Erika here with PrepScholar GMAT in our GMAT time management made simple
video we talked about varying how much time you spend on a question and how you
approach it based on what kind of question it is
today we're going to dig into what that means by breaking down the reading
comprehension question types on the GMAT as always if you like this video please
hit the button to subscribe and feel free to head over to our blog for even
more great GMAT content links are in the description so we can break down GMAT
reading comprehension into quick and not so quick questions the quick questions
are ones we should be able to answer based on our initial skim of the passage
we often think of them as general questions the first type of general
question is the main idea question now main idea questions take two distinct
forms one is asking about the purpose of the passage in other words what is the
goal of the passage what is it trying to do is it to argue something to compare
something to explain something etc these questions often feature language like
primary purpose or primarily concerned with in the question stem as well as
very vague language in the correct answer choices for example generally
accepted position possible explanation and puzzling finding could refer to
pretty much anything it's up to us to figure out how they apply to the passage
the other form of main idea questions deal more directly with the topic of the
passage so rather than why is the passage written these questions ask what
the passage is about now these questions are somewhat easier because they're more
specific to the passage they use the language from the text to explicitly
state what the passage is about we can recognize these questions because they
use phrases like main point in the question stem and have more precise
language in the answer choices the second type of general question is the
logical structure question logical structure questions ask about you
guessed it the structure of the passage you're required to figure out what role
a certain element of the passage plays in the passage as a whole in other words
what does this part of the passage do now some of these
are pretty easy to recognize they ask why the author does something in the
passage or why the author includes some passage element other logical structure
questions barrow language from those purpose questions but instead apply it
to individual paragraphs and sentences asking what purpose or what role does
this passage element serve in the passage as a whole the final type of
general question is the perspective question now these are often called the
style and tone question these questions ask you to find the perspective or the
tone of someone from the passage now oftentimes this someone is the author of
the passage however these questions also often ask about people discussed in the
passage these questions can be expressed in a variety of ways but some common
phrasings are asking which answer someone in the passage would agree or
disagree with what someone's attitude or point of view is or what someone
believes so again these three types of general questions are meant to be quick
we want to be able to answer them after our initial skim with little-to-no
hunting through the passage this means that as we do our initial skim we should
focus on trying to figure out the main idea
so both purpose and topic the logical structure and the perspective showcased
in the passage now luckily for us these ideas are often most clearly expressed
in introduction and conclusion paragraphs introduction and conclusion
sentences and sentences with obvious transition keywords which is exactly
what we should be focusing on during an initial skim so if we've done a good job
with our skim when we run into one of these general questions we should
already have a good prediction for what the correct answer will be onto our not
so quick questions not so quick questions fall into two groups these are
specific questions and extrapolation questions
the most common kind of specific question is a supporting idea question
and these are often also called a detail question unlike main idea
questions which are dealt with on the passage level supporting idea questions
often focus on single sentences or even pieces of single sentences
with these questions we'll often get some sort of reference for where to look like
a specific paragraph or specific sentence or a piece of highlighted text
but sometimes we don't sometimes on supporting idea questions
we're completely out of luck and need to hunt through the entire passage to find
the answer however usually we can skim the passage for words from the question
or use our knowledge of the passage structure to zero in on the part of the
passage most related to the question we'll also notice that these questions
use very matter-of-fact language according to the passage the author
states etc this language is critical to recognize as we compare these to
extrapolation questions extrapolation questions ask us to take what's in the
text and then extrapolate it beyond the text so they ask us to find an answer
that isn't actually in the passage pretty tricky now the first type of
extrapolation question is the inference question inference questions ask us to
take what's in the text and read just between the lines what is the passage
saying not directly but that still must be true based on what it is saying
directly you'll note that many of these questions are just about as specific as
supporting idea questions however we'll notice that they don't use the same
matter-of-fact language instead they ask about what the passage infers or
suggests or they refer to underlying assumptions however be careful with
these while all inference questions will have inference language not all
questions with inference language are inference questions like we saw earlier
perspective questions often use words like suggest and infer so if you see
inference language don't immediately assume you're going to need to do extra
work we might have already pinned down the answer in our initial skin the
second type of extrapolation questions are application questions while
inference questions asks us to go about a half a step beyond the text
application questions ask us to leap beyond the text to take the information
in the passage and apply it to a new situation these questions can be
intimidating because they require a really complete understanding of the
passage like a general question does then ask
us to push past the bounds of the passage so it's kind of a double whammy
we can identify these questions with words like application obviously the
concept of strengthening weakening or providing support for an argument or
conclusion and the phrase if true now because specific questions are so well
specific and extrapolation questions require us to find answers that aren't
in the passage these questions often take more time and effort to answer than
general questions do this means one that we should save more time for them than
we do for general questions and two that we shouldn't be caught up in these ideas
when we're skimming the passage initially we don't know which details
we'll be asked to recall or which elements of the passage we'll be expected
to apply or make inferences from so getting too worked up about them early
on is a waste of time having a good feel for the main idea structure and
perspectives of the passage from a solid initial skim will help us much more with
answering these questions than doing an in-depth analysis up top and those are
the question types that show up on GMAT reading comprehension if you have any
questions about what we talked about today or suggestions for future videos please
leave a comment below thanks for watching and happy reading comprehension
studies