hey buddy, I totally hear you on verbal. I was just passing through this forum and had to respond to this - believe, there's plenty of people who hate verbal including myself!
alright, I had a low verbal score my first time and had to improve it. This is what I did to make myself focus more.
First, read a lot - I mean, outside reading. If you keep doing the kaplan or passages from the book, you'll get burned out quick. Take an hour or so a day out of a magazine like the economist (nice and short articles). Read through a passage. From the first paragraph, you should always be able to come up with some general idea (like, volcanoes, or sports, or abraham lincoln - that's all). Then paraphrase the rest - in other words, reword the entire paragraph as if you were explaining it to someone else. After doing this, then practice some passages.
Word to the wise - don't expect immediate results. In fact, don't expect a huge result. My score ended up a 9 the second time, which was enough (I've gotten into two schools thus far, so they obviously think it's enough too).
This exercise only helped me increase the probability of getting a better score and simply helped me THINK better on these passages. Do them slow first, then build up your speed. Heck, if you even leave only 4-5 minutes to skim the last passage, that may be more effective then trying to do every passage a tiny bit faster. Give it a whirl and good luck.
