Can't decide on RC strategy

[OSU22]

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Hey guys, I have the DAT coming up in a week and I can't decide on what reading comprehension strategy to use. I've taken the DAT once already and I got a 20 on the RC by using Kaplan's method of making a road map by writing down the topic and keywords of each paragraph. It seems like it takes too much time to write all that down tho. I can't really remember, but I think I ran out of time on the DAT and had to guess on 2 or 3 questions at the end, and I am definitely running out of time on the achiever practice tests. The other strategy I have used is to just read the entire first and second paragraph and the first sentence of every other paragraph and then just go to the questions and look for the answers. I obviously get through the passage much quicker this way, but I don't know if its better or not since its hard to judge with how difficult/long the achiever RC section is.

How do you guys approach it? Part of me thinks I should do it the Kaplan way since I got a 20 in the past using it, but I just worry I did that good by getting lucky and getting easy passages.

 

[OSU22]

Bump

 

[erk005]

From my personal experience.

Outline (Kaplan) method: RC=16

Search and destroy: RC=19

 

[bustahfoo]

I found reading the entire passage first makes answering the questions much easier, especially since there are more tone questions on the actual DAT. I got a 25 on the RC on the real DAT (check out my breakdown). I didn't have a problem with the time constraint, I spent about 20 minutes or less on each passage. All of these various "methods" seem to be cheap shortcuts, and using them I never felt entirely comfortable with my answers which makes me hesitate and slows me down. The RC section is meant to test your ability to read and understand scientific writing which you will be reading quite a bit in dental school. I don't think it'll be much help to you if all you can do is "search" and "destroy" terms. I say read the entire passage quickly first. You don't have to understand everything you read, just have a mental roadmap of various topics. As you answer the questions, your mental road map of the passage will become more clear and you will be answering later questions faster and faster.

 

[Vicviper]

Try my method, it's worked great for me, and many others as well:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=615852

And SnD is the way to go for most people on the RC section. Granted, if I were you, and I got a 20 doing one method, I would just stick with that and try for another 20, that's a great score. And sure, SnD isn't really how you'd read anything, and if you were reading for understanding, you clearly wouldn't use SnD, but in the RC section you're actually not reading for understanding, you're reading to answer questions - and as good as it would be to be able to improve your reading skills when prepping for the RC section to a point where you could just read through it once and answer the questions, most people can't develop that in the short time before taking the DAT.

 

[mrduckyquacks]

I agree with Vicviper, if you already scored a 20 using Kaplan's method I would just stick with that.

Here's my S&D strategy (scored a 23):

Usually the first two questions for each passage were tone/inference questions so I would immediately skip those. I would quickly skim through the paragraphs looking for keywords from the question. I remember the first question took me 5 minutes to answer, so it's easy to start panicing if you can't find the answer right away. I stuck with it though, and after a few questions I had a mental outline from skimming the passage where I could quickly locate the relevant paragraph to a specific question. It just takes some time to form the outline by skimming, but you start to get a feel for the passage after a while. After I finished with all the questions I would immediately go back and answer the tone questions for that passage before moving on. I ended up finishing with 5 minutes left (I was always running out of time on achiever RC, they are much harder than the real test)