![\"Manhattan](\"http:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2017\/03\/3-28-17-social-1.png\")
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Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We\u2019re not kidding! <\/i><\/b>Check out our upcoming courses here<\/i><\/b><\/a>.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n <\/i><\/b>After working with thousands of students, I\u2019ll admit: Reading Comprehension is my least favorite subject to teach. Why? Because unlike Quant or grammar, it doesn\u2019t have concrete <\/span>rules<\/span><\/i> to apply, so it can be harder to find ways to help when students are struggling.<\/span><\/p>\n I have found, though, that many students who struggle with GMAT Reading Comprehension aren\u2019t actually struggling with the \u201creading\u201d or the \u201ccomprehension\u201d part (unless they struggle with English skills generally). No, the passages \u2013 though dense and often boring \u2013 are mostly ok. It\u2019s answering the <\/span>questions<\/span><\/i> that\u2019s a struggle!<\/span><\/p>\n RC questions can seem vague, and the answer choices can feel like a sphinx\u2019s riddle. Often 2 or 3 answers choices may seem equally right, or maybe none of them seem right! So what should you do?<\/span><\/p>\n Have you ever watched a courtroom drama on TV, in which the lawyer knew her client was guilty but couldn\u2019t say so? \u201cYour Honor, it\u2019s <\/span>possible<\/span><\/i> that my client <\/span>may<\/span><\/i> have been present at <\/span>some<\/span><\/i> point, but\u2026\u201d This lawyer will be very sure never to make any declarative statements, because then no one can claim that she ever lied!<\/span><\/p>\n When students are approaching GMAT Reading Comprehension, they often focus exclusively on the content of the answer choices, and forget to pay attention to <\/span>language<\/span><\/i>. You should ask yourself as you\u2019re going through answer choices: <\/span>Would this hold up in court?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Answer choices with strong, definitive language are rarely right answers. This is especially true on <\/span>main idea<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>inference<\/span><\/i> questions. Inference questions especially ask you about things that were not directly stated but only implied, so TLaL: <\/span>It\u2019s hard to know anything for sure that wasn\u2019t directly stated.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Here is an experiment for you to try: TLaL and see if you can guess which answer choices wouldn\u2019t stand up in court, even though you haven\u2019t read the passage! This is a 700-800 level question from the Manhattan Prep practice exams.<\/span><\/p>\n The passage implies that:<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n (A) the Monteverde area may be home to toad or frog species that have not yet been noted by researchers Without knowing anything except that the passage was about amphibians, you should still be able to eliminate most of the wrong answers if you TLaL:<\/span><\/p>\n (A) \u201cmay be\u201d sounds vague and noncommittal \u2013 that would be hard to prove wrong. Sounds good! As it turns out, the correct answer was in fact A! Many of the other answer choices were tempting based on the content of the passage (you\u2019ll just have to take my word for it), but we could eliminate them based on language alone.<\/span><\/p>\n You can practice this on your own: flip through the <\/span>Official Guide<\/span><\/a> to any RC passage. Without reading the passage, see if you can eliminate at least several of the wrong answers based on lawyerly-ness (not a real word, I know) of language. <\/span><\/p>\n You may not get all the way to the right answer every time, but it will help key you in to the specificity of language that the GMAT uses to distinguish right answers from wrong answers.<\/span><\/p>\n Please note: this won\u2019t work on every question! I am <\/span>not<\/span><\/i> advocating that you skip the passage itself on test day. For questions that ask you about specific details from the passage, it won\u2019t really help to use this technique. But for Main Idea and Inference questions, developing a radar for the <\/span>intensity<\/span><\/i> of the language in addition to the content will help to improve your accuracy on GMAT Reading Comprehension. ?<\/span><\/p>\n What other strategies do you use to conquer a difficult RC question? Comment below!<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n See that \u201cSUBSCRIBE\u201d button in the top right corner? Click on it to receive all our GMAT blog updates straight to your inbox!<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We\u2019re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here. After working with thousands of students, I\u2019ll admit: Reading Comprehension is my least favorite subject to teach. Why? Because unlike Quant or grammar, it doesn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873,929,52871,930,2,25,10],"tags":[818],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-13420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-current-studiers","category-gmat-prep","category-gmat-strategies","category-gmat-study-guide","category-how-to-study","category-reading-comprehension","category-verbal-on-gmat","tag-gmat-reading-comprehension"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13420"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13499,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13420\/revisions\/13499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13420"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=13420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThink Like a Lawyer (TLaL)<\/b><\/h4>\n
Find the Right Answer <\/b>Without<\/i><\/b> the Passages<\/b><\/h4>\n
\n<\/span><\/i>(B) the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve was not large enough to protect the golden toad
\n<\/span>(C) only Costa Rican amphibians living near Monteverde have disappeared since the 1980s
\n<\/span>(D) if amphibians did not have permeable skin, then they could not act as biological harbingers
\n<\/span><\/em>(E) more than one third of the world\u2019s amphibian species have become extinct<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>(B) \u201cwas not large enough.\u201d That sounds really definitive. When we\u2019re talking about protecting a species, is there ever one definitive cause? Probably not. A lawyer would probably phrase it as \u201cmay not have been large enough,\u201d or \u201cits small size was likely a factor,\u201d etc.
\n<\/span>(C) The word \u201conly\u201d is a <\/span>major<\/span><\/i> dealbreaker! It seems pretty unlikely that the passage would prove that <\/span>no<\/span><\/i> other amphibians disappeared in the entire country.
\n<\/span>(D) This one is hypothetical. Consider this statement: \u201cIf I didn\u2019t teach the GMAT, I could not have written blog articles.\u201d Well, in that alternate universe, I might be writing other kinds of blog articles! We can almost never make definitive declarations about hypothetical realities (unless the passage stated that it was the <\/span>only<\/span><\/i> way for something to have happened).
\n<\/span>(E) This one is awfully specific. \u201cMore than one third\u201d implies that we have data on all of the exact numbers. Unlikely! A lawyer might say \u201cperhaps as much as one third\u201d or \u201csome scientists theorize that it could be more than a third,\u201d etc.<\/span><\/p>\nPractice TLaL With the OG<\/b><\/h4>\n
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\n![\"ceilidh-erickson-Manhattan-Prep-GMAT-Instructor\"](\"https:\/\/d27gmszdzgfpo3.cloudfront.net\/gmat\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2016\/02\/ceilidh-erickson-150x150.png\" "\\"Ceilidh")
<\/a>C\u00e9ilidh Erickson<\/a>\u00a0is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Boston, MA.<\/strong>\u00a0When she tells people that her name is\u00a0pronounced \u201ckay-lee,\u201d she often gets puzzled looks.\u00a0C\u00e9ilidh is a graduate of Princeton University\u00a0and a master’s candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Tutoring was always the job that brought her the greatest joy and challenge, so she decided to make it her full-time job. Check out C\u00e9ilidh\u2019s upcoming GMAT courses<\/a>\u00a0(she scored a 760, so you\u2019re in great hands).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"