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While my verbal score is not astronomically high, I think it's pretty good compared to what it was when I started studying (started around a 7, now 11/12). Also, since I've gotten some PMs based on just one comment I made in a thread a while ago, I've decided that maybe other people in MCAT Discussions would at the very least be interested in reading something for 5 minutes if there was even the slightest chance it would increase their VR.
One of the biggest things I've realized in all my time studying VR is that the #1 reason that I'll flop on a passage (like getting 75%...wrong) is because I just didn't understand the passage as a whole. Not that any particular questions "got me," or "seemed confusing". Those are all secondary to not understanding the entire passage and internalizing it. That led me to perusing the MCAT forums or the EK book for guidance, but these sources mostly failed me because the only advice I would get for better reading comprehension was "read a lot" or "act like you're interested in the material" or some other vague, unhelpful drivel. After some experimentation, this is what I came up with (and I quote this from a PM I sent).
After adopting this strategy, I've used it on ek101 with a huge amount of success. I literally just kind of "discovered" this strategy a few days ago, and before I had a big problem with finishing a passage on time, now for some reason I'm just zooming through questions and finishing passages with 1-2 minutes to spare (with 100% accuracy). Now this is starting to sound like an infomercial, but I'm not trying to sell anyone anything, I'm not asking for money, or offering any guarantees. I'm mostly just kind of excited and was hoping to validate this method by seeing if anyone else could get anything from it. I also realize this has probably been stated by someone elsewhere in MCAT discussion at some point in time in one form or another. Well, here it is again!
Cheers.
EDIT: Edited to address some of the questions brought up in the topic, as well as some things that I have realized about this method. Also, some comments to address common problems/questions are found below.
Also, as far as TIMING goes, yes, you may initially find yourself losing a little time with this method. It is not unlikely that you will spend 4 minutes just reading the passage. However, this is offset by being able to complete questions much faster (Say about 15 seconds to read through each answer and pick out the right one just off the top of your head, and maybe another 15 seconds to confirm it by looking at the corresponding paragraph in the passage). Getting used to reading like this combined with getting used to answering questions with less reliance on digging through the passage for clues will contribute to faster times.
It WILL still be difficult to tackle those hard artsy passages with crappy language, because lets face it, nobody in real life writes like that and it's a little unreasonable for AAMC to ask a bunch of science majors to read an article about the cubism movement written by the author equivalent of a hipster.
A common problem a significant number of people seem to encounter with this method is that it can be very mentally draining. I don't know exactly why this is, though I theorize that having to read for complete comprehension of ideas is much more taxing on your brain than is doing a superficial reading and painfully making your way through each question. You might find yourself running out of steam midway through a VR test. Be aware of when this happens, take a quick 5-10 second breather and try to empty your brain, then go back to the questions/passage. It's better to recognize when you've begun to lose focus and take a step back than to just keep trying to push through it, then finishing the entire passage while realizing that you have not 1) actually understood any of the words you just read and/or 2) did not focus on connecting the ideas.
One of the biggest things I've realized in all my time studying VR is that the #1 reason that I'll flop on a passage (like getting 75%...wrong) is because I just didn't understand the passage as a whole. Not that any particular questions "got me," or "seemed confusing". Those are all secondary to not understanding the entire passage and internalizing it. That led me to perusing the MCAT forums or the EK book for guidance, but these sources mostly failed me because the only advice I would get for better reading comprehension was "read a lot" or "act like you're interested in the material" or some other vague, unhelpful drivel. After some experimentation, this is what I came up with (and I quote this from a PM I sent).
Here's how I break it down:
Spend 1~ minute reading and internalizing the first paragraph of a passage. Understand it as if it were an idea that you came up with on your own. Every passage is written so that it follows a logical progression of ideas. Starting out I realized that I would read an entire passage and not really get the gist of it because I didn't fully understand the first paragraph and couldn't connect each subsequent paragraph to the entire passage as a whole. That's the first thing.
After you understand that first paragraph, read the next one carefully, but don't spend as much time on it. I like to take a 5 second scan of a paragraph to get the general idea of what it's going to be talking about. Then I do a closer read for about 30-35 seconds, connect the idea of that paragraph to what was said in the previous one, then I move on. And by connecting, I mean asking yourself the question "what does this paragraph add to the last, or how does it support the last paragraph, or if the idea in this paragraph conflicts the last one, what does this imply about where the author is taking his train of thought". Etc. Paragraph-by-paragraph. Once I'm done with the passage, I have a very clear picture of what the author said, why he was saying it, what was the purpose of each paragraph, and I also have a good idea of where to go look for something that comes up in a question. The brain is a lot better (well my brain is anyway) at internalizing ideas and concepts if they are attached or correlated to something else. The "something else" has to be rock solid though, which is why understanding that first part of the logical train of thought the author is on is so important. If you read each paragraph in relation to the previous one, you *should* find that you have a much easier time recalling and whatnot when you're doing the questions. I also find that it's easier to do something like this, where I concretely know what I have to accomplish when I'm reading a passage, than to blindly follow some vague strategy like "pretend a friend is telling you a story" or "just act like you're really interested and somehow you will be."
As far as the questions go, that's something you have to learn to do on your own. Just do a lot of practice tests, get familiar with what kinds of questions AAMC likes to ask on VR, and come up with a strategy for doing them that makes the most sense to you.
After adopting this strategy, I've used it on ek101 with a huge amount of success. I literally just kind of "discovered" this strategy a few days ago, and before I had a big problem with finishing a passage on time, now for some reason I'm just zooming through questions and finishing passages with 1-2 minutes to spare (with 100% accuracy). Now this is starting to sound like an infomercial, but I'm not trying to sell anyone anything, I'm not asking for money, or offering any guarantees. I'm mostly just kind of excited and was hoping to validate this method by seeing if anyone else could get anything from it. I also realize this has probably been stated by someone elsewhere in MCAT discussion at some point in time in one form or another. Well, here it is again!
Cheers.
EDIT: Edited to address some of the questions brought up in the topic, as well as some things that I have realized about this method. Also, some comments to address common problems/questions are found below.
Also, as far as TIMING goes, yes, you may initially find yourself losing a little time with this method. It is not unlikely that you will spend 4 minutes just reading the passage. However, this is offset by being able to complete questions much faster (Say about 15 seconds to read through each answer and pick out the right one just off the top of your head, and maybe another 15 seconds to confirm it by looking at the corresponding paragraph in the passage). Getting used to reading like this combined with getting used to answering questions with less reliance on digging through the passage for clues will contribute to faster times.
It WILL still be difficult to tackle those hard artsy passages with crappy language, because lets face it, nobody in real life writes like that and it's a little unreasonable for AAMC to ask a bunch of science majors to read an article about the cubism movement written by the author equivalent of a hipster.
A common problem a significant number of people seem to encounter with this method is that it can be very mentally draining. I don't know exactly why this is, though I theorize that having to read for complete comprehension of ideas is much more taxing on your brain than is doing a superficial reading and painfully making your way through each question. You might find yourself running out of steam midway through a VR test. Be aware of when this happens, take a quick 5-10 second breather and try to empty your brain, then go back to the questions/passage. It's better to recognize when you've begun to lose focus and take a step back than to just keep trying to push through it, then finishing the entire passage while realizing that you have not 1) actually understood any of the words you just read and/or 2) did not focus on connecting the ideas.
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