Question about reviewing CARS passages

[acetylmandarin]

Sometimes, I go back to review CARS passages, and I just can't figure out what exactly the author is trying to say, no matter how much time I spend on the passage. I was just reviewing a passage from the 2nd cars q pack about feminism, and I'm having a difficult time understanding the main points of the passage and the questions. When I actually did the passage under timed conditions, I got all the questions correct, but I think I went 2 minutes over my time limit, because I remember having a very difficult time reading the passage and figuring out the main idea.

I've noticed this has happened with other passages too. I do okay on the passage under timed conditions, but when reviewing, I realize that I actually don't understand the passage that well. I think I slightly understand it under timed conditions, and that, combined with luck, lets me answer the questions sometimes.

I think that some of the passages are just beyond my ability to understand.

 

[cwx216]

I agree with you on that, but I feel as if on the real exam there are definitely going to be some pretty convoluted passages that we're going to have to try our absolute best to wrap out head around them. Do you understand the feminism passage now?

But I think a good thing to do for in the future is to take note of words that hint to the author's opinion or the tone of the passage. For CARS passages I was a pretty aggressive highlighter which messed me up a lot and after having worked w/ my MCAT tutor for a while she told me to highlight tone words ie. "should, would" and see how the author describes the area of focus. So if the author uses words with positive connotations he/she thinks highly of the topic vice versa. So for the feminism passage I highlighted words/phrases such as "woman writer", "I deny this", "myth-fed condition", "mistaken voice" so from this I was able to get the gist of what the author was saying.