kaplan vs. examkrackers verbal strategy

[mosdef]

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what exactly is the difference between the methods taught by Examkrackers and Kaplan on the verbal section. I know that kaplan emphasizes finding the topic, scope, and purpose whilst paraphrasing each paragraph. Does Examkrackers generally say the same thing.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

i was just skimming examkracker's verbal tips yesterday and am taking a kaplan course. it seems like the primary difference is that ek does not recommend passage mapping. they think you should digest each passage as a whole. both recommend identifying the point of the passage after reading it. ek also recommends taking a 5 second break before each passage and reading each passage as if you were an academic critiquing it.

 

[Jonathan13180]

EXAMKRACKERS in my opinion provides the best verbal strategy. Exlawgrrl has it right: the main difference between kaplan and EK is that in EK, they instruct you NOT to go back to the passge, to use intuition and CONFIDENCE while reading passages, whereas in kaplan, they tell you to underline words, go back to the passage, etc. Both intstruct you to look out for "distractors", answers that are put there on purpose in order to F**k you up. I have tried Kaplans way, and i find EKs much better.
PM me if you have any more questions.

 

[MD Rapper]

The Examkrackers strategy is drastically different. I don't know if I could describe it to you in just one post but I'll give you the main points of it. One thing that I can tell you is that EK is a lot more precise as far as what they want you to do... in other words, they think that there is only one way to tackle the section.

** I'm giving you these to satisfy your curiosity. To learn these fully or apply them, you would probably have to pick up EK's book.

Check it out:

EK
- It makes more sense to do the passages in the order that they are given. This gets rid of any doubt as to what you should be doing during the section.
- Do NOT underline or annotate the passage.. you should be reading it as one whole piece of work. This helps to answer the large majority of the questions since they are mostly not detail oriented.
- You should underline/annotate question stems and spend more time on questions cause that is what is getting you your score.
- It is often possible to use inferences from the question stem only to answer a question.
- Reading faster doesn't help your score. But its important that you understand the passage as best as you can. If you don't, you won't get the questions at all.
- You should never get behind on passages.. time management is of the essense.
- Read with confidence and almost arrogance.. if you see something weird in a passage, assume it is the author's fault and not yours.
- Practice with mainly AAMC materials because no one, not even EK, can replicate them.


There is a lot more but that is what I remember off the top of my head. Their book is really good and concise if you want to actually employ their strategy. The thing is, you probably wouldn't be able to mesh Kaplan and EK's strategy together. EK is meant to be a whole system in itself that wouldn't work with interference of other strategies.

Given that there is about two weeks left (and I'm assuming your taking the Aug. test), I'm thinking its better to stick to what you are doing right now and just PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE. This is best thing you can do at this point to improve your score.

Hope that helped

 

[Jonathan13180]

I agree and forgot to mention that- Whatever works for you, then stick with it, MDRapper is right.