verbal reasoning

[laya533]

Hi guys. I have a huge problem in verbal reasoning. Can anyone tell me what the following article is trying to say? Is it me or its hard for every one?.
As for Deep Throat, well, we will all soon learn if Woodward has been protecting a criminal for three decades, or merely a source who gave him some good information and some bad information — when history's greatest source was wrong — that Woodward has never corrected. (To pick just one of Throat's many errors, I randomly opened All the President's Men, scanned until I came to the passage in which Woodward reports Throat as giving him this: "Dean talked with Sen. (Howard) Baker after (the) Watergate committee (was) formed and Baker is in the bag completely, reporting back directly to the White House." It never happened.)

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[2DEG]

Sorry this is not a direct response to your post. But I am finding VR to be very difficult. Yesterday during lunch hour, I took the first full length from 101 EK book. I had only 4 hour sleep and I actually fell asleep during that full length exam. So, I am not sure if that contributed to my poor score. But I did bad..real bad.

Is it really possible to do well in VR by just practicing? Its not like physics or chemistry where you are using tricks, equations etc.

I am trying to follow EK's guidelines. I hope it improves.

Shahab

 

[MoosePilot]

Hi guys. I have a huge problem in verbal reasoning. Can anyone tell me what the following article is trying to say? Is it me or its hard for every one?.
As for Deep Throat, well, we will all soon learn if Woodward has been protecting a criminal for three decades, or merely a source who gave him some good information and some bad information — when history's greatest source was wrong — that Woodward has never corrected. (To pick just one of Throat's many errors, I randomly opened All the President's Men, scanned until I came to the passage in which Woodward reports Throat as giving him this: "Dean talked with Sen. (Howard) Baker after (the) Watergate committee (was) formed and Baker is in the bag completely, reporting back directly to the White House." It never happened.)

It's saying that Woodward's (one of the journalists that exposed the Watergate scandal if I'm remembering right) source codenamed "Deep Throat" is announcing his identity and we're going to find out who it is. The writer also clearly has a problem with Deep Throat's accuracy.

 

[keedz]

The paragraph isn't talking about Deep Throat the movie, it's talking about a guy nicknamed 'Deep Throat'. He was supposedly a key informant in the Watergate scandal. It's talking about how he possibly gave inaccurate information even though what he said at the time was taken as gospel. And it's also talking about if Woodward, who had contact with Deep Throat, knew that the info was wrong but reported it anyway.

 

[Shrike]

Moose is right. the reason you're confused is that the writer's ostensible purpose -- to discuss the potential that we'll find out who Deep throat was -- is obscured by the bulk of the text, which is just bitching about his (and Woodward's) alleged inaccuracies. If you read it carefully, which you would not do if this were an MCAT passage, you'll notice that the author opened to a random place in All the President's Men, but then moved forward until he found the error he quotes; how far forward, you have no idea. Where's this from, Fox News Online?

Actually, this is a great example of how a passage can lead an MCAT taker astray, and what to do about it. I would teach my students to read as follows: We'd see the "As for Deep Throat," and that would probably be important (depending on what had preceded it) so we keep reading. "We'll soon learn if" and we see a dichotomy -- is he a criminal, or not, is the author's point. There's then an assertion that Deep Throat was inaccurate; we would note that. We would absolutely ignore the part set off by dashes, which is parenthetical (and we know that without reading it, because that's what pairs of dashes are for) and the part that's actually in parentheses (which is obviously parenthetical). If, when doing questions, we see one relating to what Deep Throat said or Woodward quoted, we come back here, but until then we are zipping along, both making good time and refusing to be deflected from our task by author's digression.

It's the great thing about appropriate passage-reading tactics: you get through the passage faster, and you often understand it better.

Shrike
TPR physics, verbal, bio

 

[Shrike]

The paragraph isn't talking about Deep Throat the movie, it's talking about a guy nicknamed 'Deep Throat'. He was supposedly a key informant in the Watergate scandal..

Goes without saying, I guess, that anyone who, at this point in the article/passage, thought it was about Deep Throat the movie, is going to be a little off base about what the author's saying here. What, bad information? You mean Linda Lovelace didn't . . . ?

 

[laya533]

Thanks to you all. It now makes sense for me. Shrike are you living somewhere near dallas or not? I am looking for a tutor for my verbal reasoning and you seem very pro. I hope you can help me. Thanks for the tips again

 

[Shrike]

Thanks to you all. It now makes sense for me. Shrike are you living somewhere near dallas or not? I am looking for a tutor for my verbal reasoning and you seem very pro. I hope you can help me. Thanks for the tips again

To make clear publicly what I have told laya by pm, I appreciate the compliment but tutor only through TPR, as to do otherwise would be a violation of my agreement with the company. Meanwhile, I post on here because I like helping; I don't think that's inconsistent.

Shrike
TPR physics, verbal, bio