What does this passage suggest about the topic/the author/the future?

The more difficult the passage is, the more crucial it is that you ask these questions (and even more ques-tions) about anything you don’t understand. Think about a question as a clue to the answer. When you have asked the right questions, you are halfway to the right answer. These are the kinds of questions you will need to ask in order to answer the exam questions correctly. In business school, you will use the same question-ing technique to help you comprehend densely written material (of which you will see plenty). It’s essential that you practice asking and answering these questions. Quickly—what is the main idea of this passage?

Until you become very skilled at asking and answering questions about what you have read, it’s a good idea to actually write questions out for yourself. For one thing, the act of writing helps you remember what questions to ask, especially for kinesthetic and visual learners. If you are an auditory learner, you will want to repeat them aloud as you write.

Mark It Up

Assuming the book belongs to you, get in the habit of highlighting and underlining when you read. When you open your book, pick up your pen, pencil, or highlighter. When you see a main idea, mark it. If you come across an unfamiliar word or a word used in an unfamiliar context, mark it. However, the trick is to be selec-tive. If you are marking too much of the passage, important information and key ideas will not stand out.

You need to practice distinguishing between main and supporting details. (You will learn how in Chapter 5.) You can practice asking questions and marking main ideas and supporting details by going through the sample test passages in this book and in Official Guide for GMAT Review, 10^thEdition. Check yourself by look-ing at the questions about those passages. How well do your ideas match up with the questions about the pas-sages? Check the answers. Were you correct? If not, why not?

On the GMAT CAT, you will write the key words and ideas on your scratch paper. You may want to pre-pare by practicing this technique as you study for the test. Of course, you will also want to practice it with any borrowed books you use, such as library books.

Make Notes

Don’t just take notes; make them. Making notes requires you to think about what you are reading. Asking questions, such as the ones mentioned previously, is one way to make notes. Another kind of note-making involves recording your reactions to what you are reading. For example, you may disagree with an author’s opinion; if so, write down your reaction. Be sure to say why you disagree or agree, or why you are confused.

When you read the kinds of challenging materials you will find on the GMAT exam and in graduate school, it should be more like a conversation between you and the author than an author’s monologue. So what if the author can’t hear you? You can still hold up your end of the conversation. It will be more interesting for you, and you will get more out of what you read.

Make Connections

Another way of interacting with the material you study is to relate it to what you already know. For exam-ple, if you are trying to learn the word demographic, you may know that demo-cracy refers to government run

–S T U D Y S K I L L S–

by the people, while graphic refers to information, written or drawn. Then you can remember that demographic has to do with information about people.

Making connections differentiates remembering from memorizing. In the short run, it may seem easier to just memorize a word or a fact, but unless you understand what you are learning—unless you have con-nected it to what you already know—you are likely to forget it again. Then you will have wasted your study time and failed to improve your test score. Memorized information gets stored in your short-term memory, which means it’s forgotten within a few days or even a few hours. Your long-term memory has to file new information to fit in with your existing information. That means you have to create connections to what you already know.

Find Patterns

Success on the Quantitative section of the GMAT exam does not depend on math skills more advanced than algebra; it depends on how well you use basic math as a logical tool. One way to start practicing math logic is to look for patterns in the questions on the practice tests you take. As you look for patterns, you will see that the same kinds of questions appear in different guises. You may realize, for example, that you will be asked about the properties of triangles or about solving inequalities. Then you can practice the kinds of questions you have had difficulty with and learn to master them.

Math is easily learned when you find patterns and make connections that are meaningful for yourself.

When you encounter the same type of question on the GMAT exam, you will know how to tackle it and find the right answer.

Break It Up

Just as you do not train to run a marathon by waiting until the last minute and then running twenty miles a day for five days before the race, you cannot effectively prepare for the GMAT exam by waiting until the last minute to study. Your brain works best when you give it a relatively small chunk of information, let it rest and process, and then give it another small chunk.

When you are studying the 24 Rules for Grammar and Style in Chapter 7, for example, don’t try to mem-orize the whole list at once. The most efficient way to learn these rules is to break your list into several smaller lists of five or six rules each and learn one group of rules before tackling the next. Making some kind of con-nection among the rules in each list will help you remember them. For example, you can group rules about sentence structure together or rules about agreement and consistency. If you decide to review vocabulary, learn words in small chunks, preferably groups of four or five words. Can you relate those five words in some way? If not, can you make up an amusing sentence that uses all five words? Doing this kind of creative work is more fun than rote memorization, and it is easier to learn when you are actively engaged with the mate-rial you are studying.

Flashcards are a great study aid for the GMAT exam. The act of writing on the cards engages your kinesthetic learning ability. Seeing the cards uses your visual learning, and reading the cards aloud sets up auditory learning. Flashcards are also extremely portable and flexible in the ways they can be used and help

Five Times to Use Flashcards