Weak in certain CARS topics

[756034]

I have been working through CARs passages, and am quickly noticing a trend. If the passage is about politics, law, economy or anything pertaining to the government, I typically perform poorly. Does anyone have advice regarding how to improve on these specific topics?

Thanks!

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[Lawpy]

Read these passages actively as if the author were telling you a very interesting story. Keep yourself engaged to the author's argument and follow along. Imagine you are talking to the author in person and want to know more on what they want to say.

By reading actively and focusing on the author's argument, you will be able to nail down the main idea very effectively and use that to answer the questions correctly. The topic of the passage wouldn't really matter besides giving you a context on what you're reading. This method of active reading works well for any passage topic.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

It shouldn’t matter to you what the passage is about. You don’t need to know anything about the subject other than what’s in the passage, so you should approach every passage the same. You can even just think of it like a puzzle. You’re looking for clues and keywords to what the author is trying to say in each paragraph and overall. Then answer the questions through that lens.

As @Lawper said, the best way to keep engaged is to read actively. Highlighting or outlining can help with this because it forces you to do something physical while reading. I also suggest taking 5-6 seconds in between passages to look away from the computer screen and not think about anything. This will help you reset and not blur passages together.

 

[iusesharpies]

I am wondering is your problem in understanding the passage or is it the questions? I found that a lot of times with those types of passages the answers can be worded differently than how they are talked about in the passage so even if you understand the passage you might get stuck on an answer that doesn't sound like you expect. Maybe that helps.

 

[TestingSolutions]

While I can appreciate that reading about a topic I'm familiar with is more comfortable, as others have said, you should never use outside knowledge on a passage. Everything you need to do well on the CARS is in the passage and dependent on your reading and reasoning abilities. Is there really a huge difference in your scores?

A few questions/comments:

1) Is there a vocabulary issue here? Maybe some words associated with particular topics are less familiar to you than others? For instance, if it's a political topic, maybe you aren't as familiar with words like aristocracy, plutocracy, kakistocracy...etc

2) You might be psyching yourself out. When you hit a political science passage, you start to think "Oh I never do well at these sorts of passages..." If you can stop that sort of thinking I think it will be really useful.

3) Some companies (shameless self-plug...) label their passages with the passage topic, so you can study with specific topic types. It might be useful for you to give a little extra attention to political science/government/economic passages. Knowing which passages are which helps you with this.

4) I'd recommend spending a little extra time reviewing the problem topic passages after you take them, in particular, focusing on the passage itself. We go through how to do this is in our free CARS guide here on SDN: Day 26 – How to Review a CARS Passage. I think if you work through these sorts of passages slowly, and practice summarizing and re-reading them after you take them, you'll both pick up any vocabulary you're missing as well as become more comfortable with these sorts of passages.
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Best of luck!