a different kind of verbal problem, help :|

[750hp]

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hey everyone, i understand that verbal is a unique section which is to say, each person must find what works for them

i have found a pretty good strategy that works very well for me, the only problem is that when i get to the second last passage, i have about 12minutes left.. my scores have a trend with 1 wrong in the first two passages, 2 wrong in the next to, and as i dwindle down to the very last two, i dont have time to do anything with them and it kills my points

basically what i do is jot down little notes about the authors opinion is of each paragraph, ie. id have 2-3 point form notes of what the author is saying - this of course depends on the nature of the passage (i had passage about joining wood together that i had time to read, answer and i bombed it :S)

anyhow, any help is appreciated on what i could do to salvage some time that i can use to read/answer the last two paragraphs, thanks in advance!

 

[Bruinsfinalfour]

Read..read..and read. Read scientific articles, read the newspaper, read stuff that you normally would never read (archeology journals). This is the only way to increase your reading speed and the only way you're gonna be able to finish the Verbal section on time with the method you've outlined.

 

[750hp]

oh god, my test is in 1 week

 

[Bruinsfinalfour]

In that case I'm gonna recommend you do something else since you wont be able to improve you're reading speed much. You said you can do the first 5 passages in 48 minutes (roughly 9.5 minutes per passage) and only have 12 minutes left to do the last two passages...so i would advice you to spend your usual 9 minutes on passage number 6....leaving 3 minutes left on the last passage. In this last passage without even reading the passage try to answer the questions solely based on how the answer choices sound (its pretty easy to eliminate at least one and sometimes two of the answers just based on extreme words elimination). If you see a question that refers to a word in the passage or references a line try to quickly skim the passage for these (no more than 30 seconds).
This method is risky but if you ace your first 6 passages (only miss 4 or 5) and smart guess your way to a 2 or 3 out of 5 or 6 on the last passage, you are looking at a 11-12 on verbal.

One other thought...you maybe already doing this...but try to spend the least amount of time (the 3 minute passage) on the hardest passage and not necessarily the last one.

 

[750hp]

that sounds like a really good idea, im going to try it - lets hope it works as good as it sounds