Can't Tell If I'm Learning Useful Stuff or Just how Kaplan Does it

[iamdanthemanstan]

Going though the Reading Comprehension questions in this new Kaplan book I can't tell for some of the stuff if the advice they are offering is actually good advice or just the way they like to do it. For example any they ask about the "primary purpose" or "main idea" they are looking for a fairly general answer even if they have a more specific answer listed. Also there have been a bunch of questions that relied on the difference between a general "topic" and a specific "scope" where if the passage was about symbolism in Moby-Dick they would say the topic is Moby-Dick and the scope is the symbolism in Moby-Dick. I can't tell if this is actually what they want on the GRE of just what how Kaplan likes to make the questions.

[IOPsych3927]

I haven't taken the GRE yet (I take it on Wednesday), but I can answer your question based on what I've seen in ETS practice tests.

I have seen several ETS questions that specifically ask about the author's "primary purpose" in a passage, which is why Kaplan wants you to get familiar with identifying it. I have never seen an ETS question that explicitly asks you to identify a "scope." However, I have seen deceptively misleading answer options that are outside of the scope of the passage. Kaplan wants you to know the passage's scope so you can quickly eliminate any misleading answer options that are outside of it.

On to your bigger question.. I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about comparing/contrasting a scope versus a topic. At least from what I've seen, I'm not sure ETS ever requires you to do that. But on the whole, it is good to get familiar with both of the concepts.