A verbal reasoning journey for an ESL

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eminisceff

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Long time lurker here, and just got my June 21 score. I feel I need to write something to share some experience of improving my verbal score as an ESL.

First time: 14/7/10. My BS was affected by the verbal because I score 12-15 for AAMC.
Second time: voided because I couldn't finish VR.
Third time: 14/11/14. I was so surprised by this score, honestly.

For verbal, I probably have the lowest starting point here. Reading comprehension is my weakest link even in my native language, so VR is extremely hard for me. When I started January 2013, I could finish only 3 passages in 1 hour with 60% questions wrong. My first full length? It took me more than 90 min, and I scored a 3 or 4.

Two goals were clear for me: 1. Finish 7 passages in 1 hour, 2. Get the questions right.

For the first goal, I just practiced. I finished EK, TPR, AAMC, Kaplan, all of them, but still couldn't finish any full-length on time. I just found everything I could find, and managed to finish a full-length in an hour for the first time 3 days before the real thing in 2013. For me, a full length every day is necessary to train my brain, although sometimes I even wanted to puke when I saw verbal passages. In my MCAT last year, at least I finished my VR. It was a 7, but I finished it.

For anyone who can't finish on time, my suggestion would be keep practicing. Reading NY times op-ed only helps to get familiar with certain topics.

For the second goal, I tried different strategies. I first studied all EK answer keys, then TPR, because I wanted to save AAMC to the end, but I was wrong. After a long time, until this spring, I realized that no matter how good a practice book is, it is still different from AAMC. As an ESL, I can't feel the author's tone and attitudes through his/her wording as well as native speakers. It's just not gonna happen. Therefore, I need that instinct and that good sense of guessing more than anyone. So, I decided to repeat AAMC again and again. I repeated every AAMC for at least 4 times, with about 3 months between every two times. Studing the answer keys carefully, not to remember their rationale, but try to convince yourself that this is the right way to think. That sense of guessing just comes slowly to you, after a long time of thinking and practicing, I guess. I could feel that sense finally arrived in my brain before my June 21 test.

One thing is, repeating AAMC works to increase your sense of guessing, but not gonna train your brain. I found some new tests, old Practise tests, and did full-length from time to time without even checking the answers. Their answers are just gonna affect your AAMC-type of sense.

This is my experience. I don't know if it fits all the ESL, but it works for me. It was a long journey for me, and I was so lucky that I did better than I expected.

For the science parts, I think the key thing is to quickly identify what knowledge a question is asking about. For all the knowledge, you don't need to remember everything, but have to understand it and to know in what situations can this knowledge be useful.

This is mg 2 cents, and I hope it can be useful for someone here.

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Thanks for sharing! Your story is really inspiring! I'm also an ESL. For me timing is more of an issue. I can get most questions right if I can finish reading the passages and fully understand them, which takes about twice as long as the allowed time. > < When I speed up my reading, I cannot understand the content as well and my accuracy goes down. :( Do you have any suggestions for increasing my reading speed without decreasing the accuracy?
 
doctor_wannabe, I know exactly what you mean.

My reading speed is less than 200 words per minute, which is slower than normal, and that's why I thought reading speed is my problem. I have tried reading books, reading NY times with timing, and even tried speed-read training apps. For me, none of them worked. I realized that even for someone like me, the speed limiting factor is still solving the questions. The only thing works for me is a full length every day. A lot of people said practicing too much work against you, so I'm not sure whether I should suggest this...

Anyway, good luck! Trust yourself, and I really hope you can nail it
 
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