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- Attending Physician
These are my strategies for the verbal I've picked up and modified for this week. of course the best strategy is insane amounts of practice. Tell me what you guys think and by all means add to the list...
first strategy
sit down with a stop watch, start the clock, do one passage, stop the clock, check the answers and understand what you did wrong (take no more then 5-10 min), start the clock and repeat. this basically breaks the test down into parts, if you do good here then take the whole thing at once.
why: this will minimize the time you have to reflect back or even reread the passage (when checking answers), with one week left this may save some time, more importantly youll actively search for reasoning behind the answers since you still feel pressured by the time constraint and since you 'want to know' what happened.
second strategy
be critical of the question stems and answers, circle definitive words like "only" and "certain" and be critical of them. after reading the passage write down 2 sentances on what the main idea is, or at least stop for 10-20 seconds and think about it. during the test this should be done in your head.
why: because difinitive words limit the meaning of the answer choices.
my personal "in test" strategy
read a passage, try the passage questions mark them up and skip the ones you dont know, finish the rest of the questions FOR THAT PASSAGE only and go back to the ones you skipped, afterword fill in the bubbly's.
why : a lot of information can be gained about the passage through the passage questions, youll have the question in your subconcious and reinforce the main idea through the other questions so when you return to the hard question you will have a little more passage info to help.
When checking answers I believe you should read the answers scripts that are correct and why the answer you chose was wrong. dont read the reasoning behind all the answers - you didnt pick them.
hope this helps people who are struggling with verbal.
first strategy
sit down with a stop watch, start the clock, do one passage, stop the clock, check the answers and understand what you did wrong (take no more then 5-10 min), start the clock and repeat. this basically breaks the test down into parts, if you do good here then take the whole thing at once.
why: this will minimize the time you have to reflect back or even reread the passage (when checking answers), with one week left this may save some time, more importantly youll actively search for reasoning behind the answers since you still feel pressured by the time constraint and since you 'want to know' what happened.
second strategy
be critical of the question stems and answers, circle definitive words like "only" and "certain" and be critical of them. after reading the passage write down 2 sentances on what the main idea is, or at least stop for 10-20 seconds and think about it. during the test this should be done in your head.
why: because difinitive words limit the meaning of the answer choices.
my personal "in test" strategy
read a passage, try the passage questions mark them up and skip the ones you dont know, finish the rest of the questions FOR THAT PASSAGE only and go back to the ones you skipped, afterword fill in the bubbly's.
why : a lot of information can be gained about the passage through the passage questions, youll have the question in your subconcious and reinforce the main idea through the other questions so when you return to the hard question you will have a little more passage info to help.
When checking answers I believe you should read the answers scripts that are correct and why the answer you chose was wrong. dont read the reasoning behind all the answers - you didnt pick them.
hope this helps people who are struggling with verbal.
