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how to improve reading skills for the GRE


Salem

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Thanx loadz...can i know which one is best for reading amongst the Wall Street Journal,Scientific American or the NewYorker?....if anybody has those subscriptions can they advise?.....so that i may select the best option.
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Hey Salem..

 

I think that besides the info on the above website a small secret to reading any passage is to read it twice....read it once very fast to understand the structure of the passage and read it again to understand the content. This way one can easily transform oneself from any previous mindset totally in to the passage ahead. And we can also save time in answering the more direct questions which we can recollect easily.

 

All the best.

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Hey Salem..

 

I think that besides the info on the above website a small secret to reading any passage is to read it twice....read it once very fast to understand the structure of the passage and read it again to understand the content. This way one can easily transform oneself from any previous mindset totally in to the passage ahead. And we can also save time in answering the more direct questions which we can recollect easily.

 

All the best.

Are you sure one must read the passage two times!! how , there is no time in the real exam , I have problem with this section but until now I didn't find the good answer for our asking , how we can improve our reading and get the right answer after all !

 

All the best too

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Hey Ikhlas...

 

I too am in the prep stage for my GRE and can quite understand the difficulty of reading passages twice...one surely never gets enough time.

 

But that said,I think if you have some time before your exams,do get in to this habbit. One may find it difficult initially to read twice and yet be in time...But as the mind gets used to analysing the data and breaking it in to parts,it becomes easier to deal with long sentences and the often gibberish sounding information.

 

Hope this helps.

 

All the best.

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Do not read the passage twice. That wastes a ton of time. Just make sure you read carefully the first time. When you read the questions, you refer to the passage. Often they provide a line number, so you can go straight to the area you'll find the answer.

 

Remember, if an answer is correct, there is evidence somewhere in the passage to prove it.

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Oh, and one more thing, the reading sources that you mentioned earlier. Those are all good sources for GRE-level reading. Just choose the one you think you'll find more interesting. If you're into science, go with Scientific American. If you're more interested in current events, go with The Wall Street Journal.

 

If you don't like reading any of those, read them anyways. Most likely you're not going to find the real GRE passages very intriguing, so you need to get used to actively reading a lot of "uninteresting" material. Avoid the most common pitfall, which is to lose concentration. Stay focused.

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I think developing the best strategy that works for you is the most important. I've tried reading it twice and reading it carefully once and the latter works better for me (but I've lived in US since 8). Sometimes non-native speakers can be benefit from reading twice because it is often too difficult to "understand" the first time or it's too discouraging to try to understand the first time, so you skim it quickly the first time hoping to grasp the topic and what the passage is trying to do (persuade, explain, argue...), then go through it again to "comprehend".

 

Reading comp was not my strength in HS when I took the SAT, but is now my strongest section on the GRE. I got 640V without really studying, just practicing a few times. I think this is because I've had to read SO MANY boring textbooks in college, so reading boring material definitely helps. I read textbooks rather slowly, usually about 10 pages per hour for my econ text.

 

Reading it once carefully works me because I can usually understand what the passage is talking about (sometimes I still don't get the point though) and I'm just trying to figure out the tone of the author and where the details are. Some people have suggested reading the questions first before reading the passage, but that has NEVER worked for me, it distracts me when I'm reading the passage.

 

Just sharing my experience, hope it helps.

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