Hey, you guys are lucky! I just found my verbal tips post from another thread. Here it is:
My verbal strategy...(I bombed on the real thing comparatively to my practices. For instance, I got a 12 on my diagnostic, and was scoring consistently in the 13-15 range on my final practice exams: AAMC 6-10.)
1) Practice under harsher timed conditions than you will encounter on the test. You will have about 8.5 mins for every verbal passage. Get a stop watch and a verbal workbook, and practice finishing every passage in 6.5 mins. When I started doing this, two things happened: 1-Even though I was using less time, my scores did not decrease, they stayed the same. 2-When I became really good at answering the passages ultra-fast, I found that I had time to refer back on every passage. Now, since I can read the passages much more effectively (meaning faster) when I see a question that I'm not sure of, I have time to go back and quickly (very quickly) re-read the 3-4 sentences that pertain to the question.
2) Attack every single paragraph. Read very quickly, but read very actively. Don't try and go slowly to glean every detail, this will kill you. What you should do is Gather the main idea of every paragraph, and make sure you're always thinking about the POINT of the passage.
3) When doing the read-through, DO NOT re-read a sentence if you think you weren't paying attention. Try this on any reading material: Try reading very quickly and actively, but force yourself not to re-read sentences you just read, or go back. If you are actively reading, its amazing to see how much you pick up without having to reread. Your brain often tricks you into thinking that you didn't get something.
4) You should be categorizing the paragraphs in your head. This does not mean stop an summarize every paragraph. It does mean that you should be categorizing what each paragraph is talking about so you know where information is. This way you don't waste time re-reading when you need to refer back for a piece of information.
5) Answer every question in order, do not skip questions. I think that this particular point works really well because often the questions themselves are ALOT of reading! If you read a question, decide that its too hard, and then skip the next, you'll then have to come back and re-read the question, wasting time! Make a mental note of which questions your iffy on so that when you check your answers you know where to look.
6) Be aware of the different question types on the verbal section. The princeton review book has a list of these, and I think the Kaplan one does as well. As to HOW to answer every question type; This is one of the major areas where practice comes into it. As you get better, you'll begin to realize the types of things that look like 'correct' answers, and you get a feel for the types of things that the examiner is looking for.
7) Do heavy post-game analysis. You must, must, must go back over your verbal questions and ensure that your thought process was correct for the questions that you got right, and figure out what exactly you were thinking when you answered a question incorrectly. Try and figure which types of questions you are missing often, and then analyze your thought process to see what wrong thought caused you to pick a wrong answer.
8) Learn to use process of elimination. There are a few tricks you can use to POE the hell out of some verbal questions.
- Extreme sounding answers are almost always wrong. Exception: If the passage itself sounds extreme.
- In questions that ask you to describe the 'mood' of the author, or any question with 'one word' answer choices, answers that are similar or say the same thing are almost always both wrong. Check and see if you picked an answer that sounds very similar to another one, and make sure you know exactly why you chose that answer.
- Watch out for inverted relationships using identical vocabulary from the passage. A very common trick is that often words that were used in the passage will be transplanted to an answer choice with either: a cause and effect relationship reversed so that it is wrong, or, with a fact from the passage taken out of context. Watch out for these, and when you see an answer choice with alot of identical words from the passage, be very sure you understand its meaning.
9) PRACTICE!!!
This is my entire strategy. What works for me may not work for you, but it's worth a shot! If something different works for you, then use it!
I picked up a princeton review verbal workbook (I think you can only get them from the class) and I did two passages every 1-2 days starting at about 3 months before my MCAT. Toward the end of my practice test runs I was consistently getting 13s in verbal on the AAMCs. This section is doable guys. Just make sure you are practicing properly! Just doing passages isn't going to give you exponential gains in performance. You have to practice properly.
Good luck guys.
