“Interactive” Reading: The Key to Reading Comprehension

If you’re like most GMAT test-takers, you’ll experience at least one of the following problems as you tackle Reading Comprehension:

• Your concentration is poor—perhaps due to your lack of familiarity with or interest in the topic, or perhaps due to general test anxiety.



• Your reading pace is slow—so you have trouble finishing the Verbal section in time.



• To answer each question, you find yourself searching the passage again and again to find the information you need.



• You have trouble narrowing down the answer choices to one that’s clearly the best.

Believe it or not, all of these problems are due to the same bad habit: passive reading, by which you simply read the passage from start to finish, giving equal time and attention to every sentence without thought as to what particular information might be key in answering the questions. You might call this approach the “osmosis strategy,” since you’re hoping to absorb what you need to know by simply allowing your eyes to glaze over the words.

What’s the likely result of this osmosis strategy? You might remember some scattered facts and ideas, which will help you respond correctly to some easier questions. But the passive mind set won’t take you very far when it comes to most of the questions, which measure your ability to understand the ideas in the passage rather than to simply recall information. Understanding a passage well enough to answer all the questions requires a highly active frame of mind—one in which you constantly interact with the text as you read, asking yourself questions such as these:

• What’s the passage’s main idea (or “thesis”) and the author’s overall concern or purpose?



• What does each part of the passage relate to the main idea and author’s overall purpose?



• What’s the author’s line of reasoning, or so-called “train of thought”?

Interactive reading is the key to handling GMAT Reading Comprehension, and that’s what this section is primarily about!

Reading Comprehension—Your 7-Step Game Plan

The first task in this section is to learn the seven basic steps for handling a GMAT Reading Comprehension passage and question set. You’ll apply these steps to the following sample passage and three questions:

1. The author of the passage quotes Cartier-Bresson (line 5) in order to
   
   
   1. refute Avedon’s conception of a portrait sitting.
   2. provide one perspective of the portraiture encounter.
   3. support the claim that portrait sittings are, more often than not, confrontational encounters.
   4. show that a portraiture encounter can be either brief or extended.
   5. distinguish a sitting for a photographic portrait from a sitting for a painted portrait.


2. Which of the following characterizations of the portraiture experience as viewed by Avedon is most readily inferable from the passage?
   
   
   1. A collaboration
   2. A mutual accommodation
   3. A confrontation
   4. An uncomfortable encounter
   5. A consultation


3. Which of the following best expresses the passage’s main idea?
   
   
   1. The success of a portrait depends largely on the relationship between artist and subject.
   2. Portraits, more than most other art forms, provide insight into the artist’s social relationships.
   3. The social aspect of portraiture sitting plays an important part in the sitting’s outcome.
   4. Photographers and painters differ in their views regarding their role in portrait photography.
   5. The paintings of Reynolds provide a record of his success in achieving a social bond with his subjects.

The 7-Step Game Plan

Step 1: Read the first question (including the answer choices), before you begin reading the passage. Try to anticipate what the passage is about and what sort of information you should be on the lookout for in order to answer the first question.

Step 2: Begin reading the passage, actively thinking about a possible thesis (main idea) and how the author attempts to support that thesis. Also, begin your reading with an eye for information useful in answering the first question.

Step 3: When you think you’ve learned enough to take a stab at the first question, go ahead and choose a tentative answer. You probably won’t have to read very far to at least take a reasoned guess at the first question. But don’t confirm your selection yet!

Step 4: Read the remainder of the passage, formulating an outline as you go. As you read, try to (1) separate main ideas from supporting ideas and examples; (2) determine the basic structure of the passage (e.g., chronology of events, classification of ideas or things, comparison between two or more ideas, events, or things); and (3) determine the author’s opinion or position on the subject. Make notes on your scratch paper as needed to see the flow of the passage and to keep the passage’s details straight in your mind.

Step 5: Sum up the passage; formulate a brief thesis (main idea) statement. Take a few seconds to review your outline. Then, in your own words, express the author’s main point—in one sentence. Jot it down on your scratch paper. Your thesis statement should reflect the author’s opinion or position (e.g., critical, supportive, neutral) toward the ideas presented in the passage.

Step 6: Confirm your selection for the first question. Eliminate any answer choice that is inconsistent with your thesis statement, that doesn’t respond to the question, or that doesn’t make sense to you.

Step 7: Move on to the remaining question(s), considering all of the answer choices for each question.

Now let’s walk through Passage 1 (involving portraiture) and the sample questions about it, using this 7-step approach.

Step 1: The first question tells you a lot about what you might expect in the passage. In all likelihood, the passage will be primarily about the portraiture experience. The author will probably provide different viewpoints and insights on this experience from the perspective of particular artists.

Step 2: The first four sentences (lines 1–11) reinforce your initial prediction about the passage’s content. Based on these initial lines, it appears that the author will indeed be comparing and contrasting different views of the portraiture experience. At this point you don’t know whether the passage will involve the views of any artists other than Cartier-Bresson and Richard Avedon, nor do you know whether the author has any opinion on the subject. But you should be on the lookout for answers to these unknowns during Step 4.

Step 3: Consider question 1 based on what you’ve read so far. The author points out in lines 4–9 that Cartier-Bresson’s conception is quite different from that of Avedon. Choices (A), (B), and (C) all appear to be viable choices, at least based on lines 4–9. But whether the author’s purpose here is to refute Avedon’s view (choice (A)), support Cartier-Bresson’s view (choice (C)), or simply provide one of at least two perspectives without taking sides (choice (B)) remains to be seen. You’ll have to read on to find out. In any event, you can probably eliminate (D) and (E), since neither one seems relevant to the Cartier-Bresson quotation. Don’t confirm a selection yet; go on to Step 4.

Step 4: Your goal in Step 4 is to formulate an informal outline of the passage as you read from start to finish. You might want to jot down some key words and phrases to help you see how the ideas flow and to keep the four individuals discussed in the passage straight in your mind. Here’s a good outline of the passage:

Step 5: Now let’s sum up the passage based on the outline you formulated in Step 4. It’s a good idea to jot it down. Notice that the “thesis” is neutral; the author does not side with any viewpoint presented in the passage.

Step 6: Having read the entire passage, return to the question. Nowhere in the passage does the author attempt to either refute or support any of the viewpoints presented. So you can eliminate (A) and (C). Accordingly, (B) provides the best answer to the question. Notice also that (B) is consistent with our thesis statement. Regardless of the particular question, you can eliminate any answer choice that is inconsistent with your thesis statement.

Step 7: Move ahead to questions 2 and 3. In the following analysis, notice the qualitative difference (from best to worst) among the answer choices.

Question 2: The correct answer is E. In the first sentence of the second paragraph, the author distinguishes a “quite-different paradigm” (that is, the case of Reynolds) from the conceptions of Cartier-Bresson and Avedon in that the Reynolds paradigm “has its roots not in confrontation or consultation but in active collaboration between artist and sitter.” The third sentence of the passage makes clear that Cartier-Bresson conceives the encounter as “confrontational”; thus, you can reasonably infer that the author characterizes an Avedon sitting as a “consultation.”

Choice (B) is also a good response but nevertheless not as good as (E). Although the term “mutual accommodation,” which does not appear in the passage, is not altogether inconsistent with Avedon’s view, the term suggests a relationship in which both artist and painter allow for the other’s needs or desires. Such a description is closer to Hazlitt’s analogy of two lovers than to Avedon’s view of the artist as diagnostician and psychic healer.

Choice (A) also has merit, yet it is not as good a response as either (B) or (E). Admittedly, the idea of “a collaboration” is not in strong opposition to the idea of “a consultation.” However, the author explicitly ascribes this characterization to the Reynolds paradigm, not to Avedon’s view. Thus, (A) confuses the passage’s information.

Choices (C) and (D) are qualitatively the worst choices among the five. (C) confuses the passage’s information. The quotation in the first paragraph makes it clear that Cartier-Bresson (not Avedon) conceives the encounter as “confrontational.” (D) also confuses the passage’s information. According to the passage, Avedon confesses “uncomfortably” to his role as diagnostician and psychic healer. It does not necessarily follow, however, that Avedon finds his encounters with his sitters to be uncomfortable.

Question 3: The correct answer is (C). Although this passage doesn’t seem to convey a strong central idea or thesis, the author seems to be most concerned with emphasizing that a portrait sitting is a social encounter, not just an artistic exercise, and that artists consider their relationship with their sitters to be somehow significant. For this reason, (C) is a good statement of the author’s main point.

Choice (A) also has merit. In fact, but for (C), (A) would be the best choice because it embraces the passage as a whole and properly focuses on the author’s primary concern with exploring the relationship between artist and sitter. However, the passage does not discuss how or whether this relationship results in a “successful” portrait; thus, (A) distorts the passage’s information.

Choice (D) has merit in that the author does claim that the Reynolds paradigm (described in the second paragraph) is “quite different” from the two paradigms that the first paragraph discusses. The latter does indeed involve a painter (Reynolds) whereas the other two paradigms involve photographers (Cartier-Bresson and Avedon). However, the author does not generalize from this fact that a portrait artist’s approach or view depends on whether the artist is a painter or a photographer. Thus, (D) is a bit off focus and calls for an unwarranted generalization.

Choices (B) and (E) are qualitatively the worst among the five choices. (B) distorts the information in the passage and departs from the topic at hand. Although the passage does support the notion that a portrait might reveal something about the relationship between artist and sitter, the author neither states nor implies that a portrait reveals anything about the artist’s other relationships. Moreover, nowhere in the passage does the author compare portraiture with other art forms.

Choice (E) is too narrow and refers to information not mentioned in the passage. The passage is not just about Reynolds, but about the portraiture encounter in general. Also, the author does not comment on Reynold’s “success” or about how his relationship with his sitters might have contributed to his success.

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