Verbal timing Help plz

[Cells4life]

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hey guys!
just wanted to know how much time are we supposed to allot to verbal passage? I know in the Sn2 schedule, it says 6 mins..however, when I do 6 mins I find myself rushing and reading so fast, I cant comprehend the main idea so quickly. I mean I map it out also since that helps me but that doesn't take as much time as reading the bulk of the passage.

 

[AktionPOTENTIAL]

How long have you been practicing? I would say for the first 25% of your practice, don't time yourself, but log your time using a stop watch. Each time, make your goal to reduce your practice time by a reasonable amount. This will allow you to get used to common question stems and types, the passages and the overall feel of the verbal reasoning section.

When you get comfortable or when you get to 25%, you can increase the rigor of your timing. 8 minutes per passage will get you done with 4 minutes to spare on the real deal.

 

[Renaissance Man]

I always did it a different way. I knew that I had to answer half the questions before the 30 minute mark. Once you answer the 20th question, check the time. If you have 30 minutes or more left, you are probably good on time.

 

[Mornhavon]

.

 

[LaughingMan]

Kinda hijacking,

but thus far I've been timing my passages to 7 minutes each--and for nearly 90% of them, it takes me 3 minutes to read the passage giving me 4 minutes to answer questions.

I consistently hear that the real deal is longer, thus I'm wondering if I should be trying to finish faster?

Is 3 minutes to read the passage common?

 

[dudewheresmymd]

I have found that 3.5 mins for reading the passage and 4.5 mins for answering the questions works very well. But mileage will vary. On the real MCAT, I've heard the passages are longer but similar to the AAMC practice tests so just find a comfortable timing that works for your practice materials and be prepared to adjust accordingly on the MCAT.

 

[starfar]

Few things I find help me with verbal timing..

1. I stopped using a stopwatch.. Seeing those numbers dwindle drove me crazy and made me even more nervous and anxious than I already was and I found it impossible to focus. Instead, I just give myself a certain number of minutes to get through however many passages and do it that way.. I can see see how much time I have left without freaking out over how fast 3 mins went by..

2. Start doing more than 1 passage at a time. For some reason, if I do 1 or 2 passages at a time I get killed. I mean it can take me 9-10mins to get through ONE passage.. I recently started doing them in chunks of 3 or 4 and it DRASTICALLY improved my time. I'm down to roughly 7 mins per passage which is fricken amazing considering when I first started, it could literally take me 15mins to get through one passage.

3. The Chad's Videos website has this nifty reading practice thing under the "quizzes" heading that I found useful. Basically you copy/paste a passage (i just copy/pasted one from AAMC #3) into the box and you set the scroll speed to make the passage scroll up as fast or slow as you want. I set it to the fastest (which I think correlates to 3mins) just to see how fast I needed to be moving through a passage. It was good practice for getting that timing down while actively digesting what you're reading. Im pretty sure its free to use

 

[Cells4life]

thanks everybody 😉

 

[Dipraman]

Few things I find help me with verbal timing..

3. The Chad's Videos website has this nifty reading practice thing under the "quizzes" heading that I found useful. Basically you copy/paste a passage (i just copy/pasted one from AAMC #3) into the box and you set the scroll speed to make the passage scroll up as fast or slow as you want. I set it to the fastest (which I think correlates to 3mins) just to see how fast I needed to be moving through a passage. It was good practice for getting that timing down while actively digesting what you're reading. Im pretty sure its free to use

Holy cow... I could barely read like the first 2 lines at the "fastest" setting. I think I will stick to fast lol

 

[Postictal Raiden]

Few things I find help me with verbal timing..

1. I stopped using a stopwatch.. Seeing those numbers dwindle drove me crazy and made me even more nervous and anxious than I already was and I found it impossible to focus. Instead, I just give myself a certain number of minutes to get through however many passages and do it that way.. I can see see how much time I have left without freaking out over how fast 3 mins went by..

2. Start doing more than 1 passage at a time. For some reason, if I do 1 or 2 passages at a time I get killed. I mean it can take me 9-10mins to get through ONE passage.. I recently started doing them in chunks of 3 or 4 and it DRASTICALLY improved my time. I'm down to roughly 7 mins per passage which is fricken amazing considering when I first started, it could literally take me 15mins to get through one passage.

3. The Chad's Videos website has this nifty reading practice thing under the "quizzes" heading that I found useful. Basically you copy/paste a passage (i just copy/pasted one from AAMC #3) into the box and you set the scroll speed to make the passage scroll up as fast or slow as you want. I set it to the fastest (which I think correlates to 3mins) just to see how fast I needed to be moving through a passage. It was good practice for getting that timing down while actively digesting what you're reading. Im pretty sure its free to use

I just copied and posted the Picasso passage (one of the longest AAMC passages) and sat the pace to the fastest. It went through the whole thing in less than a minute. With the "slow" pace, it took ~3.5 mins. I might start myself at slower pace, which correlates to ~4.5 mins/passage and work my way up from there.

 

[dudewheresmymd]

I just copied and posted the Picasso passage (one of the longest AAMC passages) and sat the pace to the fastest. It went through the whole thing in less than a minute. With the "slow" pace, it took ~3.5 mins. I might start myself at slower pace, which correlates to ~4.5 mins/passage and work my way up from there.

Yeah I think 3.5 minutes really works well!

 

[starfar]

I just copied and posted the Picasso passage (one of the longest AAMC passages) and sat the pace to the fastest. It went through the whole thing in less than a minute. With the "slow" pace, it took ~3.5 mins. I might start myself at slower pace, which correlates to ~4.5 mins/passage and work my way up from there.

Wow really!? lol my bad.. I could've swore I timed a passage on the fastest setting and it clocked at 3mins.. I'll try it again..😳

Regardless it's a great resource.. Have fun with it!

 

[Dipraman]

Wow really!? lol my bad.. I could've swore I timed a passage on the fastest setting and it clocked at 3mins.. I'll try it again..😳

Regardless it's a great resource.. Have fun with it!

Yes haha. You have to press "Go" after you change the setting every time. Nonetheless, thank you so much for sharing! 👍

 

[brood910]

few things i find help me with verbal timing..

3. The chad's videos website has this nifty reading practice thing under the "quizzes" heading that i found useful. Basically you copy/paste a passage (i just copy/pasted one from aamc #3) into the box and you set the scroll speed to make the passage scroll up as fast or slow as you want. I set it to the fastest (which i think correlates to 3mins) just to see how fast i needed to be moving through a passage. It was good practice for getting that timing down while actively digesting what you're reading. Im pretty sure its free to use

holy. Thank you so much for telling us about this.

 

[danny89]

How in the heck do you guys copy and paste a any passage from a purchased AAMC test to use it for practice on chad's reading tool? I converted AAMC #3 into a pdf, then tried to convert it to a word document but told me its "password" protected.

 

[Saharon]

What is the website for this? And you can just copy and paste directly from the score report.

 

[danny89]

http://***********.com

What is the website for this? And you can just copy and paste directly from the score report.

Just search chad's videos, click on quizzes, then reading practice.
What web browser are you using? I've tried IE, firefox, and chrome and it still didn't work for me.

 

[Saharon]

http://***********.com

Just search chad's videos, click on quizzes, then reading practice.
What web browser are you using? I've tried IE, firefox, and chrome and it still didn't work for me.

I'm using chrome. Try using ctrl + C?

 

[mehc012]

http://www.spreeder.com/app.php?intro=1

There's also that one...it's nice because it can break it down for you in a lot of ways...1 word at a time, 'chunks', etc, and also lets you adjust the speed to whatever wpm you want. Honestly, I occasionally just throw a Wiki article that I'm about to read in there, just to see where I'm standing. It hasn't increased my speed very much - 900 wpm has gone from "I can understand a few words here and there" to "I can read almost every word comfortably", but I started at an 800wpm base rate for single-word chunking, so I'm honestly not really trying to increase my speed at all.