I've been attempting various strategies in my verbal review. any thoughts on going this route: reading the question before the passage to highlight the ideas to look for while reading?
VERBAL: reading the questions first.....worth it or not?
- Thread starter kevo246
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no. waste of time. u want to read the passage to get to know the general idea, not hunting for specific stuff
skim the question stems for specified factual relationships of the main ideas
For example: "The author makes the contrast btw X vs Z, etc", This is very useful information, because you know such a relationship is discussed
I find it helps imprint a framework in mind before reading b/c I'm the type of person who understands something better the 2nd or 3rd time through.
So the first brief skimming of questions helps lay a foundation. It usually takes less than 10 seconds to do.
For example: "The author makes the contrast btw X vs Z, etc", This is very useful information, because you know such a relationship is discussed
I find it helps imprint a framework in mind before reading b/c I'm the type of person who understands something better the 2nd or 3rd time through.
So the first brief skimming of questions helps lay a foundation. It usually takes less than 10 seconds to do.
Reading each question fully will definitely be a waste of time. What you can do though if you want is skim through all the questions roughly (like 10 seconds) and see if there are any questions that quote a line or a word in the passage that would require you to go back to it. That way you can keep that phrase in your memory and when you come across it when reading the passage you can make a mental note of where it is so that when you finish reading you can go back to it easily if you need to.
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disagree. i not only read the question, but rewrite it on paper. bear in mind i'm not spending a million hours doing this, i read the questions and have them written down in under a minute no matter what- at this point i usually finish in 50 seconds. to you it wouldn't make sense since i shorten words and abbreviate and my "rewrite" is basically 2-3 words. the problem is that a LARGE portion of the passage is useless material, and if you can understand what the questions are asking, the minute you see the related info appear, you know where to go back when answering the question.
reading the questions orients me, and rewriting imprints a very very short term memory of what to look for in the passage. i still finish each passage in time. obviously i didn't finish in time when i first started writing shorthanded questions, but success in the verbal section is a product of repetition, not knowledge.
reading the questions orients me, and rewriting imprints a very very short term memory of what to look for in the passage. i still finish each passage in time. obviously i didn't finish in time when i first started writing shorthanded questions, but success in the verbal section is a product of repetition, not knowledge.
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This is actually an interesting idea.
I had a few practice passages that were passage heavy, i.e. they wanted you to apply stuff from the passage. If I had read the questions, I would have keyed in when the info was presented instead of digging again.
I thought browsing the questions was silly, but after my practice thing yesterday it makes more sense.
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