Why is Reading Comprehension so important?

Reading comprehension is oft regarded as the ‘holy grail’ of the verbal section for most competitive exams such as the GMAT, LSAT etc. Its prevalence in the verbal component of almost all competitive exams stands as a testimony to its importance.

First, let’s spend a moment to analyze why Reading Comprehension (RC henceforth) has been accorded an elite status in the world of competitive exams. In the digital age that we live in, there’s never a dearth of information. Quite the contrary, one often finds oneself overwhelmed with vast – and often indigestible - quantity of written and graphical data. It’s always a challenge to assimilate and transform the colossal data (read text in this context) in hand into condense, meaningful information in the mind. More importantly, one must be able to:

• Understand the crux of the passage
• Answer questions based on the text provided
• Develop a perspective on the tone & tenor of the narration
• Infer or deduce logical arguments

Why is this so important? Most often I hear arguments from my friends who are deeply entrenched in Technology that RC is a waste of time for most people in general and particularly to them. I don’t agree with this – RC isn’t needed just for editors and translators. Let’s say you work as a Technical Developer in the Java language for an IT firm. You come across an interesting blog that predicts doomsday for Java because of the promise shown by a new, extremely developer-friendly programming language. You want to talk about this 4-page article to your boss and coworkers. Will you start off reeling all that appeared in the blogpost in a linear fashion? No, chances are you won’t.

• You’ll probably start off by saying – “Hey, I came across this article which talks about…”. That’s the essence. That one line. The CRUX.
• The people you talk to will not sit quiet if the article piques their curiosity. They’ll ask you pointed questions: “Is this new language open source?”; “what’s the typical learning curve for a new programmer?”; “Are there successful implementations already?”. You have to ANSWER their questions. “I’ll get back to you” does not always impress people.
• If you are keen enough, you’ll put yourself in the shoes of the writer of the article. Is he cynical or hypocritical? Has this been written out of sheer excitement? Is it just a eulogy without merit? The TONE and TENOR often bring the emotion and motivation of the writer to the forefront – a factor which helps in gauging the credibility of the article.
• Lastly, you may be asked open-ended questions such as “Will this impact just Java or all open source languages?”, “What would this mean to developers like us?”, “Do you seriously think this is going to happen anytime soon?”. These are questions which are beyond what’s stated in the passage/article. You can’t pick anything verbatim; you have to INFER or jump to a reasonable conclusion based on the premises.

Bottom-line – even if you are a techie geek, chances are high that you’ll have to exercise your RC skills during the course of your work. From reading newspapers casually to poring over research papers diligently, RC is ubiquitous and hence RC skills are quintessential and needless to say – a critical parameter of evaluation of prospective students by schools and colleges.