![\"Manhattan](\"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2018\/01\/gmatprep-reading-comprehension-history-passage-part-6-stacey-koprince.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/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!\u00a0<\/i><\/b>Check out our upcoming courses here<\/i><\/b><\/a>.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n We\u2019re done! Phew! That was a complicated history passage<\/a> and those questions got pretty tricky at times. (If you\u2019re just joining us for the first time now, follow that link back to part 1 of the series and work your way back here.)<\/span><\/p>\n How did you do? More importantly, how can you get <\/span>better<\/span><\/i>? The whole point of studying is not to see what percentage of things you get right the first time. The main point is to figure out how you can perform better when you see something new (but similar) on the real test.<\/span><\/p>\n So in the final installment of the series, we\u2019re going to talk about how to Review Your Work<\/strong>\u00a0on a history passage in order to improve your GMAT prowess. (And, yes, Review Your Work gets capital letters because it\u2019s such a crucial part of the study process. <\/span>\u263a<\/span> If you leave this part out, then you are not maximizing your learning potential.)<\/span><\/p>\n Think about what you know about the main messages of the history passage\u2014now that you\u2019ve actually had to dig in and answer all of those questions. How does it compare to what you understood about the passage before you started?<\/span><\/p>\n Do expect to know or understand more now. You did, after all, answer five questions. But did you have any disconnects or misunderstandings on the main picture? Did you think a paragraph was doing one thing when it was actually doing another? Or did you miss any of the main twists and turns entirely?<\/span><\/p>\n And let\u2019s get even more particular. Did you not know certain words or expressions in the passage? If you ran across anything that didn\u2019t look familiar, now is the time to look it up and learn it.<\/span><\/p>\n Now, look back over your Map. Here\u2019s mine.<\/span><\/p>\n If you could do this all over again for the first time, how would you change your Map to make it better?<\/span><\/p>\n For instance, I\u2019ve noticed that a lot of students initially miss the fact that, in the third paragraph, the author does acknowledge that Summers may have some valid grounds for her criticism. Their Map, then, might say only that the author agrees with #2 (the editors), with the implication that FN\u2019s achievements were great and her reputation completely deserved.<\/span><\/p>\n But the author does, in fact, acknowledge that Summers may have a point (<\/span>although Nightingale may not have achieved all of her goals during the Crimean War<\/span><\/i>), even as the author asserts that FN generally does deserve her reputation. So if you didn\u2019t already have something in your Map that looks like the last line for paragraph 3 in mine, then you\u2019d want to rewrite your notes to include that line.<\/span><\/p>\n Yes, I actually want you to rewrite your Map! Don\u2019t just tell yourself that you should have noticed XYZ. On a Quant problem, you wouldn\u2019t just say, \u201cOh, I messed up the math on that\u2014don\u2019t do that next time.\u201d You\u2019d try the math again! Ditto here: Practice making your Map what you want it to be next time.<\/span><\/p>\n Alternatively, maybe you wrote down too much. What if you\u2019d tried to enumerate every one of those examples in your Map? During your review, you might realize that that was overkill. The passage is always in front of you. In this case, it\u2019s also pretty well-defined: P1 = Summers, P2 = editors, P3 = author. So you can go back to re-read the examples used by each person\/group whenever you want. Rewrite your Map to show yourself what you would want the Map to look like the next time you see a similar passage structure.<\/span><\/p>\n Along with the above, review your Simple Story. You generally won\u2019t write this down\u2014it\u2019s just your mental narrative of the flow of the history passage. Was the flow accurate? Did your narrative miss anything important? Did it get too bogged down in the weeds at any point? <\/span><\/p>\n Think about your general performance on this and prior RCs, too. Do you tend to be too high-level with the Simple Story and miss important twists? Do you include so much technical detail that it takes a long time to tell yourself the story?<\/span><\/p>\n Make it better! Re-state the Simple Story to yourself in whatever way you would want to articulate it next time you see something similar.<\/span><\/p>\n Not all passages will include general questions, but when they do, that\u2019s where you want to start. If you\u2019ve done a good job on the Map and Simple Story, then you have a much better shot at answering any main idea questions correctly.<\/span><\/p>\n The most common general type is the Primary Purpose (aka main idea)\u2014it literally asks what the primary purpose of the passage is. If you missed this problem, or struggled with it, then the issue may be in your fundamental understanding of the history passage itself.<\/span><\/p>\n In this case, be extra-thorough in your review of your Map and Simple Story. If you can figure out what went wrong there, then you may also fix whatever problem you were having with the main idea question, too.<\/span><\/p>\n Finally, analyze the question in the same way that we did in this series. Did you properly identify the question type? Did you know what you were supposed to do with that type of question? Were you able to spot and avoid trap answers or did you fall into a trap? Why? How can you avoid that same type of trap next time?<\/span><\/p>\n The \u201cwhy\u201d and \u201chow\u201d questions are the most important ones. Any time you miss something or make any kind of mistake, don\u2019t be mad. Think, \u201cI\u2019m about to get better!\u201d Then ask yourself, \u201cWhy did I make this mistake?\u201d and \u201cHow will I avoid making this same kind of mistake next time? What do I need to change about my process or my thinking to avoid that type of mistake?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In the Nightingale history passage, the third question was the Primary Purpose question (<\/span>The passage is primarily concerned with evaluating<\/span><\/i>).<\/span><\/p>\n The passage also includes another general type: the Paragraph question. These types ask you to describe the role that a certain paragraph plays in the overall passage. In this passage, the first question was a Paragraph question (<\/span>In the last paragraph, the author is primarily concerned with<\/span><\/i>).<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019ll typically have at least two specific questions per passage\u2014sometimes three or all four. In this history passage, we had three specific questions: a Detail question, an Inference question, and a hybrid general\/specific question.<\/span><\/p>\n Analyze the specific questions in the same way as the general ones, with one addition: Were you able to find the right part of the detail in the passage to review? Did you understand that material when you reviewed it?<\/span><\/p>\n And, in the end, get yourself back to the \u201cWhy?\u201d and the \u201cHow?\u201d If you didn\u2019t understand the material when you reviewed it, you might realize that it was because the passage used an expression that you misinterpreted\u2014and you can learn how to interpret that expression properly for next time. Or perhaps you didn\u2019t look at the right part of the passage\u2014but you realize now that certain phrasing in the question stem could have pointed you to the right part. <\/span><\/p>\n Or perhaps you still don\u2019t understand the material when you review it again\u2014even when you read the explanation. In that case, the solution may be to guess and move on before you use up too much precious time and mental energy. How do you know to make that decision? You may need to do so on the real test, too, so show yourself what that feels like.<\/span><\/p>\n Sadly, you can\u2019t remember every last thing that you study. There\u2019s just too much. So you\u2019re going to have to prioritize. Look back over your review of the passage and think about which takeaways are the most universal\u2014that is, the ones that are most likely to apply to the greatest number of unknown future passages and questions you might see on the real test.<\/span><\/p>\n Encode these two Big Takeaways in some kind of Big Takeaway log that you are keeping in a notebook, on flash cards, or in a file on your computer.<\/span><\/p>\n It there\u2019s only one Big Takeaway, don\u2019t force yourself to come up with two. You can leave it at one. And if there are really three Big Takeaways this time, and you just can\u2019t decide how to cut one, then you can leave it at three\u2014as long as you aren\u2019t always leaving it at three. Deal? <\/span>\u263a<\/span><\/p>\n \u2026knowing that you just got a little bit better at the GMAT. Yay!\u00a0?<\/span><\/p>\n Can\u2019t get enough of Stacey\u2019s GMAT mastery? Attend the first session of one of\u00a0her upcoming GMAT courses<\/a>\u00a0absolutely free, no strings attached. Seriously.<\/strong><\/em><\/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!\u00a0Check out our upcoming courses here. We\u2019re done! Phew! That was a complicated history passage and those questions got pretty tricky at times. (If you\u2019re just joining us for the first time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873,929,874,52871,930,2,25,10],"tags":[53186,53178],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-current-studiers","category-gmat-prep","category-gmat-resources","category-gmat-strategies","category-gmat-study-guide","category-how-to-study","category-reading-comprehension","category-verbal-on-gmat","tag-gmatprep-reading-comprehension","tag-history-passage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15042","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15042"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15067,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15042\/revisions\/15067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15042"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nRewrite Your Map<\/b><\/h4>\n
![\"Manhattan](\"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2017\/11\/sk-416-image-1.png\")
<\/p>\nReview Your Simple Story<\/b><\/h4>\n
Review the General Question(s)<\/b><\/h4>\n
Review the Specific Question(s)<\/b><\/h4>\n
Articulate Two (Yes, Only Two!) Big Takeaways<\/b><\/h4>\n
Skip Off into the Sunset\u2026<\/b><\/h4>\n
\n
\n![\"stacey-koprince\"](\"https:\/\/cdn2.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2015\/06\/stacey-koprince-150x150.png\")
<\/a>Stacey Koprince<\/a>\u00a0is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Montreal, Canada and Los Angeles, California.<\/strong>\u00a0Stacey has been teaching the GMAT, GRE, and LSAT \u00a0for more than 15 years and is one of the most well-known instructors in the industry. Stacey loves to teach and is absolutely fascinated by standardized tests.\u00a0Check out Stacey\u2019s upcoming GMAT courses here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"