Reading Comprehension

[DDS-King]

I am writing my DAT in two weeks and I cannot seem to do well on the reading comprehension portion of the exam. I have purchased DAT Bootcamp and Qvault RC.

First three tests on BC:

1) 19 (30/50)
2) 18 (26/50)
3) 17 (26/50)

Qvault

1) 19 (33/50)

I feel that as I am going these exams, my first passage is always my best, and then I start to decline in the second and third passages. I always run out of time and find myself with 5 minutes left and only 40/50 questions answered and still need to read more of the passage.

I find that Search and Destroy only works for a few questions in DAT Bootcamp and there is a lot of tone questions/correct statement questions that are difficult to answer without reading the entire passage thoroughly.

I am really lost in this section and don't know how to do well. I've tried reading the entire passage, S&D, and I've tried BYU4you's RC strategy and none seem to work. I enjoy reading a lot and I am aiming to hit at least a 20 on this section. The passages are not difficult but the timing is what gets me. If anyone has any suggestions for my next two weeks I'd appreciate it.

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[zerahawk]

How fast are you reading each passage? How fast does it take you to do a question afterwards? to search through passage?

 

[rach7290]

I gave myself 20 minutes for each cession. My strategy was I would read the first question, then read the passage until I found the answer to that question. I would answer it and move on to the second question. If I hadn't already gotten to that question in reading for the first question, I would continue reading until I got to that answer. As I read, I would write down for some paragraphs just one word about the overall point of the paragraph with the paragraph number. These key words let me quickly return to the right paragraph when I got to a question later.

Hopefully this makes sense! Also, on the real DAT, the question is above the passage so you don't have to do as much scrolling on the real thing!

 

[enamel88]

how about for the questions where each a.b.c.d. etc has facts from different parts of the paragraph? or is 1 question usually within the same paragraph? Any recommednations to tackle those kind of problems?

 

[Hrizvi1]

Hi, I just took my real DAT yesterday. During the entire section, I had maybe 2 or three tone/correct statement questions. I did run out of time but that's cuz I didn't prepare for the RC at all. But almost every question was search and destroy. Never read the entire passage lol you'll always run out of time... unless you're a super fast reader.

 

[bodmon]

im not the fastest reader, but i've ended up reading the entire passage in a few of my practice tests. I'd answer questions as I read along, but I find that if i take my time to try to absorb some of the content in the passage, the questions were a lot faster for me. Once I see keywords from a question in the paragraph I'm reading, I'd always make sure to read the ENTIRE paragraph before I went back to the question. There are a lot of 'distractors' in the answer choices that I would have gotten wrong otherwise.

 

[BYU4you]

Honestly just practice practice practice.
Qvault gives you ten practice test and go through those and it will help!
Practice will turn into a strategy that works for you.

Those scores are actually pretty good as I found BC much harder myself.

 

[DAT Destroyer]

Honestly just practice practice practice.
Qvault gives you ten practice test and go through those and it will help!
Practice will turn into a strategy that works for you.

Those scores are actually pretty good as I found BC much harder myself.

Excellent advice!