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Reading Comprehension rounds out the Verb al question-types. When
you face these questions, the computer screen will post a text
of 200 to 300 words on the left side of the screen. You must use
the text (and your reading skills) to answer the three to five
questions that appear, one at a time, on the right side of the
screen. Once you have finished the questions for a text, you
won't see that text again. Rather, later in the section, you'll
be given a new text and a set of questions. The goal of this
question type is to see how well you can digest a lot of new and
challenging information presented in a prose format. Imaging
you're a consultant new to a case. Your boss drops a load of
industry reports on your desk and asks you to go through them to
get the key details and arguments for your first meeting with
the client...in an hour's time. You'll need to be a very
efficient, discerning reader!
The texts themselves are drawn from obscure academic journals
in the fields of business, the science and the humanities/social
sciences. However, you won't need any specialized knowledge of
the subjects to do well - all the information needed to answer
correctly is the text itself.
Tips: in the GMAT Reading Comprehension, THINK GLOBAL.
The GMAT test-makers want to see if you understand how,
and especially why, authors develop their arguments in
prose. As a result, what an author says is much less
important than what an author does. Furthermore, what one
line of a text does is much less important than what a
paragraph, or the whole text, accomplishes. We're talking
structure here, rather than content. And reading for a text's
global structure is crucial to Reading Comprehension. |
