Finding your Optimal Pace

Everyone reads at a different rate. It will take practice to determine what is the optimal rate at which you can read fast and yet absorb and

comprehend the information. This is true for both the flyover that you should initially conduct and then the subsequent reading you will have to do as you go through and begin answering the questions. However, on the flyover, you are looking for only a surface level knowledge and are not trying to comprehend the minutia of details that will be contained in the passages.

You can practice with any form of reading material. Read an article at your normal pace and then after you’re finished, ask yourself some questions about what you just read and see how well you can comprehend. Experiment with reading articles faster and slower and always gauge how well you comprehended what you read at the end. Train your brain to remember the details and absorb the facts.

With practice, you will find the pace that you should maintain on the test while going back through passages. It should be a comfortable rate. This is not a speed reading exercise. If you have a good pace, and don’t spend too much time on any question, you should have a sufficient amount of time to read the different sections of the passages at a comfortable rate. The two extremes you want to avoid are the dumbfounded mode, in which you are lip reading every word individually and mouthing each word as though in a stupor, and the overwhelmed mode, where you are panicked and are buzzing back and forth through the passage in a frenzy and not comprehending anything.

You must find your own pace that is relaxed and focused, allowing you to have time for every question and give you optimal comprehension. Note that you are looking for optimal comprehension, not maximum comprehension. If you spent hours on each word and memorized the passage, you would have maximum comprehension. That isn’t the goal though, you want to optimize how much you comprehend with how much time you spend reading. Practice will allow you to determine that optimal rate.