RC Strategy - Is Writing Notes Necessary?

[HemantR606]

Hi Stacey,

I have gone through several links on the web regarding RC strategy. Almost all of them including the blogs you have written say that we need to take notes after each para.

Unfortunately, I am taking a lot of time (around 20 seconds per para) for taking notes. Taking notes never worked out for me.

I usually read the passage the way you suggest ie., read first para, then read the first sentences or till I understand what the para is going to say and skim through the rest of the passage. Then I go to the questions and answer them just out of memory.

My questions are:

1. Is writing notes really important? We should anyway go back to the original passage to answer questions. So, does taking notes help for reference or is it just a tool to remember better?

2. Am I perceiving taking notes in a wrong way? Because, everyone on the internet can but I am unable to take notes.



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Thanks,
Hemant

[StaceyKoprince]

Not everyone takes notes, no. If you are already happy with your RC performance, then you don't need to change anything.

If you are not already happy with your RC performance, then we need to talk. It may still be that you don't need to take notes, but most people will get better if they are doing so -- in the right way, of course.

I actually don't even like to use the phrase "taking notes" any longer, because people often misconstrue what they should be doing. You aren't taking notes the way you did in school. You're not going to come back in 3 weeks and study from these notes again just before the big test.

Rather, you're trying to outline or map out the major messages and where they're located (by paragraph). The latest edition of our books calls this process making a Passage Map instead of taking notes.

The idea is this: the Map is your guide to know where to go quickly when you have to go back into the passage. You're not writing much down; you're writing just enough to know in which paragraph the major messages, examples, etc, are located. That way, you don't have to hunt around as much: you realize you want to know something about why the new theory is better than the old theory, you glance at your map, that was the first thing you wrote down for P3, so now you know you're going to start scanning from the beginning of paragraph 3.

A good Map will do two things for you:
(1) allow you to answer Main Idea questions (if you're done your job on the readthrough, you shouldn't have to re-read anything in the passage to get this)
(2) allow you to know (quickly!) where to go for detail questions

If the Map contains enough information to answer the detail questions, then you're taking notes like you did in school -- that is to say: too much!

I have a question about this:

Then I go to the questions and answer them just out of memory.

Do you mean you remember where to look in the passage and so you go do that? If so, great - maybe you don't need to make a Map.

Or do you mean you answer based upon what you remember from the passage - so you don't go back to the passage at all? If so, not great. I can't tell you the number of mistakes I've made on RC by doing that (and RC is probably my best area on the test).

[AniS489]

Hi Stacey

I take notes or map the passage mostly because I don't lose the flow while reading and I get the gist easily.But while answering I somehow just don't look at my map.Is it okay?In the scale of 110 I would rate myself 7 in Rc there are some passage where I get everything right and some I end up making many mistakes.
Kindly help.

[StaceyKoprince]

As with many things, that's fine if you're happy with your performance now. It's not fine if you want to get better.

You're not typically using the Map to answer the question, though - you're using it to know where to go back in the passage to re-read some specific detail that you do need to answer. It might be the case that, much of the time, the act of mapping the passage gives you a "mental" map, and so you usually know where to go without having to look at the actual Map.

For those questions that you get wrong, why are you missing them?
Are you not going back to the passage at all and just relying on memory? Are you going back to the wrong place in the passage? Are you going back to the right place, but then mis-reading or not understanding the text? Are you fine with the text but getting sucked into a tempting trap answer?

For the first 2 questions, going back to your Map regularly would help you both to remember that you do need to go back to the passage and to help you find the right place in the passage.

But if that part is fine and your issues are more with comprehension of the text / answers, then no, you probably don't need to go back explicitly to the Map.

Go back and analyze some passages where everything worked and some where it really didn't. What are the differences in how things went / your performance?