[friendlydragonca]

I think reading speed and comprehension are important for the reading comprehension, but IMO there is another factor: it is hard to explain in words exactly, but you need to "get the hang" of how ETS presents a reading comprehension question and its 5 accompanying answer choices.

Getting the hang of it naturally involved doing the reading comprehension questions in the Official Guide, and reading the explainations for them. There are patterns in how ETS presents a question and the answer choices. Again, I could not state explictly what they are, but after doing several of the reading comprehension questions in the Official Guide, I began to sort of sense these patterns. Sometimes I was able to guess what answer was right and what was wrong by "gut feel". I was not 100% accurate, but was much better than 20% accurate (i.e. better than random guessing) by the time I had finished the Official Guide.

What I am saying is, success in reading comprehension is about general reading speed and comprehension, a skill we all use everyday. But it is also about skills that are unique to the GMAT reading comprehension. Doing better in the reading comprehension involves both improving our gerneral reading skills, and learning the specific GMAT reading comprehension quirks.

Sorry if this sounds a bit zen-like and mystical, but after working on all the Official Guide reading comprehension questions, hopefully you will develop this sense.