Not happy with the use of the English language!

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hj0517

hj0517

10+ Year Member
Dec 19, 2007
130
0
Status
Medical Student
I am being increasingly frustrated by question writers who must just write a normal question and whip out their thesaurus! I have noticed it a couple of times in UW and now its in a lot of questions on USMLErx.

I understand that the examiners are trying to get students to understand descriptions rather than eponymous syndromes but some of the descriptive terms don't fit even though I know what they are trying to say. Now I'm no English expert, my undergrad is in science but I think sometimes the questions are made unduly hard (or the correct answer seems wrong) because of the incorrect use of a descriptive term / term is a loosely associated variant.

Will this be the same on the exam??

Ahh thats my rant over two weeks before the exam...

Anyone else feel this way?
 
A

Atomic1000

10+ Year Member
Oct 25, 2008
49
0
Status
Medical Student
hj0517 said:
I am being increasingly frustrated by question writers who must just write a normal question and whip out their thesaurus! I have noticed it a couple of times in UW and now its in a lot of questions on USMLErx.

I understand that the examiners are trying to get students to understand descriptions rather than eponymous syndromes but some of the descriptive terms don't fit even though I know what they are trying to say. Now I'm no English expert, my undergrad is in science but I think sometimes the questions are made unduly hard (or the correct answer seems wrong) because of the incorrect use of a descriptive term / term is a loosely associated variant.

Will this be the same on the exam??

Ahh thats my rant over two weeks before the exam...

Anyone else feel this way?
Click to expand...
it's "english language". Not "the english language". i dont know about usmlerx (supposed to be a waste of time anyway....) but uworld is reasonable and while i cannot answer quite a few questions correctly, i am pretty sure that it is not becuase of "the english language".

:rolleyes::laugh:
 
hj0517

hj0517

10+ Year Member
Dec 19, 2007
130
0
Status
Medical Student
I apologize for my grammatical error, as stated previously I am not an English major!

ps. I thought it was "the" because there are >1 languages - is that not correct?

and as for Rx, I'll give you a verdict after the exam but early indications are that it is - as people say - garbage.
 
doc20

doc20

10+ Year Member
5+ Year Member
Oct 20, 2007
380
0
Cleveland
Status
Attending Physician
i felt rx was perfect to use in the beginning of preparation and like a building stone to more difficulte uworld, granted rx is easy but it does cover major concepts which uworld asks in a much tougher usmle style way
 
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