I usually don't feel like typing this out, but I just "upgraded" my windows version, and I'm waiting for some lost downloads to re-download, so here's my ancient chinese verbal secret.
I improved my verbal by 2 points (on practice tests, I only took the real one once, thank God) in one day by using this technique.
1. Don't skip around on passages. If you want to do well reliably, you'll have to finish them all anyways. No reason to waste time trying to evaluate the difficulty level since you have to do them all anyways. Also, no reason to chance mixing up the answers on the bubble sheet - I had a friend who did this last year, and he got a 4. Needless to say, he's taking it again.
2. Read the questions first, and notice the ones that ask for something specific, that
has to be explicitly stated in the passage.
3. Read for facts and strong words. Underline any facts, and draw an arrow in the margin to facts that you know are asked for in the questions (which you were smart enough to read ahead of time). Also underline strong words (always, never, most, least, etc.) and these will give you as good an idea of tone as you need.
4. Answer the fact questions first. I found that sometimes up to half the questions were specific fact-finding questions and were "gimmes".
5. Next answer the tone type questions. Usually the underlined words and phrases give you enough info to do this with accuracy.
6. If in doubt, go with your first, gut instinct. I used to mark all my questions that I doubted my answers, and 6/10 that I changed were right to start with. Hence, I never change an answer.
*DISCLAIMER*
This won't work for everyone. Heck, I'm not sure it worked for me - I may have just gotten lucky. I'm just offering this idea for anyone who wants to try it (I tried it on a practice test, and my scores which were around 7-8 went to 10-11, and I got an 11 on the real thing). I always had about 30 minutes left after the test, but like I said - I always go with my gut instinct, so I didn't go back and look anything over. I did look over my answer sheet to make sure I had bubbled in the answers I wanted, just to double check.
One last note: I think there's a very good reason they call this section Verbal Reasoning, rather than Reading Comprehension. It's because they don't give a rat's behind if you comprehend the passage; all they care about is whether or not you can bubble in the right answer. I like to think of it as the Verbal Get It Right With As Little Effort As Possible section. I basically only skimmed the test, and when I left the test center I couldn't remember any sections well, and some almost not at all. Not because I got the questions wrong (at least not all of 'em), but rather because I only read the parts necessary to answer the questions.
That's my advice - take it or leave it.
