Post-Game Analysis for VR

[fizzlin]

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How do you guys go about doing post-game analysis for passages in the VR section?
What are your VR question categories (Retrieval/Strengthen-Weaken/Inference/Main Idea/etc.)?



I feel as if I'm rolling through VR post-game analysis rather than spending a solid amount of time, so I'm interested in hearing your methods/tips/techniques.

 

[Jepstein30]

Post-Test Analysis
After you take a few passages, go back and just mark which ones you got right or wrong without putting the correct answer. Then, go back a few hour later or the next day to the ones you got wrong and take a second crack. Still got it wrong? Go back and take a third crack. Then make sure you do like the above and go back to figure out where you should have been looking and why each answer is correct.

After the above, go back to the original guessed/wrong answers and convince yourself WHY each one is correct. After you work out your reasoning, then go see if it matches up with the answer explanation.

If you go to the answer key right away, you let yourself off the hook for the questions you got wrong (I would look at the ones I got wrong and make excuses like "oh, stupid math" or "I would've picked that but.."). If you keep going back until you force yourself (intentionally or not) figure out the correct reasoning behind each answer, you'll develop the necessary analysis skills.. reading answer keys doesn't have the same effect.

 

[fizzlin]

Post-Test Analysis
After you take a few passages, go back and just mark which ones you got right or wrong without putting the correct answer. Then, go back a few hour later or the next day to the ones you got wrong and take a second crack. Still got it wrong? Go back and take a third crack. Then make sure you do like the above and go back to figure out where you should have been looking and why each answer is correct.

After the above, go back to the original guessed/wrong answers and convince yourself WHY each one is correct. After you work out your reasoning, then go see if it matches up with the answer explanation.

If you go to the answer key right away, you let yourself off the hook for the questions you got wrong (I would look at the ones I got wrong and make excuses like "oh, stupid math" or "I would've picked that but.."). If you keep going back until you force yourself (intentionally or not) figure out the correct reasoning behind each answer, you'll develop the necessary analysis skills.. reading answer keys doesn't have the same effect.

Thank you Jepstein! Definitely a good way to review.

Any other tips? Question types that ya'll find tricky??

 

[Jepstein30]

As for difficult question types, mostly everyone struggles with the imply/inference question type over all other. When you're asked to take the author's logic/reasoning and apply it to an outside situation ("What would the author think about.."). Definitely takes the most practice and really, the trick is just making sure you don't have an opinion!

I'll put a bunch of verbal advice I've written here in the past below.

I really suggest trying my strategy of stopping after each paragraph and giving a quick five-word summary of WHY the author included that passage. As in, not what he said but what purpose the paragraph served. This will help you get the overall idea.. which is again, what you want to be reading for. You don't need to be spending 8 minutes on a passage.. you don't want to read every single word.

Re-take tests. seriously!
Go in knowing all the answers. Sit there at each question and figure out WHY each one is right. You know it's A but find where in the passage is that answer supported. Keep doing this and you'll begin to develop an intuition/strategy that will help you. This is best for low scores (VR <8).. especially if you are quickly burning up study resources

Post-Test Analysis
After you take a few passages, go back and just mark which ones you got right or wrong without putting the correct answer. Then, go back a few hour later or the next day to the ones you got wrong and take a second crack. Still got it wrong? Go back and take a third crack. Then make sure you do like the above and go back to figure out where you should have been looking and why each answer is correct.

After the above, go back to the original guessed/wrong answers and convince yourself WHY each one is correct. After you work out your reasoning, then go see if it matches up with the answer explanation.

If you go to the answer key right away, you let yourself off the hook for the questions you got wrong (I would look at the ones I got wrong and make excuses like "oh, stupid math" or "I would've picked that but.."). If you keep going back until you force yourself (intentionally or not) figure out the correct reasoning behind each answer, you'll develop the necessary analysis skills.. reading answer keys doesn't have the same effect.

How much time to spend reading?
When reading, focus on the larger concepts. Skim. If the passage starts talking about details like years or book titles, skip it but note where it is mentally so if a question does ask you about a specific detail, you know exactly where to look (and then when you spend time on that section, it's definitely worth points). A great way of developing VR skills is to stop after each paragraph and do summarize in five words WHY the author included that paragraph. Not WHAT is in the paragraph, but WHY. As in, why did he talk about that point? What did it do to his overall main idea? Support? Reject? Expand? etc.

Your job isn't to know every single word that was talked about. It's to know the main idea (and tone) of the passage as a whole and the purpose of each paragraph. If you know those two things, you're going to do very well on that passage because that's what AAMC tests you on.

For instance, if I'm reading a passage about Confucious.. I'm not spending time reading about how he grew up or what year he published his books or whatever. When that comes up, I skip it. Only reading to get the main point of each passage so I don't care what the details are.

There are too many details to bother with. There's only so many questions and odds are, that one detail you spend ten seconds reading about won't be asked about. When you quickly skim or skip those parts, just remember where they are. So if you are asked about it, you know exactly where to look and can then spend the time to read closely (when you are assured points are at stake).

For practice, I'd suggest stopping after each paragraph of a passage. Summarize to yourself in five words or less WHY that passage was included (not WHAT was in the passage but WHY the author talked about that content). Write it down (I did this during the real thing as well, pencil in hand [active reading] is the way to go). You'll have a nice sentence summary of the passage afterwards as well as an indicator as to where to look later on for details/follow-up. You'll also focus more on the main point this way.

Picking between two answers
Start looking out for common answer traps. Ones that are very common are: out of scope (sounds right but you have to take an extra step from the boundaries of the passage to get there) and extreme answers (words like always, never, every, etc.). They're the answers that always sound great but are typically never right. Recognizing these saves you from falling into their trap and can help you decide between two 'correct' answers.

Most importantly, if you are stuck between two answers.. always go with the one that has PASSAGE support and is more related to the main idea (odds are, it'll be the correct one). Also, make sure you read every. single. word. of both the answer and question stem. I often would go back to wrong questions and realize I missed a simple word that made things much more straightforward.

But there's no secret recipe to killing VR. You just have to develop an intuition as to what the testmakers are asking about and what they want to hear in response. So the best way to do that is to analyze, analyze and re-analyze the resources you have until you know what's going on inside their heads every single time.