Verbal Help

[spring]

I am really aiming to shoot for that 11 on verbal. I have done a few FL's so far and have been practicing a few passages each day for most of the summer. This is the strategy I have been using so far - I do the passages in order and the question in order as they come for the most part. I preview the question stems before starting to read the passage, I don't read question stems that are really long though. If I get to a passage that is insane based on the question stems, I save that for last. In terms of the questions, I tackle them in order but if there is a question where the question stem is like a paragraph long, I do that one at the end for that particular passage. As I read I try to think of the point made in each paragraph and then tie it together at the end of the passage mentally. I have been working on my timing and I always end up with 5-5.5 minutes at the end with one passage to go, so I save the killer insane passage for that time - at this point, I quickly make a random guess on all question, skim through the passage and tackle a couple of questions in the remaining time. Is this a fair strategy? Is it possible to get an 11 with not being able to fully read one passage and tackle every question? I know that ideally one would want to give every question a fair try but I have really been working on the timing and seem to end up with the 2-3 minutes crunch at the end. Any advice on what I could do at this point?

[Suits]

It really depends on what works for you. What kind of scores are you getting at the moment?

 

IMO, looking at the question stems before hand is a waste of time. You should be reading the passage for understanding not for scanning questions which you have probably already forgotten. And just go in order and don't get stuck and spend too long on a passage. You can usually just skim a hard passage, that has convoluted wording and novel vocabulary, and make educated guesses based on obvious trap answers/illogical answers.

[spring]

Thanks Suit!

 

I am averaging around a 9 at this point. I do read the passage for understanding. The reason for previewing question stems is that it gives me gist of what the passage is about, if there are specific quotes/sentences or vocab questions, I can keep that info in mind, otherwise, I read the passage for understanding of main idea. I try to complete each passage in about 8.5 minutes and make educated guesses on the last/hard passage.

[FrenchToast]

Hmmm. This may seem like a silly question, but have you tried doing any without the strategy/previewing the question stems? Personally, I agree with Suits that, for me at least, looking at the questions in advance would just waste time, because you essentially have to read the questions twice. This method would thus detract precious time from actually thinking about how to answer, which I find to be the most important part of the process. I honestly believe that if I did that, my score would decrease significantly. If you're really paying attention to understanding the passage before reading the question stems, you shouldn't have *too* much trouble answering them.

 

Also, in terms of saving the passage that seems the hardest based on the question stems for last, I don't think that strategy would be most efficient. I would expect that it would be very hard to gauge the difficulty of a passage from the questions without actually having read the passage. I also don't think it would be a good plan to rush through and not give 100% to that one passage, because odds are that you will get most of the questions wrong, and to get 11+ on VR, you don't really have too many questions that you can get wrong. Personally, I try to save those leeway questions for the ones that are legitimately hard questions that I didn't really have a chance of getting right (i.e. even after reading the rationale when I'm done the test, I'm still like, "Wait. Whaaaat?")

 

Best of luck!

[tberry3]

My advice would be to try going through it without worrying about any of the strategy you've learned at all, and see how that works. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but I've read a good deal of different "proven methods" for tackling the Verbal section and I've found that my best scores come when I simply read the passage as if it's a newspaper article, and then answer the questions as straightforwardly as possible - no tricks, just reading and answering.

 

I realize this probably won't work for everybody, but I think most people assume that it won't work for them from the very beginning, and bog themselves down trying to adopt clunky strategies that may or may not work for them. I know that most of my friends who have had trouble with Verbal were using various strategies religiously, and I think their problems come from over-analyzing everything and taking it too seriously.

 

Try it the simple way at least once, and see if it helps. It's certainly been working well for me so far.

[spring]

Thanks guys! I tried another full-length verbal section today. I did all questions in order and also all passages in order. I did not preview the questions. I did't think of any strategies. I just assumed that I have the task of reading a number of passages and doing the questions and went right into it.

 

I am still getting about the same score. The problem I had was there was one vocab question and a couple of questions where it specifically referred to specific quote from the passage which had me scrambling trying to find it since I had not previewed the questions (more so for the single word vocab). When I am reading, I try to look for the general main point rather than specific details. I am still having an issue with timing. I am still ending up with about 5 minutes for the final passage. This forces me to skim the final passage and make educated choices.

 

Is everyone else able to finish the section on time? Has anyone else taken the TPR course? In the course, they taught us to preview questions, rank passage (which doesn't work for me other than saving the one harder passage for last due to my timing issue) and the 5 minute drill and I have been trying to see if these things help me in anyway since the start of the course and have modified it to what worked for me. Is this not the way to tackle this section?

 

I am going to continue working at it. Any tips with solving the timing issue? When I first started, it used to take me 12 minutes on a single passage. I have really worked at it to get it down to 8.5 minutes per passage. Anyone else having or have had a problem with timing?

[Savac]

Thanks guys! I tried another full-length verbal section today. I did all questions in order and also all passages in order. I did not preview the questions. I did't think of any strategies. I just assumed that I have the task of reading a number of passages and doing the questions and went right into it.

 

I am still getting about the same score. The problem I had was there was one vocab question and a couple of questions where it specifically referred to specific quote from the passage which had me scrambling trying to find it since I had not previewed the questions (more so for the single word vocab). When I am reading, I try to look for the general main point rather than specific details. I am still having an issue with timing. I am still ending up with about 5 minutes for the final passage. This forces me to skim the final passage and make educated choices.

 

Is everyone else able to finish the section on time? Has anyone else taken the TPR course? In the course, they taught us to preview questions, rank passage (which doesn't work for me other than saving the one harder passage for last due to my timing issue) and the 5 minute drill and I have been trying to see if these things help me in anyway since the start of the course and have modified it to what worked for me. Is this not the way to tackle this section?

 

I am going to continue working at it. Any tips with solving the timing issue? When I first started, it used to take me 12 minutes on a single passage. I have really worked at it to get it down to 8.5 minutes per passage. Anyone else having or have had a problem with timing?

 

I took the TPR course, but I think their verbal strategy needs some serious work. They throw a lot of tactics at you in the hopes that some of it works. Ultimately you need to figure it out for yourself.

 

For the record, I don't rank the passages either. I never found the need, because I always finish with 1-5 minutes left.