star passing in the (astronomically speaking) short time of the sun’s existence required scientists to abandon the encounter hypothesis in search of a new explanation. Soon after, astronomers formed a SECOND theory, the nebular hypothesis, which submits that the solar system began as a large cloud of gas containing the matter that would form the sun and its orbiting planets. The nebular hypothesis suggests that when the cloud reached a critical mass, it collapsed under its own gravity. The resulting angular momentum would have morphed the nebula into a protoplanetary disc, with a dense center that generated intense heat and pressure, and a cooler, thinner mass that revolved around it. The central mass would have continued to build in density and heat, forming the sun, while the centrifugal force around the disc’s edge kept smaller masses from being pulled in to the sun; those masses, upon cooling, would break off to become planets held in orbit by the competing gravitational force of the sun and centrifugal force of their orbital inertia.

Just by highlighting the keywords above – however, furthermore, and second – you can give yourself a powerful blueprint of the paragraph:

* “however” means that the paragraph transitions away from the first sentence
* “furthermore” means that the paragraph continues along the path set up in the previous sentence
* “second” notes that another theory was constructed to complement the initial one

Just by looking at that layout, you can get a good understanding of what this paragraph does. The first sentence lays out the existence of a theory, the “encounter hypothesis”. However, as the transition says, there were some problems with it. Furthermore, there were even more significant problems, which means that a second theory had to be established. The rest of the paragraph describes some of the specifics behind that theory.

Note that, in our crude breakdown of the paragraph above, we don’t use any technical terms or emphasize any details, yet we know quite a bit to prep us for the passage. If a question asks about any problems with the initial theory, we know we’ll find them here; similarly, if a question asks about any of the specifics with the second theory – the “nebular hypothesis” – we know we’ll find that in this paragraph, as well. And any answer choice about the primary purpose of the passage as a whole that only mentions one theory is wrong; the passage clearly details at least these two theories.

Most importantly, this demonstrates that you can focus on keywords – those that signal the organization of the passage – and then construct your understanding of the details around that structure. For your preparation, this means two things:

1. Train yourself to pay particular attention to these structural clues, as they are typically the most important words in the entire passage.
2. If all else fails and you just can’t focus on the passage, you can just skim for those types of words and use them as your anchors so that you’re only responsible for small chunks of information at any given time.

The authors of the GMAT will rely heavily on technical terms, dense writing, and intimidating or boring topics to impede your ability to focus. Their failing? They always leave you a blueprint of the passage with these structural terms. Learn to embrace those, and you can much more quickly and efficiently get to the heart of the matter.

Part Two - a follow-up post specifically on Function questions:

Why Did You Do That?

In a previous post in this space, we covered an effective strategy for reading GMAT Reading Comprehension passages efficiently. If readers focus on the structure of the passage – a one-sentence summary of “What” and “Why”: what is the paragraph about, and why was it written? – they’ll have an easier time reading than if they allowed themselves to try to understand all of the potentially-complicated content, and they’ll set themselves up to efficiently answer the questions that follow.

To better emphasize the importance of that strategy, consider one of the popular question types that may follow a passage you’ll see on test day. Function questions ask something to the extent of:

Why does the author quote Whitman in the second paragraph?

The author uses the word “ironically” in the third paragraph to…

In these cases, the question is asking you to gauge the author’s intent. Almost always, the author’s intent when using a quote, statistic, or term is to prove the point that he is trying to make in that paragraph or section. If you’ve understood the “Why” of why the paragraph or section was written, you can make quick work of such a question by double-checking that portion to confirm that the term/stat/quote in question does, indeed, make that point.

Consider this section from a GMAT Reading Comprehension passage, and a question that follows (portions appear courtesy of the Graduate Management Admissions Council):

Despite their many differences of temperament and of literary perspective, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, and Whitman share certain beliefs. Common to all these writers is their humanistic perspective. Its basic premises are that humans are the spiritual center of the universe and that in them alone is the clue to nature, history, and ultimately the cosmos itself. Without denying outright the existence either of a deity or of brute matter, this perspective nevertheless rejects them as exclusive principles of interpretation and prefers to explain humans and the world in terms of humanity itself. This preference is expressed most clearly in the Transcendentalist principle that the structure of the universe literally duplicates the structure of the individual self; therefore, all knowledge begins with self-knowledge.

This common perspective is almost always universalized. Its emphasis is not upon the individual as a particular European or American, but upon the human as universal, freed from the accidents of time, space, birth, and talent. Thus, for Emerson, the “American Scholar” turns out to be simply “Man Thinking”; while, for Whitman, the “Song of Myself” merges imperceptibly into a song of all the “children of Adam, ” where “every atom belongs to me as good belongs to you.”

The author quotes Whitman primarily in order to

(A) show that the poet does not agree with Emerson

(B) indicate the way the poet uses the human ideal to praise himself

(C) illustrate a way the poet expresses the relationship of the individual to the humanistic universe

(D) demonstrate that the poet is concerned with the well-being of all humans

(E) prove that the poet uses real-world analogies in his prose

Structurally, the first paragraph’s intent is to introduce a common perspective that five prominent authors share. We can gauge that by looking at the terminology given in the passage:

Despite ________, (these authors) share certain beliefs. Common to all is ________. This perspective… This preference…

The word “despite” introduces the idea that the first portion of that sentence will run counter to the main point, so we know that the second part (common beliefs) is the author’s main intent there. The second sentence, then, begins to describe what is common, and the subsequent sentences use the word “this” to refer back to that commonality. Even without too much effort on the details, we should be able to get the idea from that paragraph that:

“The author introduces a common theme between five different writers, and goes on to describe what is so common.” That’s kind of a vague description, but if that’s all you derive from this paragraph – which can certainly seem dense and bland to non-literary types – you’ve taken away the most important themes.

The second paragraph begins with the phrase “this common perspective…”, which should note that the author is going to describe that commonality initially introduced in the first paragraph a bit further. Since we’ve already set up the passage as a whole with a fairly well-defined topic paragraph (the author wants to discuss a common theme between five writers), it seems natural that the author is using the second paragraph to further explain that commonality. With that in mind, the What/Why of the second paragraph is something to the extent of:

The author further explains the common perspective, noting that the authors see the individual as part of a larger universe.

Because we know that the author’s goal in this paragraph is to demonstrate a bit further this common perspective, and in particular show that the authors use it to see the individual as universal, the reason that he would use any quotes or references in the paragraph is to further develop that point.
Looking at the answer choices:

(A) the most popular incorrect choice in this question, does the opposite of the author’s intent. He hopes to demonstrate that these authors are common in their belief, but the answer choice says that they disagree. Even though the word “while” is used to separate the quotes of Emerson and Whitman, which in a vacuum might indicate that they do disagree, the author is clearly using those quotes to show their commonality – even if they have different ways of expressing it – so choice A is incorrect.

(B) also misses the scope of the author’s intent. The author is trying to demonstrate the commonalities of these authors, and not show their own self-promotional differences.

(C) expresses the author’s intent. He wants to show how the authors fit his point, that the individual is part of the universe, and so he would use that quote in exactly the way that the answer choice describes. C is the correct answer.

(D) misses the scope of the content provided in the paragraph. Whitman may well be concerned with the well-being of all, but the author is specifically dealing with the human-universe dynamic in this paragraph, so the correct answer must be consistent with that.

(E) similarly misses the scope of the author’s intent. He is not concerned with the way the authors write, but he is trying to demonstrate that they write about a common philosophy.

Overall, you should use this example to highlight the importance of understanding the author’s intent when you read, as these Function questions will test that understanding directly. Furthermore, even if the answer choice comes down to content (like choice D, in a way, does), your focus on those terms that signal author intent will show you where to go to check the content. More importantly, as you’ll note with choice A, the most popular trap answers will try to bait you to think locally while missing the author’s intent.