👋 Hello, my friends at GRE Prep Club!

When taking the GRE, we have on average 1.5 minutes to answer each question in the Verbal section. As a result, many GRE students practice Reading Comprehension by setting a timer and giving themselves around 1.5 minutes for each question. However, that strategy is not great for maximizing the results of your GRE Reading Comprehension practice. In fact, the use of that strategy often keeps GRE students from mastering RC, and here’s why.

During your GRE prep, you aren’t taking the GRE. Rather, you’re training for it, and 1.5 minutes per question simply isn’t enough time to learn how to answer RC questions correctly.

When you’re practicing GRE RC, the goal is learning to read the passages in the optimal way, find information in the passages, analyze questions choice by choice, avoid traps, and arrive at correct answers. Sure, once you’ve prepared for a while, you’ll be able to do all these things in a minute or two per question. However, when you’re studying for the GRE, they will be new to you. So, doing them well will take much more time per question.

Learning to do these things well is essential for your GRE RC success. So, when practicing, you should give yourself enough time to do these things well and arrive at correct answers, even if enough time is 10 minutes or more on one question. In other words, start off doing GRE Reading Comprehension practice problems untimed, focusing on accuracy and skill development. Speed will come with skill.
Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep