Hints to improve reading score

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Comet208

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Hi all...

I just want to ask people what they did to improve their reading scores.. especially if English is their 2nd or 3rd language! (my case)

thx

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Read the news daily and magazines such as Scientific American. Go over articles and try to summarize what it was about. Looking back, I would recommend maybe subscribing to the online magazine in order to practice reading through text on a computer screen. (While English is my first language, I do not read very many non-textbooks and I consider myself a slow-average reader).
 
A friend of mine who is attending dental school at Oregon gave me far and away the best advice I received for reading comprehension. This advice will probably seem obvious to you, but keeping it in mind helped me score extremely well.

He told me this: FOCUS. Tell yourself ahead of time that you are going to have laser-sharp focus and concentration during reading comprehension, especially on test day. It is a mind game, and you must get psyched up for it. For the science sections of the DAT, focus is important, but chances are you will have memorized most of the material and will be able to just plug in your answers (especially for biology and organic chemistry). For reading comprehension, however, you must exert all your efforts toward memorizing (as much as possible) the structure of the passages you are given, and toward understanding what they are saying. I'm not the greatest reader, but having absolutely laser-sharp focus allowed me to score very highly on this section with very little practice. For you, Comet, with English being your second language, you are going to have to focus all the more intently.

That being said, it's also absolutely essential that you have spent time practicing a method for jotting down the structure of the reading passages you are given. Write down a main idea or two from each paragraph so that you can jump back to them and refer to them when you are given a question. For me, taking good notes on the structure and having intense focus on remembering what was where made it easy to locate the answers for each question. Keep in mind that very few questions you will be given will require you to analyze or make inferences. It's basically a game of hide-and-seek - how fast can you locate the facts?

I hope this helps you out in your prep. Good luck!
 
Excellent advice. Focus is the key. As was just posted, you don't have to analyze much on this section. You just have to search out the answers to what they are asking. On occasion you will have to understand the material, but usually you will only have to read it and then respond to it without developing a real understanding of it.

It seems like too often peope find the corresponding paragraph in the chapter and then read the paragraphs above and below it before answering the question. At times this may be necessary, but it probably isn't.

The term "reading comprehension" isn't entirely true with this part of the exam, because comprehension isn't needed on most of the questions.

I only missed 2 or 3 on this section by maintaing focus and hunting for the right answer--no actual reading on my part.
 
I found the key to this section is how quickly you can get through the passage (5 minutes is best) and exit with a thorough understanding of its main idea and general strucure. Then you have plenty of time to hunt for answers. I ended up with a 22, not super, but i'm happy with it.
 
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