Tips for Reading Comprehensions

In most competitive examinations reading comprehensions account for anywhere between 20-50% of the allocated marks. This means that you have to be good at solving them in order to do well in these examinations. But more often than not, the reading comprehensions are not that simple, and are quite lengthy and time consuming. Thus most students complain of not being able to complete these exams satisfactorily. I have put together some of the best tips which I could find after doing some research on how to solve reading comprehensions.

What is Reading Comprehension?
Well reading comprehension involves a passage which has been written by someone, which you have to read, and then on the basis of the passage you are supposed to answer a few questions which are asked.

Type of Reading Comprehension:
It is important that you identify the class under which a reading comprehension lies. In general, there are two classes in which reading comprehensions can fall into: a) Science and b)Arts

Science: In case of a passage which is of the science class, it generally contains scientific data. They are easier as compared to those of the arts class. These passages should be tackled in a way so as to boost your speed- in the sense, you should read through the passage quickly but fast, and note down (either on paper or in your mind) what the main idea in each paragraph is. In such a passage, generally there is a lot of data and examples. More often, questions are asked on examples which you can refer back to, and you should not spend time in reading 10 examples, rather read the one example with respect to which they have asked the question. Thus it is important to read quickly but to know where what is.

Arts: In case of a passage which is of the Arts class, they are generally more difficult. These passages have some meaning into it, and more often require a careful reading. Thus when you read such a passage be careful to read it slowly, and note down (either on paper or in your mind) the important points of each paragraph. It is crucial that you read the passage well, or else you would be wasting time in rereading and in trying to understand by repetitive reading. Thus go slow the first time, but understand it.


IMPORTANT - A Few Articles You Should Read Before Your Exam:
It has been my observation that in the GRE exam, almost 7 out of 10 times a reading comprehension comes regarding African American Culture. So what I did was I searched the net for some articles on African American culture. If you read these articles prior to your exam, you are better equipped to tackle reading comprehensions regarding this subject. You can research the terms used in these articles and that should help you understand the topic better. Also these articles are written in a very scholastic manner, and hence they contain words which will help you boost your vocabulary as well. Here are the links to those articles and this is one of those things which you should not overlook:
African American : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_american
African American History : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_history
African American Culture : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Culture
Harlem Renaissance : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Renaissance
African American Music : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_music
African American Art : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_art
African American Literature : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_literature
Slave Narratives : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_narrative
American Civil Rights Movement : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Rights_movement

Please go through each of these articles, and if time permits go through the subarticles in them which are actually links on the pages. If you want to do well in your exam, I would definitely recommend that you attack this area with prior preparation.

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For more information on the type of questions asked in Reading Comprehensions do check out: http://grehouse.blogspot.com/ they have a good article on that