last 5-10 min of verbal - what's your approach??

[mandy_848]

---

Members do not see this ad.

i normally have 1 (sometimes, but rarely 2) passage left in the last 10 minutes and that seems to be the passage where i lose so many points. actually my last and second last passage cause the most point deductions since i just seem to run out of time.

i tried to do the TPR strategy of just reading the first line of each paragraph, and going back to the passage to find the information but i find that doesn't work for me at all. i never have enough of a sense of the passage to answer most of the questions. and then i tried just focusing on the passage but i tend to run out of time for the questions that way 😡

any suggestions? what's your approach when the time starts to run out?

 

[yunan]

i normally have 1 (sometimes, but rarely 2) passage left in the last 10 minutes and that seems to be the passage where i lose so many points. actually my last and second last passage cause the most point deductions since i just seem to run out of time.

i tried to do the TPR strategy of just reading the first line of each paragraph, and going back to the passage to find the information but i find that doesn't work for me at all. i never have enough of a sense of the passage to answer most of the questions. and then i tried just focusing on the passage but i tend to run out of time for the questions that way 😡

any suggestions? what's your approach when the time starts to run out?

10 min with 1 passage left is just right! I would kill if i'm up to that par. But it seems like you may have lost concentration at the end passages. Are you taking 5 second breaks in between passages to clear your mind? (per EK strategy)

 

[ctv1116]

If this has been happening to you with the AAMC tests, I wouldn't sweat it too much; the passages are roughly ordered from easiest to hardest, with the exception that thet 10 question passages are always filled with hard questions.

 

[mandy_848]

10 min with 1 passage left is just right! I would kill if i'm up to that par. But it seems like you may have lost concentration at the end passages. Are you taking 5 second breaks in between passages to clear your mind? (per EK strategy)

well maybe 5-10 minutes (more on the 5 min end). i was looking over my answers and i think it is partly due to the fact that i start to lose concentration as the time runs out. i totally forgot about the 5 sec break suggestion (i'm using tpr but heard about it somewhere else on the boards) - i guess i'll try that out.

 

[MoosePilot]

Bubble your guess letter and then start working through the ones you just guessed on.

 

[Mister Pie]

If you have 10 minutes left for your final passage, take it like you normally would. Ten minutes is enough for pretty much any passage, unless it has more than 8 questions.

Usually by about the 20 minute mark I have three passages left, at which point I start skimming. It didn't work that well for TPR diags but it seems to work for AAMC tests since the AAMC ones are more general.

 

[Scrub MD]

If you have 10 minutes left and two passages to go through, I'd try the EK approach of looking at question stems to figure out the answer. If you have five minutes then it is guess time.

But EK has an approach where they say to look at the question stems and see what you can figure out based on the question stems alone. I'd recommend you try that, if you have absolutely like 10 minutes left for 10 questions.

What are their tips for getting the correct answer on stems only?

 

[snakeplissken6]

this is probably the only section i can give my 2 cents cuz my average on verbal is 12-13. not like im an expert, verbal is so frustrating.


10 seconds is enough. don't panic. if you can, before the big day, just do timmed passages so that you can give yrself maybe 13 minutes on the last passage. it works. if for nothing else it will give you timming. so like from now till friday, just do some 85 minute verbal. you'll get a good pace or better.

skimming wont help cuz you dont know what to look for, if yr stretched. you can however skim for tone (is it biased? general idea of what its about) eliminate all obvious bad choices (ones that sound wrong, numeral choice questions: if 1 is in all the choices, 1 is good to pick) guess on anything that is specific (the main idea is, the author agrees with..) and answer questions that tell you where to go in the passage. one passage wont kill you. even to get above ten you can miss a whole passage.

dont stress. yr good enough, yr smart enough, and gosh darn it, sdn loves you.

 

[Sondra]

It is hard to explain without having the book in front of you. But if you know anyone with an EK strategy book, I'd go ahead and look at it.

I agree. You really have to look at the EK verbal book to understand how this works. I think it is a really good method, and EK's explanation and example is great. The only problem is that it takes me nearly as much time to find the answer from the answer steams only as I do just reading and answering the questions.

 

[N1DERL&]

Our instructors told us to make sure you do the straightforward questions such as the ones that refer to specific lines in the passage or definitions. These you could probably narrow down to two choices without having to read the entire passage.

After that, try to tackle the inference questions, strengthen/weaken.

Oh also sometimes the roman numeral ones can be done without too much reading, especially if it's asking which example was used or not used, if there was support or not, that sort of thing. Besides that, it's the letter of the day technique!

G'luck!!