all those who got phenomenal scores(32+)..V.Reasoning included

[dreambig2night]

do you approach the verbal reasoning section with a different mindset than from the science sections?

also, with reference to V.R:

the more I try to find the main idea the more I find myself thinking about finding the main idea rather than finding the main idea itself.

Any new suggestions on how to tune myself into finding the FREAKIN MAIN IDEA??????

I just did Kaplans V.R 9 section test and I got 26 questions wrong!!!!!!!!
im in despair!~

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[brs23]

Kaplan sucked with verbal....I took a verbal full length the day before I took the real test, and I got like 26/27 questions wrong. Don't sweat it. Here's a suggestion for trying to get the gist of the passage:

Instead of asking yourself, "what is the main idea of the passage?", ask "what is the author's oppinion?" Almost all of the authors have some sort of oppinion, and while they may present evidence for both sides of an argument, most of the passages will lean to one side or the other. If you can catch what the author is arguing, then you will have a great lead on what the "main idea" is. So many of the questions are about the author's oppinion that this becomes more useful than the main idea question anyway.

b

 

[silkworm]

I am far from a verbal god, but an approach that helps me is to circle key words in the passage, and after you finished reading, quickly scan the circled words, use them as nodes to link up the main idea.

Kaplan verbal #3, #7-#9 are extremely hard. So don't panic.

 

[vegangirl]

Instead of asking yourself, "what is the main idea of the passage?", ask "what is the author's oppinion?" Almost all of the authors have some sort of oppinion, and while they may present evidence for both sides of an argument, most of the passages will lean to one side or the other. If you can catch what the author is arguing, then you will have a great lead on what the "main idea" is. So many of the questions are about the author's oppinion that this becomes more useful than the main idea question anyway.

This person read my mind I saw my verbal jump from a 5 to a 9 just by thinking about the authors point of view and not getting bogged down with all the other experts ideas. Did anyone else notice how a passage tells you the authors view, then person X's view, then person Y's view, and then how X and Y are related etc.... they try to trick you by giving a number of different opinions but if you FILTER through the material and stick with the author you have a better chance of doing well. Hmmm. if only I could find a strategy for physics

 

[!dr_nick!]

Be sure not to rely on outside knowledge for VR. Remember, they arent necessarily asking what the truth is, but what the author says it is.

 

[VFrank]

Instead of circling key words in the passage, the strategy I used was to jot down little notes next to each paragraph when I was done reading -- really short little four-word notes that I could refer back to. Not only does this make the information more findable in the passage, but by jotting down what the paragraph was about, you have a chance to internalize what that paragraph MEANS and WHY the author wrote it. In my opinion, circling key words doesn't really allow you to understand things as well as does paraphrasing.

 

[bella_dottoressa]

I've gotten on 11s decently consistently in my verbal prep, and I swear to God the hardest questions are the "what is the main thesis of this passage" ones. I definately agree with the above posters to finding which way the author is leaning on whatever it is. I think going through your tests when you're done and seeing the types of questions you tend to get wrong helps too. With enough practice you'll be able to pick out answers that just look wrong, etc. It's all about intuition.

 

[velo]

One thing that sometimes helps with MI is to skim over the questions for about 5 sec and see if there's a question that asks "what is the main idea of the passage?" Read those answer choices. One of them has to be the real MI right? It should get you in the right mindset to read the passage too.

As for overall verbal advise, i don't really have much great wisdom to impart. Honestly, I just kept practicing until it clicked.

Someone once asked me how I attacked VR, I thought about it for a while, struggling to put it into words, and suddenly it came to me...i thought what I said was quite profound...but it just pissed my friend off, because apparently what I told her was "I read the passages.....then, i answered the questions..."