Help to do well on Reading Comprehension for poor test-taker

Parents Forum
1

<p>I posted this in the Grad school thread but no response so I'm posting here.</p>

<p>I am a good student and very poor standardized test taker. I do extremely poorly on reading comprehension. I took the SAT and did the best I could and practiced reading from old exams and still did very poorly.</p>

<p>For my major I need to take the GRE which I understand is revised this year but still contains lots of reading comprehension. I need to do well in order to get into extremely competitive grad schools for my major.</p>

<p>Any ideas or suggestions are very much appreciated. Also if anyone knows the specifics of the new GRE I would appreciate hearing anything as well.</p>

<p>Thanks SO much!!</p>

2

<p>What kind of grad school? Are you certain that you need to go in order to pursue the career path you want?</p>

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<p>If you google “Xiggi SAT prep” you will get links to one very good do-it-yourself program. Start there.</p>

4

<p>Away2school- sse a professional tutor who can draw your attention to the things you are missing. Use someone with strong credentials including a university degree or Orton Gillingham training if Engish is your first language; otherwise, if English is not yor first lanagague use a trained ESL tutor.</p>

5

<p>Definitely study GRE vocabulary words. There are some free apps that you can download onto a smart phone that you can use to study (if you have a smart phone, of course)-- my son did that so that he would have something to study while he was riding the bus. He was using the app put out by Kaplan and he said that he saw at least 4 vocabulary words show up on the GRE test. My son also checked out review materials from the library and really practiced extensively taking the exam - he ended up acing the test, so whatever he did worked.</p>

6

<p>No matter how many times I go over reading comprehension questions I don’t get it. I’m not sure if I don’t understand the main points of the reading or I don’t know what the question is asking.</p>

7

<p>So if even in practice at home, with lots of time, you read a question and still “don’t get it” there may be another problem. </p>

<p>Most of the texts in the exams come stright from books (they are not modified in some way to tric the student). If you doubt what I am saying, just get one of the official ACT and SAT practice books, google the title/reference of the passage, and you will be able to find the original text. I imagine you could do the same with the GRE.</p>

<p>This then lives a question. When you read a real book or article, do you “get it”?</p>

8

<p>Since you “don’t get it”, you may want to ask at your school’s counseling center about screening for processing disorders. Think “dyslexia lite”. If you have formal documentation of this, you can ask about testing accommodations.</p>