pcat reading section tips?

[tprice108]

Do any of you guys with high scores on the reading section and/or verbal section have any tips to share? I did much much worse on these sections than I had expected last time, so I'm attempting to get better for the January PCAT.

For instance would it be good to skim the questions first or go straight to the passage? Don't even read the passage just look for the answers? Any and I mean any help would be amazing right now. Thanks

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[PharmPrincess]

When I took the PCAT, the Kaplan book had some good advice on what to look for (word-wise) while reading the passages. I also have heard from people who retook the PCAT that they tend to repeat some of the passages, so perhaps that would work out in your favor. For the verbal section, unless you read a lot of books or a dictionary laugh, i guess you can hope for is that they repeat some of the words. Try to get as many PCAT prep books too.

 

[fenixtnlfan]

Moved to PCAT forum because of topic.

 

[diastole]

I was an SAT tutor before and I'm trying to remember the tips for this section. It was a long time ago but I think it was:

1. Read whole intro and then first and last sentence of each paragraph to get a feel for the passage.
2. Next go to the questions. If it is a general question like "the best title of this passage is" or "the tone of the passage is," skip it for now.
3. If it is a specific question like "in paragraph 2, what did the author mean by," read the whole paragraph and answer the question.
4. Keep answering the specific questions. On the SAT, they asked the questions in the order they are found in the passages and I can't remember if that was the case for the PCAT. If not, you could just scan the questions and look for all the questions in paragraph 2 and then move onto paragraph 3.
5. By the time you are finished answering the specific questions, you should have read the whole passage. Go back and answer the general questions.

The rationale behind this method was that students lose focus and can't remember what they are reading so they score higher if they don't read the whole passage first. I have only taken one of the practice PCATs but it looks like those passages are a lot shorter so it might be easier just to read the whole passage first. I prefer to read the whole passage but if you are having problems remembering what you read by the time you get to the end, then this method could be pretty helpful. I would try it out on practice tests to see how it works for you.