I have hear that Erica Meltzer’s grammar guide is the gold-standard, but what about her critical reading guide?
Has anyone achieved drastic improvement by using it?
It is also very very good although personally I don’t like the format/layout/font of the book.
Is it a lot of material layed out densely?
Her critical reading guide is excellent, but yes, it’s dense and verbose, and probably not for everyone. She’s very methodical about her explanations, and those who don’t want/need to have every dot connected for them may grow bored or irritated. It’s an excellent resource, though, imo.
If it was up to me, I would cut up apart the book and totally reorganize it.
You can do it too.
There is Sentence Completion and Vocabulary part that’s independent and very helpful.
For the Passage Reading part (from about Chapter 4) for each chapter,
I would go straight to the chapter end and do half of excercises and read answer explanations, and then go back to the chapter content and skim it, then go back to do the rest of exercises and then do listed Official Guide (Blue Book) questions for that chapter (Main idea, Literal Comprehension, Rhetorical Devices, Tones, etc.) That should speed up working the book.
Her Blue Book question type categorization is very helpful.
@payn4ward - that’s an excellent approach to her book. Well done.