notes in verbal

[cis_man]

is it a good idea to make little notes while reading verbal passages?

[bpatient]

Gotta do what you gotta do.

[Kyleh]

Depends on the person... try taking notes and not taking notes. See what works best for you.

[medpass]

No...my advice is to try to understand the essence of the passage in general because you don't know whether your notes will actually help in answering the questions thus making you lose precious time.. try to answer the questions posed rather than trying to be educated by the passage

[a1b1]

Time wise taking notes would be too costly, even if it is just an extra 30 seconds to do so. Also it would probably distract you temporarily. EK recommends to not take notes.

[niceshrp]

For me, it really helped. I took notes after every paragraph, just a few words. Of course, essence of the passage matters but I found myself loosing track of the flow if I didn't write a few words after every paragraph. Since there are only a few paragraphs per passage, note taking took me about 20 seconds total.

 

It's one of the things that helped me improve my verbal score by 4 points.

[cis_man]

For me, it really helped. I took notes after every paragraph, just a few words. Of course, essence of the passage matters but I found myself loosing track of the flow if I didn't write a few words after every paragraph. Since there are only a few paragraphs per passage, note taking took me about 20 seconds total.

 

It's one of the things that helped me improve my verbal score by 4 points.

I also found that by writing down the main idea of the passage and author's opinion, it helps me with answering the questions. However, I am trying to be efficient with writing down notes for the passage so I don't waste time. Do you have any tips on which words to write down or how you make your notes while reading the passage?

[123izme]

I tried writing down notes for a few passages and they really did not help at all. I don't usually preview questions before reading the passage, so I wasn't really sure what was important.

 

I honestly think there is no 'correct' strategy. Try out different ones and figure out what works best for you!

[Savac]

I also found that by writing down the main idea of the passage and author's opinion, it helps me with answering the questions. However, I am trying to be efficient with writing down notes for the passage so I don't waste time. Do you have any tips on which words to write down or how you make your notes while reading the passage?

 

If you're going to write anything down, keep it concise. It only needs to make sense to you while you're working the passage.

 

For example:

You're reading a passage about Natural Selection (I wish!). The author states Lamarckism is incorrect and then gives examples to support the claim.

 

For this chunk of information, if I were taking notes (I don't) I would jot down something like:

L is wrong

 

It's short, and I'll understand it while I'm working the passage. You don't need to understand this later on in the day.

[mikeb88]

I also found that by writing down the main idea of the passage and author's opinion, it helps me with answering the questions. However, I am trying to be efficient with writing down notes for the passage so I don't waste time. Do you have any tips on which words to write down or how you make your notes while reading the passage?

 

I found that, given unlimited time, this was the best strategy for me. I always got perfect or at most 1 wrong on each passage. However, it's too time-consuming to be of any use to me during the test. Instead, I used this as an exercise similar to EK's strategy for improve your ability to glean the author's main point. In an untimed setting, I would read 3-4 passages/day, jot down all the important points I could remember, then quickly skim the passage to add any missing points. Finally, I would formulate a main thesis and use it to answer the questions without looking back to the passage. Eventually I got better at remembering the points and coming up with the thesis without having to skim it a second time. It's a good exercise to boost your reading comprehension, but I found that actually writing the notes wasted precious time under timed settings.

 

My strategy is to read through passages at a pace that allows me to understand the passage thoroughly. I find that there really isn't any point in reading through it quickly, because most of the questions are based on the main theme and understanding it allows you to breeze through the questions. It makes a HUGE difference in timing when you don't have to look back to the passage for answers. If I spend 4-5 minutes reading each passage, I'm able to understand the passage better and it still gives me almost 30 seconds per question. For the most part this has worked for me, although every once in a while you run into a passage that's incomprehensible. Still haven't figured out a good way of attacking those

[niceshrp]

Well for me it wasn't really about taking the notes to refresh myself all the details. What was important was the process of taking the notes so that I could summarize what I just had read in the paragraph. So all the scribbles I wrote after each paragraph were probably gibberish and I didn't even bother to check lol. For instance, if I wanted to write "Scientist A is wrong because of small sample size", I would scribble A wrng bc sss. lol it doesn't even make sense but I never bothered to read it anyway, and it probably took 2 seconds to write each point.

 

I didn't even look at the notes after reading the whole passage, but I realized that I could keep track of the flow and the main ideas of each paragraph that way.