Acing the GRE. READING COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS: Strategies and methods.

[MarGS]

Hello everyone!

This post is for the people who are struggling to ace the READING COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS of the GRE.

I think, it will be very useful to share strategies and methods that helped you on the test and during your preparation. Should we read the text first and then the question, or the vise versa? What are the "signal words" we have to concentrate on while reading? How to discern the author position and etc. Some of you may say, that all these strategies are written in the prep materials. That is true. However, having all these things collected here in one single thread would make a lot of good in saving a lot of time!

 It would be also of a great importance to analyze here the examples of the tricky texts, literally, "word by word" and to do the "reading" of them as they must be read in order to answer the questions correctly. 

 

- Reviving the practice of using elements of popular music in classical composition, an approach that had been in hibernation in the United States during the 1960s, composer Philip Glass (born 1937) embraced the ethos of popular music in his compositions. Glass based two symphonies on music by rock musicians David Bowie and Brian Eno, but the symphonies' sound is distinctively his. Popular elements do not appear out of place in Glass's classical music, which from its early days has shared certain harmonies and rhythms with rock music. Yet this use of popular elements has not made Glass a composer of popular music. His music is not a version of popular music packaged to attract classical listeners; it is high art for listeners steeped in rock rather than the classics.-

1. The passage addresses which of the following issues related to Glass's use of popular elements in his classical compositions? 
   1. How it is regarded by listeners who prefer rock to the classics
   2. How it has affected the commercial success of Glass's music
   3. Whether it has contributed to a revival of interest among other composers in using popular elements in their compositions
   4. Whether it has had a detrimental effect on Glass's reputation as a composer of classical music
   5. Whether it has caused certain of Glass's works to be derivative in quality

 

What are your suggestions, dear citizens of the forum, for solving the above one? 

[DC1020]

On this question you have no other option but to read the passage and then go through each lettered item individually and determine whether it is addressed.

The writer is not negative toward Glass so you can scratch D and E.  He is not writing about what rock listeners like, which gets rid of A.  Closely related, he does not address the commercial success of Glass, so you can skip B.  That leaves C, which is directly addressed in the first sentence: "Reviving the practice of using elements of popular music..."

More generally, one question you can ask yourself is, "Would a sophisticated writer who cares about the subject say something like this?"  A, D and E (and arguably B ) are either negative or simplistic and fail that test.

Edited February 12, 2016 by DC1020

[MarGS]

(-)A. How it is regarded by listeners who prefer rock to the classics -  This one is wrong, as there is nothing said about how it was regarded by listeners. - I do cross it out.

(-)B. How it has affected the commercial success of Glass's music - Again, not a line about the commercial success.                                                                                                  

(-)C.Whether it has contributed to a revival of interest among other composers in using popular elements in their compositions....  - This is also wrong, as the author is stressing about "reviving the practice of using elements".

(-)D. Whether it has had a detrimental effect on Glass's reputation as a composer of classical music... -  "His music....it is high art for listeners steeped in rock rather than the classics" So, another wrong answer.

(+)E.Whether it has caused certain of Glass's works to be derivative in quality - We read in the text, that Glass based his two symphonies on music by rock musicians David Bowie and Brian Eno.

So, as the correct answer we have E. 

 

Edited February 12, 2016 by MarGS

[DC1020]

Oops, shows you what I know

[MarGS]

DC1020, I think, that your strategy would best work out with the other type of questions in the RC section. Like this one:

 

Should we really care for the greatest actors of the past could we have them before us? Should we find them too different from our accent of thought, of feeling, of speech, in a thousand minute particulars which are of the essence of all three? Dr. Doran's long and interesting records of the triumphs of Garrick, and other less familiar, but in their day hardly less astonishing, players, do not relieve one of the doubt.(7) Garrick himself, as sometimes happens with people who have been the subject of much anecdote and other conversation, here as elsewhere, bears no very distinct figure. One hardly sees the wood for the trees. On the other hand, the account of Betterton, "perhaps the greatest of English actors," is delightfully fresh. That intimate friend of Dryden, Tillatson, Pope, who executed a copy of the actor's portrait by Kneller which is still extant, was worthy of their friendship; his career brings out the best elements in stage life. The stage in these volumes presents itself indeed not merely as a mirror of life, but as an illustration of the utmost intensity of life, in the fortunes and characters of the players. Ups and downs, generosity, dark fates, the most delicate goodness, have nowhere been more prominent than in the private existence of those devoted to the public mimicry of men and women. Contact with the stage, almost throughout its history, presents itself as a kind of touchstone, to bring out the bizarrerie, the theatrical tricks and contrasts, of the actual world.

 

1. In the expression “One hardly sees the wood for the trees”, the author apparently intends the word trees to be analogous to

A. features of Doran’s language style 
B. details learned from oral sources 
C. personality of a famous actor 
D. detail’s of Garrick’s life 
E. stage triumphs of an astonishing player

2. The doubt referred to in line 7 concerns whether

A. the stage personalities of the past would appeal on a personal level to people like the author 
B. their contemporaries would have understood famous actors 
C. the acting of famous stage personalities would appeal to us today 
D. Garrick was as great as he is portrayed 
E. historical records can reveal personality

3. Information supplied in the passage is sufficient to answer which of the following questions?
(Select ALL answer choices that apply)

A. Who did Doran think was probably the best English actor? 
B. What did Doran think of Garrick? 
C. Would the author give a definite answer to the first question posed in the passage?

[Vince Kotchian GRE Prep]

BTW, the above passage and questions (about Garrick) are not GRE style - as a tutor, I wouldn't suggest practicing with them. Analyze ETS-written verbal questions instead - like the Glass passage.

Also, your justification of Choice E in the Glass passage is missing something - Glass's work is not derivative because, although he based his work on others, the sound is distinctly his.