Verbal Reasoning strategy?

[numero0121407]

Hello everyone,

 

I am having some difficulty with this section. When I practice for the VR section I put my timer at 1min/question+1 and it usually works fine but when I am in the actual full length test, I alway run short and loose track of time.

 

Also, I am having difficulty approaching the passages. PR instructor said write down main idea in each para then make an overall bottom line...problem is, DO THEY HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG THAT TAKES?

 

Also, they said to classify the passages to now,later, and killer...problem is how do I decide and how long should that process take....I am so overwhelmed

 

any ideas?

[ericl]

Hello everyone,

 

I am having some difficulty with this section. When I practice for the VR section I put my timer at 1min/question+1 and it usually works fine but when I am in the actual full length test, I alway run short and loose track of time.

 

Also, I am having difficulty approaching the passages. PR instructor said write down main idea in each para then make an overall bottom line...problem is, DO THEY HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG THAT TAKES?

 

Also, they said to classify the passages to now,later, and killer...problem is how do I decide and how long should that process take....I am so overwhelmed

 

any ideas?

 

I always got bogged down in passages too on full length tests and was probably overthinking everything - on my first attempt, I had 1.5 passages left when time ran out so I had to guess on about 10 questions. Second time, had about 1 passage left so had to guess on about 7 questions. My third time, this guy I was talking to during the 10 minute break told me that he approaches verbal by just picking the first answer he sees that he feels is right and then never looking back. I thought it was a good idea and ran with it and I finished the whole section and ended up with my best verbal score.

 

I don't write down anything although I learned in my Kaplan prep course that writing the main idea for each paragraph is the best. I just remember what happens in every paragraph to save more time .

 

Sorry, not very helpful since I'm not a good verbal reasoning guy. But for me, just going with your first feeling on the questions worked out in the end!

[waterluv]

Yeah I also didn't bother writing down any points for VR...

May be try doing that for some passages to practice extracting main ideas quickly WO rereading? But doing so during the actual or practice test just would not be time-efficient. As long as you read the passage with concentration/focus, you will remember the gist of how the ideas were layed out and all that.

And this is just a suggestion to OP but how about trying the 60min/5~6 passages (I think that's the CTB format) instead of 1min/question? Some questions are simple recognition, but some take longer... and the passage lengths do vary slightly btw passages. And this way your practice would resemble the actual testng condition more. Good luck!

[TeaHatingBrit]

This is what I did for VR; and it worked very well for me...

 

I simply read the passage; and I thought to myself 2 things while reading:

1) I am smarter than whoever wrote this passage

2) I am the author. Essentially I would pretend that I wrote that passage; and it was me formulating these ideas and opinions. That made it alot easier to answer the 'from the author's perspective ...' type questions.

 

I would quickly eliminate answers I knew were wrong; and if I was stuck, I wouldn't delve, I'd just pick one that sounded better.

 

Don't worry or focus on your time. Don't think about the 1 minute/1 question either. Just go through it, and eventually the flow will come together, and you'll wrap things up in proper time.

 

Just keep practicing and don't get discouraged.

[xi88]

Dont write notes while doing VR, and dont re-read passages. There isnt enough time for this. Just do the questions one at a time, and if you get a questions you dont know, just guess a best answer and mark it. Come back to it later if you have time. Dont waste time on a question you dont know.

[Mei_Mei_girl]

Practise, practise, crazy practise!!! First time I failed verbal miserably, last run got 11. Practise your verbals TIMED and DO the 7 passages in a row (I think its 7) as in the real MCAT. Practise helped me out alot. All that crap about classifying passages as hard/easy I have no idea how people can do that on the real thing, but I do know I did not do that. Good luck and get out the practising!

[numero0121407]

Thanks everyone thats really helpful

[AP_gooner]

Hello everybody,

I was wondering if anyone had any tips for when it comes to reading the passages in VR. I find sometimes that I read a lot of sentences and don't really understand what the author is talking about, and then that ends up making the question answering process pretty tough. Any tips on how to get the most from what you read, and understand it well too?

 

Thanks bunches!

 

Don't try to skim-read it (read very fast). Just try to pace yourself and just really concentrate as if you ARE really interested on the topic. If you find yourself thinking to yourself 'oh, this is a *****y topic' or 'i cant wait to get drunk after this' etc, it will just make the reading that much harder.

 

That being said, there are things in VR that are just extremely screwed up sentences anyway... nothing you can do about that. Just don't get flustered!

[AdamP]

Dont write notes while doing VR, and dont re-read passages. There isnt enough time for this. Just do the questions one at a time, and if you get a questions you dont know, just guess a best answer and mark it. Come back to it later if you have time. Dont waste time on a question you dont know.

 

...I took notes while reading and scored a 13, not to say that your advice is bad but I think what people need to do is pick a method, practice and stick to it, and not change it on test day.

 

I think if you tend to enjoy what your reading or at least try to convince yourself that the passage is going to be enjoyable you will score better. I found while reading that I was actually interested in figuring out what the author's point was, and that seemed to help a lot since most of the questions deal with the some form of the authors opinion.

 

Also IMO people spend too much time thinking about how to tackle the passage and not enough on their question strategy, you can be the best passage reader in the world but if you don't have a good method of attacking the questions you're sunk.

[firefly]

I tend to scan the questions really quickly first. I would specifically look for questions that involved the definition of a specific word in the passage. I would then highlight those words in the passage before reading it, so that when I do reach the words when reading the passage, I can answer those questions as I go along. I prefer that over going back to the passage to reread for the meaning of those words.

 

Also I practised with both EK verbal books (the 101 passages and verbal strategy). I found them to be really helpful.