improve verbal score?

[Chankovsky]

I know that reading helps with verbal, but what kinds of materials should I read. Any recommendations.

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[envelope]

anything that will keep you awake and interested...

try reading the new yorker and stuff...it can be interesting...or if u're sciency, scientific american has passages similar to the mcat...

i read good old harry potter...

read anything you like...reading something is the key.

 

[PreMedAdAG]

here's to Harry Potter reading...
I'm also reading the Adventures of Huck Finn and Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault (pretty intense, but interesting), then I read the newspaper, get on NYtimes.com, and also read TIME magazine. Seems that I devote about an hour to reading everyday, if not more. Good luck.. but I'm thinking we should write to JK Rowling and let her know that she is crucial to med school preparation!!

 

[dustin04ag]

I suggest reading the most boring confusing crap you can get your hands on... cause that is what i think the verbal section is.

If you can't tell, I dont like the verbal section very much!

 

[indo]

Originally posted by dustin04ag
I suggest reading the most boring confusing crap you can get your hands on... cause that is what i think the verbal section is.

If you can't tell, I dont like the verbal section very much!

I agree...read stuff that you would never want to read like the "UK's Journal of Industrial Horticulture".

 

[Iron Horse]

Get out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself. Go to a good book store and pick out several journals from the mag section. Try lit journals (Granta, etc.), policy journals (Foreign Affairs, etc.), Harper's, The Economist, New Yorker, etc. Read a lot, and not casually, i.e. concentrate, read at a good pace and try to absorb and understand the content. Periodically take practice exams. Good luck.

 

[silenthunder]

I agree with what people are generally saying:

try and read a variety of things, mostly things that you are not used to reading. The newspaper is a bit simple, and I find that the articles are nowhere near as confusing as MCAT passages.

One things you may want to look at is reading philosophy articles/journals/books. Maybe even look up a few bioethics related articles, since this might help you out later on in the interview process as well. Most bioethics articles are fairly complicated (although, like everything else they range in difficulty)

I know many people will groan, but reading a book like
the metaphysics of star trek (or the ethics of-) might help since
it gets technical, and is pretty boring in parts.

hope everyone's coming along with prepping,

Good luck, and cheers,

Silenthunder

 

[thackl]

I posted this in one of the other forums. Worked for me:

Some are naturals at VR, but most are not. I don't think leisure reading will help much. For me, it took lots of practice. I started out in PR with a 6 and ended up with a 12. The PR method is to throw you in the "sandbox" by having you attempt only 5,6 or at most, 7 passages (after ranking of course). The caveat is you must be completely anal and try to get everything right on the selected passages. This method didn't help my score much (peaked at 8), however, it did force me to focus on why I got questions wrong.

About 2.5wks before the MCAT I ditched the method and started doing all the passages (imediately scored a 10). This is not hard. Another misconception is that you must be an extraordinarily quick reader. Not true! I am very slow and subvocalize horibly and if I try to speed up nearly all concepts and main points are lost. In the end, I didn't waste time ranking, browsing questions, marking up the passage with stuff related to the questions, etc. I spent most of my time reading and understanding. I only highlighted main ideas and author opinions. Very little time was spent on the questions. By doing the PR method and practicing (probably 150+ passages total over 3 months- not that hard) my insticts became much better. I learned methods on how to eliminate answer choices ("teasers, moldy, extreme, partially correct", etc) and get to the correct one over 80% of the time. Critical post analysis is an important part of this as well. Why did you pick the wrong ans? Why is it wrong? Why is the right ans right?

If not a natural, bust your ass. This is the most important test you will ever take. Don't short yourself......... and yes, I too have been told by many, including the director of admissions at my brothers school, that the VR is considered very highly, followed by BIO, which is just VR2 (that's for another rant).

 

[lotanna]

Originally posted by thackl
I posted this in one of the other forums. Worked for me:

Some are naturals at VR, but most are not. I don't think leisure reading will help much. For me, it took lots of practice. I started out in PR with a 6 and ended up with a 12. The PR method is to throw you in the "sandbox" by having you attempt only 5,6 or at most, 7 passages (after ranking of course). The caveat is you must be completely anal and try to get everything right on the selected passages. This method didn't help my score much (peaked at 8), however, it did force me to focus on why I got questions wrong.

About 2.5wks before the MCAT I ditched the method and started doing all the passages (imediately scored a 10). This is not hard. Another misconception is that you must be an extraordinarily quick reader. Not true! I am very slow and subvocalize horibly and if I try to speed up nearly all concepts and main points are lost. In the end, I didn't waste time ranking, browsing questions, marking up the passage with stuff related to the questions, etc. I spent most of my time reading and understanding. I only highlighted main ideas and author opinions. Very little time was spent on the questions. By doing the PR method and practicing (probably 150+ passages total over 3 months- not that hard) my insticts became much better. I learned methods on how to eliminate answer choices ("teasers, moldy, extreme, partially correct", etc) and get to the correct one over 80% of the time. Critical post analysis is an important part of this as well. Why did you pick the wrong ans? Why is it wrong? Why is the right ans right?

If not a natural, bust your ass. This is the most important test you will ever take. Don't short yourself......... and yes, I too have been told by many, including the director of admissions at my brothers school, that the VR is considered very highly, followed by BIO, which is just VR2 (that's for another rant).

well said, u just described the Examkrackers method.
I am in a PR class, which thank goodness is free thru a summer prog, and it cracks me up when people actually follow the methds and are not even getting up to a 7. I'm using EK study materials, and their verbal book, and getting a 9 on their practice verbal and the AAMC exams.
I'm really aiming at least for a 10, any critical advice to get 4 more questions right would be very beneficial

 

[JDENTHOPEFULL]

read the comics...that always works for me

 

[carpe diem]

I practiced reading articles on subjects that I seemed to always get.....ones I was not used to reading such as art, philosophy, literature, archeology/paleontology.

I also read scientific journals on subjects that I had no clue about just to see what I could get from reading rapidly for 6 minutes. After doing that for a couple of weeks, the relatively straight forward "science related" verbal passages were a breeze. I also improved in physical sciences by doing this.

To practice understanding a poorly written essay, I bought a book on literary textual criticism and read it for "leisure", concentrating on discerning the main point of each paragraph. (No offense meant to all of you literature/philosophy majors out there)

Hope this helps.

 

[ZigZag]

Originally posted by thackl
I posted this in one of the other forums. Worked for me:

Some are naturals at VR, but most are not. I don't think leisure reading will help much. For me, it took lots of practice. I started out in PR with a 6 and ended up with a 12. The PR method is to throw you in the "sandbox" by having you attempt only 5,6 or at most, 7 passages (after ranking of course). The caveat is you must be completely anal and try to get everything right on the selected passages. This method didn't help my score much (peaked at 8), however, it did force me to focus on why I got questions wrong.

About 2.5wks before the MCAT I ditched the method and started doing all the passages (imediately scored a 10). This is not hard. Another misconception is that you must be an extraordinarily quick reader. Not true! I am very slow and subvocalize horibly and if I try to speed up nearly all concepts and main points are lost. In the end, I didn't waste time ranking, browsing questions, marking up the passage with stuff related to the questions, etc. I spent most of my time reading and understanding. I only highlighted main ideas and author opinions. Very little time was spent on the questions. By doing the PR method and practicing (probably 150+ passages total over 3 months- not that hard) my insticts became much better. I learned methods on how to eliminate answer choices ("teasers, moldy, extreme, partially correct", etc) and get to the correct one over 80% of the time. Critical post analysis is an important part of this as well. Why did you pick the wrong ans? Why is it wrong? Why is the right ans right?

If not a natural, bust your ass. This is the most important test you will ever take. Don't short yourself......... and yes, I too have been told by many, including the director of admissions at my brothers school, that the VR is considered very highly, followed by BIO, which is just VR2 (that's for another rant).

I totally agree. TPR Verbal training didn't work for me at all.