What is the best way to study for Reading Com?? Please HELP!

[bebi]

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to study for Reading Comp? I've been practicing my RC, but can't improve? Does Kaplan way work?

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[DesiDentist]

The best way is to RELAX. Take a deep breath and look for key words.

DO NOT do what kaplan says, the whole writing a key sentence. That just takes too much time, which you don't have on the DAT.

DesiDentist

 

[critterbug]

Hey Desi, where's your MODERATOR Title??

I hope you start your job off by moving all those DAT discussions in the pre-dental forum over to this forum Get to work man !!

 

[DesiDentist]

I don't want to terrorize everyone and move DAT threads around. I'm sure that people will realize that there is a sole DAT discussion thread, it will take a little bit of time.

As for my Moderator Title, only a title, i'm actually a DMD, Desi.Moderator.Dentist



DesiDentist

 

[mcataz]

How to read...MCATAZ Style
there are only three things you want out of an DAT passage...period
1) What the Author is talking about
2) What the authors overall opinion on this topic is (there is almost always an opinion somewhere)
3) What kind of information is located in each paragraph, in case you have to look something up

To find this info Read the first and last paragraphs. If at this point you do not know #1 and #2 repeat, and if necessary read the 2nd paragraph. Then SKIM the following paragraphs to find what is in which paragraph. and head to the questions
On the surface this would seem to be a bad way to read an argument,to essentially ignore all the backing for the claim of the paragraph, but this is the DAT and not the real world and the method to this madness will become clear when we analyze the type of questions asked on the DAT

Contrary to what is empirically obvious, the DAT only asks two types of questions (these are my names for them), and they must be approached entirely differently
1) Find the fact
2) Touchy Feely

1) Find the fact-
These questions require you to answer a question based entirely on what is said in the passage (or a reasonable approximation of such) these tend to be the more straightforward and unfortunately for many less frequent. This is where your skim comes in: When prompted to find a fact, go to the area where the information is located and put the answer most similiar to what is stated in the passage, often times it will ask you to find out what type of evidence is or isnt located in the passage. I hope I don't have to continue stating the obvious, but I need to describe this in order to contrast it with the technique for #2
2) Touchy feely- These are the Harder questions, the more frequent, but once you know what your doing, they are the quickest questions
It is key that you first know the authors opinion on the topic for your entire stategy will hinge on this opinion
second one must know what questions qualify for this category in order to know when to use the technique
there are two types
1) Direct main idea questions- where the question explicitly asks for the passage's main idea
2) Ones with "touchy feely" key words in the question- these words include Probably, most likely, can be inferred, the author would most likely say....basically any question where it does not ask you to explicitly look for something in the passage, and which uses vague, indirect language

Here is the corner stone of your DAT verbal attack
The STUPIDITY MANUEVER
This Idea came to me while analyzing practice tests, to determine why I was missing the questions that I was. The questions I was missing were mainly of the second type, and after some thought, I decided to take an entire verbal test where I always answered the touchy feely questions with the most obvious answer (the gut answer). This was the first time I ever scored in the double digits
From this I concluded that on these questions I had been talking myself out of the right answers using a complex set of reasons based on factual evidence in the passage (like any good bright person would) and was talking myself out of the right obvious answer hence the following rule
THE OBVIOUS ANSWER IS RIGHT ABOUT 90-95% OF THE TIME...STUPIDITY RULES THE MCAT, IF YOU HAVE TO SPEND A LONG TIME JUSTIFYING ONE ANSWER OVER ANOTHER, YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG
Blanket stupidity is of course not that way to go,but the following algorhithm took me far
1) Find the authors opinion (ie Beer is good)
2) Identify any questions which qualify as touchy feely (this is an art form) (ie what is the authors opinion on breweries near high schools)
3) look at the answers and eliminate any answers which either directly conflict with the authors opinion, or have nothing to do with that opinion (ie beer is bad or we should not sell cigarrettes to children)
4) when in doubt narrowing down the rest,follow these rules
-the more general answers tend to be right on these
-Go with the gut

a small number of these questions do not conform to these (usually they happen in the bad 2 passages), experience will teach you how to spot these

Finally a word on the I, II,III questions
a simple algorhythm for these
1) look at the I,II,III part (the real answers) and eliminate all obviously wrong ones
2) go to the answer choices and eliminate any ones affected by #1, then find out which answer (I, II Or III) is located in the most of the remaining choices
3) test the validity of that answer in the passage or if a touchy feely one go with the gut
4) repeat till other answers are eliminated

 

[ecdoesit]

if i may add, kaplan cd is not the best tool, since their scoll bar is somewhat different from conventional windows.