McGraw-Hill Education GRE 2019

passages and accompanying questions. A large component of this section will focus

on how to be an efficient, active reader. Throughout this section, the focus will be

on the necessity of asking yourself big-picture questions about the passage and

identifying concrete, textual evidence in support of your answers. After all, the test-

makers need to justify whichever answer they deem correct, so you should be able

to do so as well.

Developing the appropriate approach for GRE passages largely requires the

development of the mind-set that the test-makers are addressing in the passages

and associated questions. These passages are written by academics and are about

academic topics, so you will want to view the passages with a keen, analytical

eye. Because of this, there are no foolproof methods for tackling Reading

Comprehension. Many companies and books suggest reading the questions and

then the passage, but assuming you have budgeted your time correctly, you should

always read the passage first. Why? Because properly answering the questions and

eliminating wrong choices requires an understanding of the passage’s structure

and the author’s tone and main purpose, all of which cannot be fully understood

unless you’ve read the passage first.

This section will look at how you should best approach the passages to align

your mind-set with that of the test-makers.

Principle 1: Engage Yourself with the Text

Most of the time when you read, you tend to passively absorb the information

without questioning what it’s telling you or even what its relevance is to the author’s

main point. On GRE passages, you need to read actively, with an eye toward the

passage’s structure. As you read through the passage, you should always be asking

yourself questions. What’s the author’s main point? Why is she telling me this? How

does this detail relate to the passage’s overall purpose? Oftentimes, there’s a tendency

for readers to get bogged down in the content of the passage and to lose sight of

the bigger picture, but by asking yourself Why? instead of What?, you’ll be able to

efficiently absorb the passage’s content without wasting time on minor details.

Principle 2: Slow Down, Then Speed Up

The beginning of a passage always introduces essential information. It will

introduce key people or terms, important phenomena, the background for a theory,

or in many cases, the passage’s main point. Since this information is so important,

you should slow down when reading the first few sentences of a short passage and

the first paragraph of a long passage. Make sure that you understand all the terms

and information introduced at the beginning of the passage. Even if this means

losing time at the beginning, you’ll make up for it later in the passage by speeding

up when you’re only looking at minor details.

Principle 3: Identify the Main Purpose

When you are reading a passage, your initial goal should be to identify the author’s

purpose. This means asking yourself: “Why did the author write the passage?”

CHAPTER 6 ■ READING COMPREHENSION 125

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