Question #1590

Tips for Reading Carefully?

Started by sakshi_h · started 2022-05-11 18:24 · last activity 2022-05-26 03:53 · 2 replies

Hello, I find that with these types of questions I am having a very hard time reading critically and carefully. I inevitably miss a few important details that understanding the correct answer is basically dependent on, and I get the answer wrong because of this. For example, in this particular question, the answer was dependent on understanding that 1. the term "successful" in the stimulus means the political ads were indeed useful, and 2. the usefulness is not because the ads were persuasive, but it was because the ads provoked reactions. I completely glossed over both these aspects. How can I improve in this aspect? Should I paraphrase every sentence by writing down a summary of the stimulus in my notebook? Any tips are appreciated because I find that this casual overlooking of minor details is my biggest hindrance. Thanks!

Replies

  1. Emil-Kunkin · 2022-05-25 01:46

    Hi Sakshi, I think the best advice I ever received about reading carefully was to read sentences, not words. That is, to try to understand the totality of what each sentence or clause is telling us, and in the process of doing so you can understand what the words mean in their context better. The next tactic I would use is to read slower. While I don't know how well you are doing in timing, I think that simply forcing yourself to read the stimulus slower will help with your understanding and also likely save you time in being able to see wrong/right answers faster. Finally, I'm not a huge fan of paraphrasing/diagraming every sentence. That is a huge time drain, and does not do that much to really reinforce your understanding.

  2. sakshi_h · 2022-05-26 03:53

    Thanks Emil!

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