Tricks to speeding up CR questions?

[mhalpert]

I have been practicing 5-10 CR questions a day for a few weeks and I am finding that my accuracy rate is very high, even on 700-800 level questions. While I find that these questions are one of my strengths, my concern is that it takes me at least 2-2:30 per question - especially on the more difficult questions. Does anyone have any advice as to how to speed these questions up without of course speeding up my rate of answering RC or SC questions.

Thanks,

Mike

[Ben Ku]

First, spending 2:00 to 2:30 on CR is not unusual because there's quite a bit of reading, and unlike SC, you cannot eliminate answers based on splits and re-splits; you actually have to read through and analyze each answer choice. Expect CR to take about 2 min. This means you should budget RC and SC questions accordingly. If you're taking MUCH longer than 2 minutes, then you should be concerned.

Secondly, much of being able to solve CR questions quickly has to do with PROCESS and PRACTICE. In our classes and in the Strategy Guides, we introduce processes (such as the T-Diagram, and S-W-Slash) that helps process the argument and answer choices in an efficient way. It might seem unnatural and inefficient at first, but they need to be practiced so you can execute them effortlessly. These processes DO work.

Finally, there are many reasons why a person may take a longer time on CR questions. You should talk to your instructor to diagnose what issues specific to you that slow you down on these question types.

Hope that helps.