EK makes a good point about verbal

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novawildcat

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EK claims it is a myth that you need to read volumes and volumes of material in order to improve your verbal score. This is because even if you manage to double the rate at which you read, this will only save you about 2 min. on reading everything and spread out over all the questions in the verbal that only gives you about 2 extra seconds for each question--not exactly worth 5 months of reading 100 books. So did anyone who actually read tons and tons of stuff actually feel like it helped them improve on verbal or is EK totally right?

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I think where EK slightly misses, is that if you read tons and tons of material, your focus and skill at reading actively would improve.

EK makes some very valid points, but I feel most of their tactics are on mud slinging on other test prep companies' strategies.
 
While reading is my strong point, I was annoyed that sometimes I was really on the fence between two choices, and even after looking at the answer I wasn't so sure why one was the "best" answer. What helped was EK's suggestion (probably other prep companies' too, but I wouldn't know) about figuring out "who" the author is and where he's coming from/what he's trying to accomplish with the passage. Keeping that in the back of my mind while I answered the questions was very helpful. It was easy at the beginning to just read each passage as if it were coming from a text book and not question the motivations. Once I realized I was missing half the picture by doing that, my score was consistently two points higher. Anyway, that's my two cents.

Oh yeah, I also think it's lame that EK knocks other prep companies.
 
I think where EK slightly misses, is that if you read tons and tons of material, your focus and skill at reading actively would improve.

EK makes some very valid points, but I feel most of their tactics are on mud slinging on other test prep companies' strategies.

Most of their tactics are mud slinging? I would say that most of their tactics are right on, especially with respect to verbal, with a little mud slinging thrown in.
 
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I guess I'm confused: if you could double your reading speed you'd only save two minutes total? Most people spend about three minutes per message when they start out (without training): the savings would be 1.5 minutes per passage for a total of more than ten minutes on the entire section. That in turn translates into an additional fifteen (actually, sixteen) seconds per passage; moreover, if you've gone from three minutes per passage to 1.5, you have fifty percent more time per question. I'm puzzled as to why that;s not worth some effort. And even if my numbers are high (as I said, there for an untrained student; if you move from 2 minutes a passage to 1 the time per question is increased about 28 percent), they're directionally correct: faster reading is worth a lot.

Also, as has been mentioned, reading practice should increase accuracy as well as speed. It seems very, very odd to say it doesn't help much.
 
The main point that you should take from the EK method is that it is easier to speed up on the answering questions part than it is to increase your reading speed. I am average to slow in terms of reading speed, but I always finished the VR section 10 or more minutes early (except on the real thing where I had the messed up passage). How can I do this with my reading pace? I read for comprehension and try not to refer to the passage unless the question is about details. The most valuable part of the EK material is the section about getting information from the answer choices. A lot of answers just cannot be correct MCAT answers because of the way they are worded. Also the section about the main idea is helpful. Just my opinion.
 
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