Doing verbal without reading passages!

[unsung]

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I'm working through EK Verbal and just completed lecture 2's 30 min exam (Qs for 3 passages given WITHOUT the passages, as practice for gleaning info from Q stems & answer choices).

It was amazing how much information about the passage it was possible to obtain simply from reading all the Q stems closely, paying attention to the phrasing of the Q stems, and using logic!

Anyway, I scored a 12 on this exam (no passages), whereas with the last exam (passages given), let's just say I did MUCH MUCH worse (<10)!

I think the problem was that I got too distracted/weighed down by all the details in the passage, that by the time it came down to answering Qs, my mind was totally muddled. Another problem is that I can sometimes fabricate (or, this sounds better... "discover") relationships between disparate, unrelated elements. This is good for brainstorming, for being creative, and for writing Bjork lyrics... not so good for finding correct answers on MCAT verbal 😉

So, I think a key for my improvement lies in really distilling the passage down to its core elements and paying close attention to both the phrasing of the Q stems and the logic of the answer choices.

Anyway, just thought I'd share my experience with EK verbal. It's really amazing how many Qs one can answer without even reading the passage!

 

[EECStoMed]

Those were handpicked passages. Trying do that without reading on the real MCAT.

 

[mongrel]

I had the same experience! It was definitely an eye-opener to look for strong context clues in the questions in addition to analyzing the passage.

 

[unsung]

Those were handpicked passages. Trying do that without reading on the real MCAT.

I realize that. But I thought those passages effectively illustrated the point of the lecture (as they should).

Of course, I'm not advocating NOT reading the passages on a REAL MCAT... but I may try doing a practice sample MCAT in this fashion just to practice paying close attention to Q-stems/answer choices.

It's just one more "tool" to use in conquering the verbal section. Take it or leave it.

(Edit: it should also be noted that the questions used (minus passage) were pulled from AAMC materials! So they were not written by EK!)

 

[dr.kicia]

I realize that. But I thought those passages effectively illustrated the point of the lecture (as they should).

Of course, I'm not advocating NOT reading the passages on a REAL MCAT... but I may try doing a practice sample MCAT in this fashion just to practice paying close attention to Q-stems/answer choices.

It's just one more "tool" to use in conquering the verbal section. Take it or leave it.

(Edit: it should also be noted that the questions used (minus passage) were pulled from AAMC materials! So they were not written by EK!)

i also scored 12 on that lecture but without reading passage on the FL verbal i got 4 With reading i got 7 so i guess the best thing to do is read with max attention and then use question stems to eliminate the answers. I am going to do that next. I am a slow reader but have really good text comprehension. What i was doing wrong so far is i was trying to skim thru text to make everything on time but noticed that i had to go back to passage because i didn't read carefully and at the end i would run out of time anyways. So my next FL VR i will just read how i always do and see how that goes.
Not reading passage for the real VR would be silly.