5 Proven GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Techniques to Boost Your Score

For any exam, the questions are aimed at assessing the aspirants skills required for that particular role. This holds true for any competitive exam like GMAT, GRE, etc. GMAT preparation includes identifying the skills that are being tested; understanding the types of questions that are part of the exam; knowing the purpose of every question type; and enhancing the required skills to improve accuracy. GMAT Reading Comprehension is one of the two major categories of questions that is part of the GMAT Verbal Reasoning section, the other being Critical Reasoning. GMAT Reading Comprehension questions would include questions that tests the readers’ overall understanding of the given passage; readers’ understanding of the specific information that is either explicitly stated, or implied in the passage; readers’ ability to identify the author’s intention behind stating specific information in the passage, and so on. We are going to look at how to improve one’s GMAT Reading Comprehension by following the below GMAT reading comprehension practice techniques.

What is GMAT Reading Comprehension:

Even though most of us have been used to answering Reading Comprehension questions since our school days, the purpose of the questions can vary widely from one test to another. For example, during school days the purpose of these questions could be just to check if we were able to locate the question to the right part of the passage to get the answer, where the answer may be just stated explicitly. The effort needed to answer such questions is just to go to the relevant location.

Whereas, in exams like GMAT, Reading Comprehension tests student’s ability to comprehend the given passage without getting intimidated by the unfamiliar subject of the passage; the size of the passage; the unknown field-specific words or the technical terms that are given in the passage; comprehending the passage within the given time, etc. Not just our eligibility to go to the right location would help but also our ability to analytically read the given information; analyze it based on the question; and decide the best choice among the given choices; within the given time, is tested. So, we need to develop a set of advanced skills to perform well in the GMAT Reading Comprehension section.

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Few GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Techniques

Let us look at a couple of strategies or you can say GMAT reading comprehension practice techniques which would help you excel in the topic and will help to boost your score.

1. Overcome the fear:

   The moment we see the passage, a list of things could pop up in our mind.

   • I do not have a reading habit, thus reading the passage is boring

   • The subject of the passage is not familiar to me

   • I do not know the meaning of the technical terms that are given in the passage

   • I have difficulty remembering all the points that are stated in the passage

   • I am taking a lot of time to read the passage

   These are a couple of common worries that the students report, the moment they read a GMAT Reading Comprehension passage. If you have a similar concern, then this article is going to be useful for you. GMAT knows that we are not experts in all the subjects. It does give us passages across various subjects, knowing the aforementioned fact. In such a case, you need to develop the habit of reading something relevant to the given context; i.e., instead of reading novels or short stories, you can start reading some articles across subjects to make yourself comfortable reading anything that is given to you. To reiterate, the purpose of reading is not to improve your knowledge in any particular subject but just to help yourself to feel comfortable reading anything that is given to you irrespective of the subject, size, technical words, etc.

   GMAT preparation includes learning the right way to approach the given information. Developing the habit of looking at the GMAT Reading Comprehension passage as a set of ideas/information, instead of looking at it as a subject, will help you understand the necessary details without worrying about the subject of it. For a large proportion of students there will be a passage that they may not be familiar with. In spite of it, how we handle the passage is the key to excel. This is one of the most prominent GMAT reading question practice techniques that can’t be ignored.

   When you are at the initial stages of your GMAT preparation, it is not the right time to worry much about answering the questions within the ideal time. Instead, focus on improving your accuracy by understanding the strategies to answer every question type. When you know the appropriate step to get the answer, you can gradually work on answering the questions within the given time, without compromising on the accuracy part of it.

   If you come across technical terms, puzzling over it would not help. Instead, go ahead and continue to read the given information. If GMAT wants us to know the meaning of that word, it would invariably explain it to us somewhere down the line. If the meaning of that word has no impact in the way we answer the questions, the explanation of that word may not be available in the passage. This is also a quick tip and a GMAT reading comprehension practice technique to help you stay relaxed when you encounter a technical term.

2. Know the purpose of every question type in GMAT Reading Comprehension:

   It is crucial to know the purpose behind any question type that you answer. The reason is knowing the purpose will help you go in search of the right answer without pondering over the other choices which could be irrelevant or out of scope. There are around four major types of questions in GMAT Reading Comprehension, where every question has a specific skill to test. For example, the primary purpose type of questions test if the reader has understood the overall context of the passage, by reading it fully. This includes understanding the author’s tone, opinion, position, transitions happening between the paragraphs, organization of the passage, etc. We offer specific strategies to get this type of questions right, even if you are running out of time, where you may not have the luxury of reading the entire passage.

   Similarly, knowing the purpose of location based questions, inference questions, author’s intention based questions, reasoning based questions, etc will aid you to select the correct answer. In our classes, we teach specific strategies to tackle the above reading comprehension questions along with GMAT reading comprehension practice techniques.

3. The importance of self-analysis and maintaining an error log:

   One common mistake that most of the students do in their GMAT preparation is that they are more concerned about practicing more reading comprehension questions without paying attention to the ones that they have done wrong. There is nothing wrong in practicing more questions and knowing more GMAT reading comprehension practice techniques, but the step before that should be to identify the reason for not getting a couple of questions correct in the previous attempts. Without identifying

   • the reasoning behind the correct answer and

   • the difference in the logic between your choice and the answer

   If you keep practicing more questions, the chances are high that you might repeat the same mistakes again. So, it is essential to spend quality time on self-analysis. Also, documenting these errors in a spreadsheet is quite important as you will be able to identify the trend in your mistakes over a period of time. If you have an hour to spend for your GMAT preparation, then 45 mins needs to be spent on practice of GMAT questions and at least 15 mins should be spent on analysis of the mistakes. Including the above steps in your GMAT preparation plays a vital role in boosting your score.

4. Practice enough timed questions:

   Students are sometimes under a common belief that learning the GMAT reading comprehension practice techniques and strategies to answer questions is enough to improve the scores. Thus, they would book the exam dates immediately after attending the classes. This is a major risk because in the classes you will learn how to deal with specific types of questions, the nuances, the traps that you need to be careful with, etc. Unless you practice those and learn to handle such traps by yourself, you can’t be under the impression that you have mastered all those techniques or strategies thoroughly. Practice is essential. To be more specific, timed practice is critical.

   Practicing with the timer would help you know if you are ready for the exam. Often one would imagine that knowledge of the strategies in answering GMAT Reading Comprehension questions is enough to improve the score. But the reality is, practicing enough GMAT Reading Comprehension questions within the ideal time is also equally important. The reason is GMAT is a timed exam and there is also a penalty if you leave a question unanswered. This step is recommended when you are in the latter stages of your GMAT preparation.

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5. Practice from authentic sources

   Most of the time, students are more concerned about practicing more questions than improving the accuracy. The focus should be in improving the accuracy by practicing even a minimum number of questions. The aim is not to cover hundreds of questions from multiple sources, the aim is to get the maximum number of questions correct, even if we are practicing from limited sources. So, do not hunt for more sources, instead focus on the ones which are essential and work on it. If you still wish to practice from a wide range of sources, do not be under the impression that those questions are of a similar difficulty level as you might get on the day of your exam. Check if the source is reliable and then work on it. There are students who have got a good score by just working on the GMAT official guide and the questions available on the Jamboree portal. Too many sources can cause chaos , thus making one feel less confident if they do not get time to work on all of it. So, limited sources would enhance your focus and thus improve your accuracy.

   If you are working on your GMAT prep, especially GMAT Reading Comprehension, then these are a few things that you need to keep in mind, apart from the strategies that you might learn to tackle those questions. I wish you work hard following the above strategies and deal with GMAT Reading Comprehension questions really well. All the best.

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