verbal help...

[amikhchi]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

Ok, i've read all of the strategies posted in the FAQ section, and it seems the general consensus is to read fast, don't focus on details and then (this is where the individual strategies seem to diverge) answer the questions. I have been trying to read through, and not re-read (if i think i didn't understand) and read fast but think about the "point" of each paragraph and the passage as a whole. I try to do this in my head (which is what the vihsadas guide says to do, which is actually against what TPR has been telling me to do) and when i've answered the questions to the best of my ability (and sometimes i'm very confident in my answers) i go check answers to find that i have got 2/6 right, give or take a few... it is VERY discouraging... i hated verbal the first time around the MCAT and i'm quickly reminding myself why this time around...

I just finished reading a passage about multi-culturalists and after reading it (without re-reading or stopping to jot down notes) i have absolutely no idea what i've just read... i can remember a few key words, but thats about it. I have not attempted to answer any of the questions yet, because after reading i had no idea wtf i had just read. I'm going to take a short break and redo this passage... so far i've done 2 passages today, and have gotten 5/12 right... i've done 19 passages overall, and i can say that i've only gotten 100% on one passage...

It is very discouraging because when i read these guides i think "okay, got a great guide to follow, i'm just going to DO IT" but in reality it doesn't work like that... Is there a sort of "idiots guide to VR" some sort of very basic fundamental approach that will get me started before i can get into the "advanced" guides (i dunno if they are actually advanced, but i'm obviously not good enough to apply them properly)

i am taking the exam april 4th (again...) so i have a lot of time, but this is just very discouraging because i'd assume the beginning passages would be easy to boost confidence and slowly would become harder... I'm enrolled in TPR (and was the last time around i took the exam) I have the examkrackers 101 passages (but have not started it yet) and although i've read most of the guides in the FAQ section, currently i have only *attempted* Vihsadas...

any suggestions or ideas that may help me. I guess I have several problems, but if i can't grasp the main idea/purpose of each paragraph and the entire passage accurately and efficiently, it wouldn't really matter if i fixed my other problems

 

[amikhchi]

bump... anyone got any ideas?

p.s. - hate verbal reasoning

 

[wannabesrgn]

Since you're fairly early in your prep you should try different techniques that you instinctively think would help you. Don't read so much into what others do, there is no magic technique that helps everyone. What I did to boost my verbal was to adjust small things here and there...i tried the different techniques given by posters and prep companies and use some aspects and dont use others. ultimately it comes down to practice practice practice. so just make sure you do it everyday until your test.

are you missing specific types of questions?

i also try to take a millisec or w/e after each paragraph to recognize the intent of the specific paragraph and its relation to the whole argument. if you are missing main point questions it helps to skim the first sentences of each paragraph or even answer those after the other questions for the passage because often in the process of answering you get a better grasp of the main idea.

dont know if any of that helps, but just noticed you had no replies yet. gl.

 

[amikhchi]

Thanks for the response. As far as early practice, do you think I should initially write these thoughts on each paragraph, or just try from the beginning to store it mentally? Either way i'll give it a shot,

how much is adequate practice? currently i try to do about 4 passages give or take a day, spend about 20 min per passage (doing them untimed atm, planning on speeding up little by little, hope to be at 8 min/passage by end of feb.) and then spend about 10-15 min going over answer choices (right and wrong). Do you think I should do more or less per day?

As far as question types, I haven't noticed a trend on question types I get wrong, I will start to log the types of questions i get wrong and see if there is a sort of trend.

 

[arman143]

very informative .. thanx for sharing..

 

[wannabesrgn]

Whatever you plan to do for the real thing you should practice doing from the start. There's no point in practicing a method that you feel you won't use in the long run. I developed my methods by trial and error and so for a while would sum up the paragraphs on paper, but found I wouldn't have enough time to do that for the last few passages so if you can't do it for every passage then it's pointless. So now I mentally store the summaries and found that my score did not decrease at all, if anything it went up because I had more time to focus on the questions.

As far as adequate practice, depends on your budget and type of materials. Best thing to do is get your hands on anything and everything for verbal practice, I tried to do all the verbal sections in the prep books and so just depends on the amount of material you have. You want to distribute it evenly so you're getting practice up to the test.

I'm not sure if I understood, but if you are spending 20 minutes on one passage that's no good. You need to force yourself to speed up starting now. You should definitely be under 10 minutes from the get go. Just try to stay focused as much as you can and read as fast as you can w/o loss of comprehension. Another thing that helps to speed read is use your finger or cursor to move along the lines faster than you are reading, it forces your eyes to follow a bit faster than you naturally do and apparently you don't lose comprehension. Also, I found that highlighting helps a lot and the CBT allows highlighting on the test. So instead of outlining, I highlight several important points in each paragraph. I don't do that until I've read the entire paragraph though because sometimes a sentence may appear important while reading, but ends up being a stupid detail after reading the whole paragraph.

Def. keep track of types of questions you're missing and try to keep track of what kind of answer you're falling for compared to the real answer. You'll learn to avoid the tricks you usu. fall for.

GL

Thanks for the response. As far as early practice, do you think I should initially write these thoughts on each paragraph, or just try from the beginning to store it mentally? Either way i'll give it a shot,

how much is adequate practice? currently i try to do about 4 passages give or take a day, spend about 20 min per passage (doing them untimed atm, planning on speeding up little by little, hope to be at 8 min/passage by end of feb.) and then spend about 10-15 min going over answer choices (right and wrong). Do you think I should do more or less per day?

As far as question types, I haven't noticed a trend on question types I get wrong, I will start to log the types of questions i get wrong and see if there is a sort of trend.

 

[amikhchi]

I'm going to post the 1st paragraph of a passage i was reading... I tried to wake up in the morning and get psyched to *attack* passages and start the trail of improvement of my VR skills. But after reading the 1st paragraph 3 times I still have no idea what it's saying. Can someone tell me the *point* of the paragraph, and actually illustrate to me how they came about determining that?

"Resemblance does not make things so much alike as difference makes them unlike. Nature has committed herself to make nothing other that was not different. Therefore I do not much like the opinion of the man who thought by the multitude of laws to curb the authority of judges by cutting up their meat for them. He was not aware that there is as much liberty and latitude in the interpretation of laws as in the making of them. And those people fool themselves who think they can lessen and stop our disputes by recalling us to the express words of the Bible. For our mind finds the field no less spacious in examining the meaning of others than in putting forth its own, as if there were less animosity and tartness in commenting than in inventing."

Yes, it's supposed to be nothing other "that" in the 2nd sentence...

so much for <10 minutes...

 

[SiR99]

That looks like a distractor paragraph to me, (it was put there to take up your time or to draw you away from/ confuse you about the main idea) maybe you should keep reading the passage and see if it starts to make more sense toward the middle/ending.

Thats a pretty hard paragraph to grasp, I feel your pain.

 

[wannabesrgn]

I'm going to post the 1st paragraph of a passage i was reading... I tried to wake up in the morning and get psyched to *attack* passages and start the trail of improvement of my VR skills. But after reading the 1st paragraph 3 times I still have no idea what it's saying. Can someone tell me the *point* of the paragraph, and actually illustrate to me how they came about determining that?

"Resemblance does not make things so much alike as difference makes them unlike. Nature has committed herself to make nothing other that was not different. Therefore I do not much like the opinion of the man who thought by the multitude of laws to curb the authority of judges by cutting up their meat for them. He was not aware that there is as much liberty and latitude in the interpretation of laws as in the making of them. And those people fool themselves who think they can lessen and stop our disputes by recalling us to the express words of the Bible. For our mind finds the field no less spacious in examining the meaning of others than in putting forth its own, as if there were less animosity and tartness in commenting than in inventing."

Yes, it's supposed to be nothing other "that" in the 2nd sentence...

so much for <10 minutes...

Yeah, very very dense paragraph. It's difficult to get the main point when you are reading an isolated paragraph like this, but for the sake of answering your question I would say that out of this paragraph I immediately noticed that the author does not feel there is any difference in creation of laws vs interpretation. He reinforces this by referring to disputes not being settled by just reading the Bible.

Again, difficult to say where the author is going just from this paragraph, but I would venture a guess that it's something related to the nature of interpretation and how the author feels that people who think interpretation is restricted is stupid.

I could be completely wrong though. What prep material is this from? I would say this is more dense than the average AAMC verbal.

 

[amikhchi]

tpr verbal reasoning workbook

i must admit, after reading the whole passage it made a bit more sense, but there is no way i would understand what it meant after a single read... (even if it were a slow read)...

the rest of the passage goes on to state we have too many laws and even with all these laws judges are free do do as they please. you can't pinpoint a law for every possible situation because human action is limitless and stuff... and after realizing that I realized that the 1st paragraph is stating you can't make more laws to try and limit a judges authority in the interpretation of laws. but you seemed to grasp the main idea fairly well considering you only got the 1 paragraph... i, on the other hand, suck...

 

[wannabesrgn]

That was a super dense paragraph and definitely on the much harder side of verbal passages you would really see on the MCAT. Don't be too hard on yourself, you're starting very early which is the best thing you could do. So you're ahead of the game on that. Just focus on learning from what you did wrong on each passage. Don't focus too much on the content, but rather the overall point of the question and passage that you missed resulting in your mistake.

Again, don't read into what others are doing too much. It really comes down to what you're most comfortable with. Keep practicing and you will see an improvement. If you feel you're not improving then adjust things here and there. Try different things.

Another thing I did without realizing it was helping my MCAT was reading regularly as I usually do. I'm an avid reader so I usually read before I go to bed every night. I look back and realize that definitely has helped me regardless of the subject you read (within reason, no Dr. Seuss) because it helps to increase reading speed.

GL