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Reading comprehension skill builder

GRE, GMAT, TOEFL, IELTS

Reading Comprehension

Concept Growth Lab

Reading ability is a cognitive disposition acquired over years of learning and practice – both conscious and unconscious. Reading ability depends, to a greater extent, on readability – the attribute of the reading material.

You should not assume that your reading ability is poor simply by assessing the speed with which you have read, say a passage on philosophy. Even if you have previous reading in philosophy, you require more time to read a philosophy passage owing not only to the abstraction involved but also to the implicit meaning underlying such text than read a passage on a concrete readable text.

At the same time you should realize that there are certain cognitive behaviours that are peculiar to efficient readers, 

  • concentration
  • mental translation as one navigates through the passage
  • summation
  • connecting ideas
  • inferring
  • judging the material.

While reading a passage

  • make a mental map
  • what each of the paragraphs deals with, 
  • the author’s intent… 
  • Read a passage and form a mental summary

This exercise serves two purposes:

  1. Build comprehension and speed by getting started with easier and shorter passages.
  2. Prepare you for verbal questions in which you are required to choose the summary of a short paragraph.

To begin do this small exercise

Reading Comprehension skill builder 1 - Summary Writing

Write the summary

 

1 / 5

Write summary

The problem is the problem of success itself. Earlier Brazil was a food deficit country, now it is a food surplus one. With surplus production of food have come the problems of storage and in turn the problem of capital being tied up in food grains. The solution that everybody seems to talk about is diversification - into fruits, flowers, fisheries and animal husbandry. This, of course, is easier said than done. First, the farmer has to be convinced of the need to market his produce, which cannot be done without providing him infrastructural support - roads and cold chain. Then there must be someone to do the marketing. After all, even the most progressive farmer has to be assured of a market and of returns on his investment. Of course physical infrastructure is not everything. Knowledge infrastructure - how to deal with perishable produce and where to take it - is also important.

2 / 5

Write summary

Biotechnology was born in 1943 when a US researcher discovered that genetic information is transcribed into a complementary DNA chain. Made of structural molecules, it translates into proteins, and controls all biochemical routes. From this point on, this science has developed technologies which have given rise to various applications for the pharmaceutical and agricultural sectors. Broadly there are three areas ofapplication of biotechnology. These are healthcare biotechnology products, animal healthcare products, and vaccines. The biotechnology market is expected to shoot up by at least ten times over the next two to three years. That should give us an indication about the size of the market and its potential.

3 / 5

Write summary

 There is some evidence to suggest that Neanderthals were cannibalistic.  They had brains as large as modern man and developed a culture of their own that included the burying of their dead with a religious ceremonial aspect attached to their custom.  They made jewellery like ornaments that demonstrate a sense of creativity and aestheticism.  However in a recent report, evidence gathered shows that Neanderthals may have slaughtered some of their numbers and actually butchered them for the meat.

4 / 5

Write summary

 In modern retail, food consumption is skewed more toward packaged and value-added products.  This is providing the much needed boost to value creation in agro-products, leading to income generation and further consumption in smaller towns and semi-urban centres.  Being present in the consumption space, retailers will not only benefit from this virtuous cycle of consumption and development, but also can act as a catalyst in driving it. Retailing is a localised business and only retailers who have developed an understanding of the different needs of the Indian consumer will have an edge in making a superior emotional connection with every section of the Indian consumer base.

5 / 5

Write summary

Revenue management(RM) was first encouraged in the US air-line industry as a tactic to deal with new low-cost competitors and fierce pricing wars that resulted from deregulation.  Now, RM is an essential business practice at all surviving airlines, and RM techniques have been used successfully.  RM is the art and science of predicting relative customer demand at the micro market level and optimising the price and availability of products.

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