Questions about verbal

[PltEnthusiast]

Hi everybody,
I have tried all techniques (Kaplan, EK, people here on SDN) but at the end I get the impression that unless you understand the passage there isn't any other way out.

Is that true? Because if it is then I am screwed. English is my second language and I am very weak in historical and political type passages especially. I don't know what to do?

Does anybody have an advice about any tricks that can be employed when reading a passage? If I take all my sweet time to go through the passage, I get all of the answers right but reading it fast is when I am screwed. I can't seem to have a grasp on any tricks or shortcuts that I can use to answer the questions or read the passages faster and understand them at once.

Any advice would help

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[G1SG2]

Hi everybody,
I have tried all techniques (Kaplan, EK, people here on SDN) but at the end I get the impression that unless you understand the passage there isn't any other way out.

Is that true? Because if it is then I am screwed. English is my second language and I am very weak in historical and political type passages especially. I don't know what to do?

Does anybody have an advice about any tricks that can be employed when reading a passage? If I take all my sweet time to go through the passage, I get all of the answers right but reading it fast is when I am screwed. I can't seem to have a grasp on any tricks or shortcuts that I can use to answer the questions or read the passages faster and understand them at once.

Any advice would help

I used to read the passage in 3 minutes and answer the question in 5 minutes. However, my score shot up when I gave myself an extra minute to read the passage. I started reading the passage in 4 minutes and giving myself 4-5 minutes to answer the questions. Read the passage slow, move through the questions fast. By reading the passage a bit slower, you can understand it better and thus answer the questions faster. And don't go back to the passage-that'll kill your time. Try this.

 

[eablackwell]

Verbal is the best part of the MCAT for me, so I'll throw in my 2 cents.

You don't need to understand everything in the passage by any means. In fact, it may be dwelling on specific parts of a passage you don't understand completely that is hindering your score.

MCAT verbal is very holistic in nature. You can rarely find the answers in the passage. It's more of a "Who would agree with this person?" or "What would this person disagree with?" etc

Therefore if you end a passage knowing "Wow, the author really hates x because of y" (not necessarily super specific) then you have a good chance of understanding the questions, imo.

Deep breaths and don't read over the same passage too many times. If you don't understand a line of text the first time because of language issues, the 5th time will only frustrate you more.

Trust me, I made this mistake a lot while learning German and Japanese. Never did reading it the 5th time make me go "OMG, I now know what that string of words means!" It's the same thing when you have no idea what something means in English.

Good luck!

 

[g8orlife]

Any advice would help

Hopefully you haven't seen these yet. Hope something here helps you:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showpost.php?p=3346163&postcount=17

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showpost.php?p=2902539&postcount=13

Good luck.

 

[Oncoloman]

You don't need to understand everything in the passage by any means. In fact, it may be dwelling on specific parts of a passage you don't understand completely that is hindering your score.

MCAT verbal is very holistic in nature. You can rarely find the answers in the passage. It's more of a "Who would agree with this person?" or "What would this person disagree with?" etc

Therefore if you end a passage knowing "Wow, the author really hates x because of y" (not necessarily super specific) then you have a good chance of understanding the questions, imo.

Exactly. Couldn't have said it any better