Going from -3 to -1 per passage on verbal

[AntonFreeman]

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I am about 2 months away from the testing date. I have been missing 2 to 3 per passages on TPRH verbal book. Do you have any tips on how I could get it down to -1 to 0 range? I have been trying to use EK main idea strategy and trying to do 'postgame analysis' . Whenever I go over answers, I could see that all answers are in the passage or could be derived from the main idea. But I am having difficult time doing that on my own whenever I start a new passage.

 

[MDminded]

What types of questions are you missing?
- "Which of the following would most strengthen/weaken the author's point?"
- "What does "x" mean (paragraph 3)?"
- "Which of the following is supported by the passage?"

Let's see if we can try to nail down tips this way.

 

[coyotelime]

I'm on test 3(so about 56 passages in) on TPRH and my past performance fluctuates a lot. I think it really depends on the difficulty of the passages. There are days where I miss 1-3 on 3 passages and others where I miss 6-8. One thing I definitely got better at was looking for similarities in answer choices. I know this seems like a very basic tactic but may be rather difficult on convoluted questions that seem to have more than one right answer. If you're down to two answers, just see if one of them has anything in common with one of the other ones you already eliminated.

Detaching yourself from the passage helps as well. By this I mean actively read, but don't put your own two cents/knowledge into it unless it's really really common knowledge because that may end up skewing your answers.

I can usually tell the easy from the hard ones. I normally get 0-1 wrong on the easy ones and 2-3(sometimes 4) on the tougher ones.

Good luck! If it helps, I've done EK 101 too and I'm still sitting at 30-34/40 per test.

 

[Dr Dazzle]

I have done the first 34 passages in PR, and some are insanely difficult becuase they have long questions and are really complex. How long do you spend on average per passage? Ek 101 seem more reasonable, but I can't seem to beat 25/40= 7 on any of the tests. 30/40 is around a 10, so that's the goal. But is PR long, dense question format fair game for the real test?

I'm on test 3(so about 56 passages in) on TPRH and my past performance fluctuates a lot. I think it really depends on the difficulty of the passages. There are days where I miss 1-3 on 3 passages and others where I miss 6-8. One thing I definitely got better at was looking for similarities in answer choices. I know this seems like a very basic tactic but may be rather difficult on convoluted questions that seem to have more than one right answer. If you're down to two answers, just see if one of them has anything in common with one of the other ones you already eliminated.

Detaching yourself from the passage helps as well. By this I mean actively read, but don't put your own two cents/knowledge into it unless it's really really common knowledge because that may end up skewing your answers.

I can usually tell the easy from the hard ones. I normally get 0-1 wrong on the easy ones and 2-3(sometimes 4) on the tougher ones.

Good luck! If it helps, I've done EK 101 too and I'm still sitting at 30-34/40 per test.

 

[AntonFreeman]

What types of questions are you missing?
- "Which of the following would most strengthen/weaken the author's point?"
- "What does "x" mean (paragraph 3)?"
- "Which of the following is supported by the passage?"

Let's see if we can try to nail down tips this way.

I seem to miss

- "infer questions"
- "reasonable to conclude that the author of this passage.."
- "most likely agree.."

Basically I am missing questions that ask for deeper understanding of the main idea or author's tone/attitude.

 

[MDminded]

I seem to miss

- "infer questions"
- "reasonable to conclude that the author of this passage.."
- "most likely agree.."

Basically I am missing questions that ask for deeper understanding of the main idea or author's tone/attitude.

"Reasonable to conclude" is a tough question. It's asking you to make an inference. So sometimes you have to make sense of the answer choices first before figuring out which is alignment with the author/stem. I try to get a sense of which is more "positive" sounding and which is "negative" sounding. That sometimes helps.

"Most likely agree" - Figure out what the author's stance on something is. Use the adjectives he/she uses to figure this out. I hone in on things like "this person UNDERSTANDABLY believed this" or "HARSHLY criticized" to figure out the tone. Then I look at the language of the answer choices to see how that aligns with the author. Do they seem to be saying the same thing? Would those two people get along as friends?

Also, once I determine my answer choice, I figure out how all the others are wrong. I give myself SPECIFIC LINES to prove my case. (I play court room in my head.) That helps me out a lot, because then I know I'm not straying from outside the passage.

 

[ash914]

I'm currently studying too (9/10 test date, just started). I'm having a some of trouble with the inference/reasonably conclude passages too. When you think about it, it's main idea thing (plus tone on top of that). One thing I've found helpful is looking back over passages before checking answers. Without time pressure, it's easier to figure out the main idea and the author's views, and I can often catch mistakes I've made. Then when I look at the answers and score it, I have a better idea of where I went wrong. Right now, I'm still missing those questions sometimes, but it's gotten to the point where I get them right in that time before checking the answers, and it's carrying over into the actual timed passages.

The other thing for inference questions is that having to take multiple inference steps doesn't usually work i.e., if you're thinking "The author thinks X, so he thinks Y, so Z would be true," then you're making too many assumptions. It seems a little obvious, but I've caught myself doing it multiple times.