How to Use News Publications to Improve GMAT Reading Comprehension

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Every good GMAT study plan includes a fair amount of reading comprehension practice.  The toughest part about this section is that is so subjective and, if not practiced properly, very difficult to get better at.  It’s one thing to try to read as much as possible, but it’s a lot to better to have a purpose and a plan when reading in order to maximize your chances of improving.  One of the best ways to get better at reading comprehension is to do a many official practice passages as possible.  The Official Guide is a great source for practice, but there are a limited number of practice passages in the book.  It is therefore wise to find a few other great sources for practice.  I really believe news publications like The Economist and The Wall Street Journal can be great practice.  The writing style is very similar to that used in the GMAT and the topics are often very similar.  The only problem with these publications is you don’t have practice questions at the end.  However, if you read from these publications with the right mindset and plan, they can be really great practice.  Here are a couple of thoughts on how best to use these resources.

Read the articles online

It’s a really good idea to read these articles online (instead of the print publications) because that will mimic how you will take the GMAT.  You should get used to reading passages on a computer screen and this is an easy way to do that.

Read carefully and not casually

Don’t read these passages like you would a mystery novel.  Be very active in your reading.  Stop to reflect after each paragraph and think about the meaning and context of the paragraph in relationship to the passage as a whole.  This is what you will need to do on the GMAT, so you might as well get lots of practice with this type of reading.

Read 2 articles a day

It’s a lot better for you to have really high quality practice with 2 articles than it is to try to read a ton of passages each day.  2 articles is more than enough to get good practice.  When you are done with the articles each day, pause to reflect on how you performed.  Think of things like how efficient you were, how focused you were when reading, etc.  Think of ways you can improve and try to implement changes for the next day.  This type of reflection is what you need to get better at a section that is this subjective.  If you want to learn how to study for the GMAT, you will need to implement strategies like this to improve on these sections.