Staying engaged and interested in every passage you read, regardless of the topic, is a major key to success in GRE RC. If your mind is wandering or you give in to boredom, guess what you’re not doing? You’re not focusing on overall meaning. You’re not noticing key relationships, conclusions reached, or differing perspectives. You’re not positioning yourself to understand the flow of the passage and thus have a sense of where in the passage different things are discussed.

So, is it any wonder that test-takers who lose focus because of boredom struggle to answer questions about the passage? Is it any wonder that they take longer to find the details they need to answer questions?

Comprehending what we read requires staying alert, aware, engaged, and interested — there is scientific evidence establishing this truth. For example, a 2020 study of 306 students learning English as a foreign language found that boredom while reading had a “significant but negative” relationship with reading comprehension performance. To assess the relationship, researchers asked the students to complete questionnaires and a reading comprehension test. When students felt bored while reading, their test performance worsened. Several previous studies have produced similar findings.

But you know what else the 2020 study found? Strategies for coping with boredom while reading helped! In other words, when the students implemented such strategies, their boredom was reduced and their reading comprehension performance improved.

Warmest regards,

Scott