Quick CARS advice/tricks for reasoning beyond the text/main idea questions?

[doctadank]

I'm at the stage where I've gotten to understand the basics of CARS and how to answer the questions referring to specific parts of the passage. However, I will still frequently miss the majority of questions referring to the main idea of a section and just have the hardest time finding these. Has anyone had a similar experience and what worked for you?

I'm not planning on letting this section get the best of me

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[Neuroscifan]

I personally paused for about 5 seconds after each paragraph and wrote down a few words that helped me remember the main point of the paragraph. Sort of the golden nugget the author wanted me to take away. Then after reading, I took about 10 seconds to look over each paragraph takeaway and synthesize a main idea based on that.

It took tons of practice and repetition to get fast enough at reading and synthesizing and writing concisely to get to that point. I have seen a lot of people have success doing the same thing, but just highlighting a phrase or sentence that was an approximation of the main takeaway.

This helps you get the gist of each paragraph much better, as well as usually the main arguments of the passage. Once I was able to do that, I very seldom struggled with those types of questions.

 

[doctadank]

I personally paused for about 5 seconds after each paragraph and wrote down a few words that helped me remember the main point of the paragraph. Sort of the golden nugget the author wanted me to take away. Then after reading, I took about 10 seconds to look over each paragraph takeaway and synthesize a main idea based on that.

It took tons of practice and repetition to get fast enough at reading and synthesizing and writing concisely to get to that point. I have seen a lot of people have success doing the same thing, but just highlighting a phrase or sentence that was an approximation of the main takeaway.

This helps you get the gist of each paragraph much better, as well as usually the main arguments of the passage. Once I was able to do that, I very seldom struggled with those types of questions.

I'll try it out, thanks! What was your timing for passages looking like? I can read decently fast but my retention for details is awful so I need to highlight. Works pretty well honestly, hopefully doing this selectively for the harder passages will fix my troubles with these kind of questions. This is like the final hurdle I need to overcome to boost my score so I appreciate it! At a 127 sub score for reference, want to get to a 130 but testing in about a week so we'll see how that goes lol

 

[Neuroscifan]

I was able to get down to consistently below 4 minutes to read the passage and move on to the questions.

 

[doctadank]

I was able to get down to consistently below 4 minutes to read the passage and move on to the questions.

Holy that's so fast if you're able to do the summary within that time too. I can do 4 but that's when I highlight and don't focus on arguments. Maybe I'll try out the strategy and experiment with pacing and see if it's a fit for me