Yea. Try to limit yourself to 30-40 secs per question. If you can't come up with an answer in that time then guess and come back when you finish all the questions. It doesn't seem like a long time but trust me it is more than enough. The average passage has around 6 questions (some have more/some have less) and this should take you 3 mins on questions total per passage. Even if you are a very very very slow reader and you take say 5 mins to read each passage then that is 8 mins a passage x 7 passages for a total of 56 mins. However, most people can read the passage in 4 mins max so that means you get done in 49 mins. This is enough time to go back to marked questions. Your ultimate goal is to finish each passage in 6.5 mins (or even 6 if possible). Finishing the verbal section should be your very first priority always. At first it will feel weird becuase you will feel rushed and that you have to guess, but you will get better as you learn to quickly figure out what is question is asking and answer it and get better at eliminating wrong answers so that if you have to guess then at least you have a 50% chance of getting it right.
Hope this helps,
-LIS
100% on the mark. I use the same strategy and I've gone from guessing on the last passage to finishing up 2 min before hand. In detail this is what I do:
60-->52-->44-->36-->28-->20-->12-->4
-I write out my time limit for each passage before hand and as I'm going through the test I check if I'm over or under the time limit. This keeps my pacing honest throughout the test and forces me to guess and move on from the difficult questions.
--Now EK usually has 3 (5 Question passages), 3 (6 Qs pass), and 1 (7 Qs pass)...so I allocate my extra 4 min accordingly (7 Q's passage and one or two hard to understand passages)
---Reading the passage: In the past I read every single word and tried to grasp every single detail from the passage. I have long moved away from this, as that was my main problem in finishing up on time. Now I read 2-3 words at a time. Its not only helped me in pacing but I tend to grasp the main idea of the passage more easily. I also seem to remember where I need to go within a passage for a exact detail question.
----Regarding questions: The best advise I have gotten and has helped me finish on time and make atleast a 10 a realistic goal is-->GO WITH YOUR GUT FEELING and move on. Most of us are science majors and have a hard time moving on when faced with a difficult question. Reading and re-reading will get you nowhere in VR. Rather eliminating the obvious wrong choices and picking out the LEAST WRONG choice (usually neutral wording/without any extremes) without wasting time seems to go very far. As the above post pointed out, this feels very weird at first...almost like throwing in the towel and leaving it up to chance, but trust me it works. Ex/ I first tried doing this for EK4, went with my "gut answer" on 14 questions, when I went back to those marked question I realized I had gotten 10 of the 14 correct. I rather get the 4 wrong then not get to passage and half at the end.
Hope this helps...keep on truckin'