Need help with my VR timing!

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Femtochemistry

Skunk Works
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Hi,

Every time i time my self doing VR, it takes me over 10 (sometimes 12 min) minutes to finish a single passage! I don?t make any notes about the passage, but i do underline important words. What can i do to lower the time i spend on each VR? Should i take notes on each paragraph? I do seem to spend some time answering the questions too: reading each questions several times to deduce the correct answer.

Any advice is greatly welcomed.

Thx!
 
Here's my suggestion. Read at a normal pace and look for the main idea of the paragraph. Create a generalized mental map of the passage in your head, nothing extensive. Do not underline anything, details will only clog up your main idea. Once done reading, take 20 seconds to pause and create the main idea of the passage in your head. With the main idea go after the questions and be decisive even if you may be unsure of an answer. Once you select an answer move on and forget about it.

One other thing, there are some passages that will take 10 minutes or more to finish depending on the number of questions. A good rule of thumb is to spend no more than 3 minutes reading the passage and use the rest to answer questions. 3 minutes is longer than you think and most people can read a passage in far less than that.
 
look - be very aggressive - try different things.
I'm not bragging, but I got a 13 on the VR section and I BARELY finished.
Honestly I think you just need to read everything as fast as freaking possible.
Screw underlining, screw everything else.
Just practice reading everything... newspapers... whatever as fast as possible.
the way I did it, I would summarize the passage in my head - and very very simply. for instance after a passage I would take something away like "trees are good".
and another thing I do, and this is rather subconcious - I have three categories - good/bad/so-so.
Reading a passage I think trees are good. pollution bad. conservation strategies so-so.
just try it slowly by asking yourself "what am I reading right now"
what does this line say right here....
speed it up... till you can really really fly through the passages.
also I jumped around a lot - I took maybe 30secs-1min at the beginning of the test and skimmed the first ffew lines of every passage. anything about philosophy or writing or any of that kind of cr@p - I would deal with last. Give me the science or the politics. and if you do that, by choosing the passages you are most comfortable with, you should be able to move quickly and accurately through these.
honestly, that triaging thing was probably the single most important thing which helped me do well.
 
I read heavily, so reading fast is not a problem for me. I finished the verbal section 10 minutes early, though I only got an 11.🙁

My suggestion is to read the newspaper every morning. But make yourself read the articles fast. Practice reading fast. You don't have to read each word individually. Your eyes should be moving quickly over the page and you should be able to get the main idea and a general understanding of the article, and even be able to remember what order the points were made in. Just keep at it and you'll be fine.
 
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