Verbal Passages

[starseeker]

Does anyone have any advice on how to finish the verbal passages quickly while at the same time getting all of the important meaterial needed to answer the questions?

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[Golddanboy]

Does anyone have any advice on how to finish the verbal passages quickly while at the same time getting all of the important meaterial needed to answer the questions?

You seem to be in the same boat I am; I always seem to have 2 sections at the end that are left blank (well guessed). I can't tell you how to get all the info but i found that if i spent 30 seconds looking for the hardest two sections, then i could put them off and skim them in the last ~10 minutes to get semi reasonable answers.

 

[ChaChaDocta]

Rather than avoiding them, just approach it logically. Even if you can't come up with a great answer with great reasoning, just write down a possible answer, and SUPPORT it with a few good paragraphs, covering each aspect of the question. Organization and logical support counts for a lot... even if the content isn't stellar. This isn't a literary competition. But I wouldn't skim over them, it'll just make you more nervous knowing that you have to go back to it. At least it would have for me.

 

[Golddanboy]

Rather than avoiding them, just approach it logically. Even if you can't come up with a great answer with great reasoning, just write down a possible answer, and SUPPORT it with a few good paragraphs, covering each aspect of the question. Organization and logical support counts for a lot... even if the content isn't stellar. This isn't a literary competition. But I wouldn't skim over them, it'll just make you more nervous knowing that you have to go back to it. At least it would have for me.

Skimming makes me feel far less nervous, i feel like I have an extra minute or two for each passage. I personally don't think i could get a perfect VR score so my safest bet is to start off on passages that have lots of questions and find the hardest passage with the least amount of questions. If i gave equal time to each passage (9.5 minutes) then I would still score lower on hard passages and in almost every case take up more time. I found that there are generally 2 monster passages with 10 question; If i gave 12 or more minutes to each passage then i would end up with around an hour, 40 questions, and 7 passages. This gives me time to rationalize with answers out rather then quickly picking the best sounding answer to make time.

In the end I'm almost always left with the 2 hardest pasages which consitiute at most 12 questions. I find that i slightly rush the second to last passage and the last passage is almost competly guessed. Generally i try to get the last passage have 5 questions. Hopefully i can still get 2 or 3 by making educational guesses and past knowlege. This basically intales picking any answer that looks like the first or last sentence of each paragraph.

In the end I sacrifice about 6 questions for the abillity to read carefully. This means i will never get a 13 but it allows me to get 10 questions wrong in other passages while still getting the the double digits.

 

[DrVanNostran]

i know how you guys feel, thats how I was with verbal a few months ago. I suggest you pick up the EK verbal manual and read it. The mail point of it is to read for the main idea and go back a little as possible. That what you finish your exam and you have answered most of the questions using the main idea. There is much more to it, but thats the gist of it.

I went from not finishing the verbal section, to finishing with time to spare.

Pre EK-5-7

Post Ek-8-11