Verbal Strategy

[astr1x]

I thought this thread would be different enough from the general strategy thread to justify starting it. Different companies have different strategies and I took the Princeton course which taught to:

1. preview questions

2. don't do passages in order

3. read first and last paragraph while skimming the middle to get a sense of where everything is while still trying to get the main point

4. highlight

5. don't do questions in order

6. go back and read over section to answer specific questions

 

THEN, I read the EK strategy yesterday, which is basically the opposite:

1. don't preview questions

2. do passages in order

3. don't skim, read every word first time through and let it be your only time. Basically understand the entire passage the first time through

4. don't highlight

5. go back to passage as little as possible.

 

I've been doing verbal for a while with the princeton method and I've pretty much never scored a 10. I tried the EK strat once last night after reading it and got 9, which is pretty decent for me. I would like to discuss the merits of both strategies.

 

I think the EK strategy of reading every word does actually make sense since I definitely get a better understanding of the entire passage as oposed to just reading first/last paragraph and skimming, however it's definitely harder to remember specific facts and harder to find information without highlighting.

What are your opinions?

[Jochi1543]

You need to find out what works for you as opposed to blindly following a strategy created to sell a prep book.

[thatonekid]

I've been getting 11-12 on my VR practice so far, and while I didn't think that I used a particular "strategy" my reading/answering technique seems to match up best with the one given by EK.

 

I find VR to be one of those things where the more you get out of the passage the 1st read through, the less you have to go back and re-read & the faster you can answer the questions.

 

As for reading the passages in order, for VR you don't need outside info, so all of the questions should (in theory) be the same in level of "unknown content". On the other hand, for PS, it is suggested to not do the passages in order because you know some stuff better than other stuff.

[astr1x]

You need to find out what works for you as opposed to blindly following a strategy created to sell a prep book.

 

It's true that I need to follow the strategy that works for me. However, this has yet to be determined. I've been following TPR strat for a while and I haven't seen much improvement, so I'm seeking other potentially better strategies, but who knows, maybe I'm the problem...

With just over a week left to practice, I guess I'm trying to "reason" out in a way which strategy should theoretically be better and put all my eggs into one basket in terms of my gameplan/strategy. I need to magically pull my verbal up by 2 for that 10 in 10 days

[deeman101]

It's true that I need to follow the strategy that works for me. However, this has yet to be determined. I've been following TPR strat for a while and I haven't seen much improvement, so I'm seeking other potentially better strategies, but who knows, maybe I'm the problem...

With just over a week left to practice, I guess I'm trying to "reason" out in a way which strategy should theoretically be better and put all my eggs into one basket in terms of my gameplan/strategy. I need to magically pull my verbal up by 2 for that 10 in 10 days

 

Oh crap! Theres only 14 days left to the 28th. I haven't even started practicing, LOL.

 

My strategy first time around was literally read the intro paragraph, first sentence of the other paragraphs, and the conclusion paragraph. Then answer questions. I'm not joking that is what I did. I did it because I noticed my score didn't change by using this technique or reading the whole thing. My VR score was 8, so its not like I'm going to do that again though. My main problem was that I thought there were 6 passages and 60 mins to do them. Then I found out 3 days before the test that there are 7 passages and 60 mins....fail!

[astr1x]

wow, that's horrible. did you not practice until 3 days before the exam? lol. What will your strategy this time around be? I've been doing the read it word by word method last night and this morning and it seems to be around the same as skimming... 8. I think the read every word has a lot to do with how focused you are at the time, so kind of a hit or miss.

[UnderDog]

May I ask which books you're using to practice VR with?

[astr1x]

May I ask which books you're using to practice VR with?

 

I've been using the TPR book, plus AAMC practice exams.

[xi88]

May I ask which books you're using to practice VR with?

 

EK all the way

[AdamP]

I would say the EK is better, except for the final point, you NEED to go back to the passage, that just comes with practice, you should only do practice timed and start to develop an awareness of how much time you have to go back.

 

Skimming and skipping around passages are terrible ideas if you're looking for double digits, because you're reading for: is this passage hard? rather than what is the author telling me?

 

I used like a modified kaplan strategy i'd say, I wrote down a paraphrase for every paragraph and the purpose of the passage at the end. Writing the purpose is key, debatable whether paraphrasing each paragraph was helpful but it gives you an appreciation of the structure of the passage

 

I scored 10 on my real mcat, ? on my re-write, and in practice I never scored in the single digits or below 32/40.

 

The main thing is to practice enough to have an internal clock that tells you how much time you have to re-read the passage.

 

Oh and on timing, i grouped i think 18 minutes per passage pair or something like that, I found that to be helpful too.

[thatonekid]

Oh and on timing, i grouped i think 18 minutes per passage pair or something like that, I found that to be helpful too.

Do you mean 8 minutes per passage?

[AdamP]

Do you mean 8 minutes per passage?

 

I think it was actually 17 per pair, so 8.5 each, it's better not to group them in ones because each passage takes a different amount of time, grouping them in pairs normalizes that

[thatonekid]

I think it was actually 17 per pair, so 8.5 each, it's better not to group them in ones because each passage takes a different amount of time, grouping them in pairs normalizes that

Ah, that makes sense. In my mind, I had "Passage set" confused with "Passage pair". I actually do group passages into sets of 2 while doing my practice tests, so I know what you're talking about. It helps with pacing.

 

Maybe I should read posts more carefully...or get my eyes checked. lol.

[astr1x]

I would say the EK is better, except for the final point, you NEED to go back to the passage, that just comes with practice, you should only do practice timed and start to develop an awareness of how much time you have to go back.

 

Skimming and skipping around passages are terrible ideas if you're looking for double digits, because you're reading for: is this passage hard? rather than what is the author telling me?

 

I used like a modified kaplan strategy i'd say, I wrote down a paraphrase for every paragraph and the purpose of the passage at the end. Writing the purpose is key, debatable whether paraphrasing each paragraph was helpful but it gives you an appreciation of the structure of the passage

 

I scored 10 on my real mcat, ? on my re-write, and in practice I never scored in the single digits or below 32/40.

 

The main thing is to practice enough to have an internal clock that tells you how much time you have to re-read the passage.

 

Oh and on timing, i grouped i think 18 minutes per passage pair or something like that, I found that to be helpful too.

 

You must read REALLY fast to write a paraphrase for each paragraph and read word for word all in 8.5min. I find that when I read word for word I end up with little/no time for the last passage and I don't write down anything.

Some questions about what you did:

Did you go in order? Did you highlight? Did you read the questions before reading the passage? What did you do if your passage pair went over 17min?

Thanks!

[AdamP]

You must read REALLY fast to write a paraphrase for each paragraph and read word for word all in 8.5min. I find that when I read word for word I end up with little/no time for the last passage and I don't write down anything.

Some questions about what you did:

Did you go in order? Did you highlight? Did you read the questions before reading the passage? What did you do if your passage pair went over 17min?

Thanks!

 

yeah so in my mind I'm still debating whether paraphrasing each paragraph was helpful...if you do want to re-find something in the passage it can sometimes help where to look, although I didn't find I used it much. That being said writing down the authors purpose/opinion is key to scoring points.

 

I don't think i remember going over the 17 mins ever, usually i would develop a buffer in the first 2/4 passages, and as I got more tired and slower near the end I would use it up. I never highlighted, didn't read questions first, and always went in the order they came, time is just way to short to be half-reading passages.

 

If you're writing late summer you have some time to develop skills and speed. Just keep working at it, and like I said before only do timed practice.

 

That being said, this is all just reading strategy, there is a whole other art to facing the questions which is what really scores you points. You need to realize common wrong answers, learn how to deal with roman numerals, just get used to the mcat VR style really.

[princess19]

the key to verbal is definitely finding a strategy that suits you personally. everyone i talked to recommended EK for verbal, so i completed about half the book before i realized that it wasn't working for me. i stuck to just practising the princeton verbal / AAMC tests and got a 12 on my actual MCAT (with a min. of 11 consistently in practice tests). timing yourself is very important as you may find that on the actual test, the passages are a lot longer than you are used to (at least this was the case for me). this means reading everything very carefully so that you only have to read the passage once, and being able to recognize key points to highlight as you go along (thus reducing the time to retrieve info directly from the passage).

[sv3]

the key to verbal is definitely finding a strategy that suits you personally. everyone i talked to recommended EK for verbal, so i completed about half the book before i realized that it wasn't working for me. i stuck to just practising the princeton verbal / AAMC tests and got a 12 on my actual MCAT (with a min. of 11 consistently in practice tests). timing yourself is very important as you may find that on the actual test, the passages are a lot longer than you are used to (at least this was the case for me). this means reading everything very carefully so that you only have to read the passage once, and being able to recognize key points to highlight as you go along (thus reducing the time to retrieve info directly from the passage).

 

When you say you stuck to the princton/AAMC tests......you mean just practicing? Or did you actually follow Princeton's advice re: verbal? Just curious as I find their advice borderline ridiculous if you want to finish the entire section. But your totally right.....every person has to find their own style...so don't be afraid to experiment while you practice.

 

sv3

[astr1x]

too bad I only have 1.5weeks left to practice... and have yet to find my own style. A strategy I might try that I thought up is reading tougher passages that are more abstract/idea oriented word for word while kind of skimming/ mapping out science/fact based passages since there are way too many facts in those to remember in the first read-through which pretty much guarentees going back anyways. Thoughts?

[RobynM]

I say for sure take it on a passage by passage basis. I found that if I had a bit of basis for the information of the passage I could read it more quickly and more readily find the purpose of each paragraph but if the passage was on something that I had no idea about I had to read slower and more carefully to understand what the heck they were trying to say.

 

I found that the Kaplan method of joting down the purpose of each paragraph worked pretty well for me. I didn't really end up referring to what I wrote but the act of stopping after each paragraph to process what I read and the physicality of writing something down really helped to keep me focused on the reading that I was doing. My biggest problem was zoning out a little as I read so this method really helped.

 

Also, I never bothered to read the questions before the passage. I tried that a couple of times in my practices and I found that it just ate up my time and didn't really help me to get many of the answers. Most of the questions are so dependent on the context of the passage that if you haven't read the passage they don't make much sense.

 

Good luck!

[Dr.Mash]

Every time I encountered EK, I couldn't help thinking they had a glaze of dilettantism in their approaches and explanations. Maybe they were amateurish indeed or maybe it was just their stupid smiling crackers all over in apparently serious material. I personally regret the time I spent following their method, which seemed just ingenuous head-on storming. Time and progress were the casualties.

You wouldn't deny that each set of VR questions has its internal logic and a good chunk of choices may be just swept away even without prior reading of the text. Only when I started reading questions first and then the text, did I get a tangible progress with the verbal score. But again, different tactics work for different people. The point is don't waste your time, do not concentrate initially on only one approach. Improvise, find what works best for you.

[AP_gooner]

i just finished up 7 practice passages, and while grading them i found i'm consistently getting 2 wrong lol

[princess19]

When you say you stuck to the princton/AAMC tests......you mean just practicing? Or did you actually follow Princeton's advice re: verbal? Just curious as I find their advice borderline ridiculous if you want to finish the entire section. But your totally right.....every person has to find their own style...so don't be afraid to experiment while you practice.

 

sv3

 

mainly i mean just using their practice questions/tests, but i incorporated parts of their strategy into my own as well. i didn't follow all of their steps - i specifically remember NOT reading the questions first, and not making notes at the end of each paragraph. moreover, i got used to recognizing and highlighting the types of facts/key words that could be asked about, and thus tried to anticipate the questions. i also followed the princeton advice on how to recognize common wrong answers (basic but helpful), and always tried to keep in mind the central message of the passage. if there was a long list of facts or numbers, i would remember where it was in the passage rather than specific details from that section. if i remember correctly, princeton had pretty good suggestions for mapping the passage (which is a necessary skill for success in verbal), so if you can get that down pat you should be good to go.

[ogrenci]

My strategy was more psychological. Basically, I told myself that each paragraph was the most facinating thing I`ve ever come across. Then I read it from top to bottom like I was really interested. I answered the questions in order but skipped the ones that were too confusing and went back to them if I had time. I highlited things that sounded like they`ed make a good question.

 

For prep I did a fair number of practice exams (the `Gold Standard`, which is not, in fact, the study book of champions and actual AAMC sample exams) and read the news and boring magazine articles with greater frequency. Apparently I`m a verbel genius or they marked my test wrong `cause the above strategy netted me a 13.

[astr1x]

i just finished up 7 practice passages, and while grading them i found i'm consistently getting 2 wrong lol

 

Do you mean per passage, if so, mee to =( and damn you if u mean overall =P jk. Time to sleep and wake up for another 8:30 practice exam... c'mon 10!!!

[AP_gooner]

haha yeah, per passage....

well, at least it's better than my first practice test... thought i was "the boss" at english and just went into it nice and cocky.... lets just say it's a good thing it was a practice test.