501 series

[powerfetish]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Someone previously suggested to read nonfiction novels to improve your reading comprehension skills, so I read catcher in the rye, lord of the flies, and hobbit--this one I just read for fun--but I feel as if I should have been reading/analyzing these books. What questions should I sleep in mind while reading a text and does it help to try to speed read if you are prepping for MCAT's verbal reasoning portion. Thanks as always guys. Please help a poor fellow out.

 

[IncognitoGuy]

Pretty sure those are all fiction.. 😉

But if you've done verbal passages, very rarely if ever do you get stuff from Lord of the Flies or something like that. People recommend reading the Economist, the Atlantic and other densely written news sources. Not a perfect source, but it helps.

And consider the kinds of questions you get - ones of tone, of looking at the passage from the author's perspective or inferring based on it.

Check out the MCAT forum for some more suggestions.

 

[mcloaf]

Non fiction novels?

 

[powerfetish]

Sorry, I was confusing fiction with SciFi. I am reading silent spring now that is a real nonfiction novel.

 

[LizzyM]

Nonfiction and novels are two different things. Nonfiction means "true stories" (history, biography, autobiography, natural science and social science explained for the lay audience, and so forth). Novels are "fiction" meaning made-up stories and of a longer length than a short story.

May I suggest magazines rather than novels? Take a look at The Economist for short passages and The New Yorker for longer passages.

Also, take a look at ExamKrackers for tips on how to figure out the logic behind the Verbal Reasoning questions. There are a lot of tricks to finding the least bad answer and some clues in the questions as to what the correct response should, or should not, include.

After you know something about the types of questions that are asked, imagine you are writing questions for the passages you've read in magazines. What questions would you ask and how would the least bad answer be formulated?