If you reach the hard section on the GRE verbal, you may see a long, dense science passage. You will definitely see a dense science passage. For many, science passages can be the bane of their test prep experience. Here are a few strategies to help you cope.
1. Remember the Big Picture
The key to success on any reading passage is, upon finishing the passage, knowing what you’ve just read. While this might sound simple, you should be able to paraphrase what you just read in such a way that an intelligent 6th grade student should be able to understand you.
2. Understanding Structure
Science passages are oftentimes about competing theories. A scientist comes up with a theory to account for evidence. Yet, that theory is found wanting by another scientist, who interprets the evidence in a different way. Sometimes, there is a third theorist, and, sometimes, the author of the passage has his or her own theory to offer up (which he or she believes is an improvement over the other theories).
3. Embrace the Weird, Italicized Words
Technical words from science abound in this kind of passage, and are often italicized. If the italics do not intimidate you, the word’s polysyllabic nature will: phytoplankton, oligonucleotide, phosphodiesterase… you get the picture.
These terms, however, are important to the passage. They usually regard some aspect of the different theories/ideas being bandied about the passage.
4. Don’t Sink into the Swamp
Just as there are tough terms, there are tough parts of the passage. Here, the dense language becomes even denser, the ideas even more abstract. Do not get “bogged down” in this part of the passage. Instead, understand how a sentence functions in the passage. Only return to this part of the passage if it is necessary to answering a question correctly.
Again, your main goal on first reading is to get the big picture, not to sink into the swamp of polysyllabic terms and the minutiae of arcane theories.
5. Remember the Geography of the Passage
Just as it is important to understand how the “swampy” parts of the passage function in the passage, it is important that you have a sense of how the different parts of the passage and paragraphs relate to each other.
Takeaway
The key to learning these strategies is applying them. In this post, I actually take a look at a hard, dense science passage and organize the discussion of that passage along the five strategies above.
Hi,
I am struggling with science reading kindly suggest me sources to read science material especially astronomy, geography or environmental science related?
Hi Meroona,
Check out Scientific American, Nature and National Geographic for great science reading practice 🙂 You can also find open-source articles on these topics by searching Google Scholar–it doesn’t matter if the article is old/outdated, as long as it challenges you!
Do you have recommended reading materials for science topic? The Economist helps a lot for humanity subject, but I still terrified with scientific passages, like astronomic-related topic. Thank you in advance!
Hi Amy,
You might try reading some published scientific articles! They will have the sort of dense technical language that you can expect from a scientific passage on the GRE. If you don’t have access to an academic library, there are some journals that publish online for free. You can try Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/, Nature http://www.nature.com/srep/ and the Lancet http://www.thelancet.com/ . Hope this helps 🙂
Chris,
I just knew about Magoosh and it is amazing. I have just started doing some verbal practice and your blog posts are very much aiding me in the process. Keep writing!
Great! I’m always very excited to get kudos like these! I’m glad my posts have been helpful :).