READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY

To continue from my previous post, I will be explaining how you can improve your mark, even by one increment. As you might be preparing for your upcoming DAT, you will have bought some resources that provide you with tests for the RC section. The thing is DAT crusher content does not reflect the DAT examination in the slightest way, and BootCamp is so far off base and practicing with a set strategy off of the computer will do you no good. What I did that made a whole lot of difference was to explore strategies that people used in tests like MCAT or SATs that contain long passages to analyze. I went on various youtube videos and blogs that would explain what strategies to use and with those in mind, I believe I morphed the advices I was given in to an interpretation of my own, to synthesize a strategy that would work best for me.

So, this strategy that I use consists of these steps:

1. when the timer starts just start reading the first paragraph fast, (a.k.a. Intro).

2. Go on to the question sheet, just read the first three questions.

3. Go back on the passage and read the first two paragraphs.

4. Skim down to the last two paragraphs, a.k.a. the last body paragraph and conclusion, and read those.

5. Move to the questions and answer as many questions as you can, skim over all the questions.

6. Come back to the passage, by now you will probably have a picture of how the paragraph is shaped, can with some certainty navigate through the passages and assume where you can find answers to the unanswered questions. if you get stuck leave the question and move on to the others, and finish the first reading even if you have not answered all of the questions and then come back if you have time at the end.

7. If god forbids you see you are running out of time just take a best guess with the knowledge you have from the passage.

There is also another strategy that I used, which was because of DAT BootCamp, if any of you are doing bootcamp you know how hard the passages are, they are also very weirdly shaped, and very long. So, logically its harder to navigate through and read fast, so my other strategy for practicing was to read the first few sentences of every paragraph, underlining and circling as I go, and then move to the questions. This will allow you to gain knowledge of the content of the passage, and to better navigate through the passage. But, a fair warning, it will not be needed on the Canadian DAT but, just for practice might be useful.

Now on to how I practiced for RC, (having done it in November and being astonished as to how different it was from what I had practiced):

A major issue for me was that I had not practiced on paper. So I decided to print my passages to allow my strategy to take place on paper, the thing that also helped me was to underline what I thought would be important, circling and writing down "IMP" as I was reading, allowed better navigation when answering questions. Next, the passages as stated were quite disappointing but I had no time to go find passages of my own, find analytical questions pertaining to three passages, so what I did was that I knew DAT crusher passages were super easy so I decreased my time increment, I printed the passages and set it up with the style of the DAT examination, meaning first passage followed by questions, and so on. I allowed myself a time span of 40 minutes for three passages, at first it was hard but after I got used to it which allowed me to work faster. Next, I went through the DAT crusher passages pretty fast, and I no longer had content, so what I did was going online and searching for scholarly articles with analytical questions for university level reading, and to my surprise there are plenty of this type of reading comprehension tests out there. so I printed a bunch online and put three together to make a practice tests for myself, and it really did help me get a new sense of what topics could be explored on the exam. This booklet that I made was really useful, I put some really hard passages in there just to try myself. this allowed me to lose my fear of complex passages with hard diction, I realized that answering questions is not about the diction or complexity of the passage, it is simply understanding the content and navigating the passage that will allow you to score high. I had also bought a few practice books, like Kaplan and Princeton, which were also disappointing since they only had one passage in the book like WTFFF!!! Anyways, I did that as well, the thing is if you want to be prepared you have to be familiar with every type of content and style of writing that they give you, so the more exposure you have the easier you will tackle the passage. AND REMEMBER THEY USUALLY GIVE YOU A HARD AND LONG PASSAGE FOR THE FIRST READING TO SINK YOUR TIME, AND THROW YOU OFF YOUR GAME!

So, now that you know this maybe you can even skip the first passage if you know you cant handle the stress of leaving questions blank and coming back to it. You must realize it is not about comprehension, it is about reading smart. If you can synthesize a strategy that will guarantee a calm and stress free reading for YOU when doing the exam, stick with that and keep practicing till you get it right. With all you know, you can make your own strategy now!