PennDreamer

Hey guys. I have gained many infos from this college discussion site and my critical score actually went up from 500s to 600s. Thank YOU SO MUCH GUYS!
But i still have some questions.
Nowadays, i understand many of the passages. But usually i get this one passage that is freakin hard to understand. These are the ones that kill my score from high 600s or low 700s to low 600s.
I miss like 3 questions on each of the sections and miss like 9 on the section that contains hard passage.
I don't know wat to do. I sometimes reread them but it's just incomprehensible.
What should i do? Usually those are the narrative or novel ones (like 19th century or 18th century)
Do you guys have any tips for those novel passages?

icandoit

It's my problem too. Someone can help me???

BB012

Well, the best way to increase your understanding of such passages is to read more and more of similar stuff. You could read some good Victorian age literature and analyze them. But since your immediate concern is to increase the score, I would suggest that you experiment with multiple strategies on such passages until you come to a suitable one. One that worked with me is this: breakdown the long passages (those are more than 40 lines) into three or four segments. After you finish each segment try to summarize it, or maybe paraphrase some of the harder lines. Then look at the questions. If you find questions that come from that particular part, try to answer them. If required reread that part. Then move on. After you finish the whole text try to find the main idea or theme. Then answer all the questions, or those you think you can attempt. In other words, think of the long, hard passages as equivalent to 3-4 shorter passages combined together to express similar thoughts. You can also try to focus solely on such passages for the time being until you find that you are making fewer mistakes. And perhaps you can read the passages without worrying too much about time. Answer all the questions even if you require more time than the allocated time. You should first try to improve your accuracy. Then comes speed.

You said that you miss around 9 on such hard passages. So your next target should be to bring that down to 7/6. Eventually you will find that you are much more confident dealing with such passages, and your score would automatically go up. I got a 660 on the critical reading section. And my problem was similar to that of yours; I messed up everything on one passage or section. But I have really worked hard on it, and now I have raised my score to around 750 in a few months. I am aiming for 780 in the October test.

nontraditional

Are you able to figure out, once you know what the right answer is, why it's the right answer?

Maybe you could find a friend or family member who can get the right answers for those passages and have them explain to you how they figured each answer out? Then you could try to learn the techniques they use.

PennDreamer

thanks guys. any other ideas? specifically on narrative passages?

johnmei

Hey guys,
If you find it hard to understand a passage I think it's a good idea to take the very passage you have trouble on and dissect it. There's a great technique called bracketing, where you look at the questions first, and then put a bracket around the part of the passage that the question relates to. That way instead of trying to take in the entire passage at one time, you can focus on the specific part that's most important to you (the part that'll give you the answer).
Usually in the critical reading section they've set a balance: the harder the passage is to understand, the easier the questions, and the easier the passage, the harder the questions. This way bracketing really comes in handy, because the easier questions directly tell you what part of the passage they're looking for.
If they're giving you tone or author's purpose questions, then you're in a little more trouble. But I still recommend breaking up the passage into more manageable parts. Also, I find that as you answer more questions the passage, the clearer it becomes. Look back at the passage, and figure out what parts are the hardest.
If you would like to point me out to a passage (if it's in the blue book) or give me a sample of what's giving you the trouble (without breaking copyright laws), I would be more than happy to help you out.

stanfordwannabe

The strategy I usually use is to read the question and use the life reference to guide me to the raw information. After I have finished with all this line reference questions, I then skim the passage so as to answer the main idea questions or any general question. This method is better because when you finish all the line reference questions, you tend to have a general idea of the passage, and when you read the passage, the passage will seem much easier. Besides, this method is very fast