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Writting section
Started by apothecare
Anyone working on the PCAT writting section? For the ones that took the PCAT and practiced the section on the Pearson test, did it help?
English is not my native language, I need all the help that I can get
Well you typed this up pretty well so it seems like you don't need that much help.
The writing section is not that big of a deal but if you need help I would recommend reading and writing prompts. If you can write something maybe someone here can take a look at it and grade you.
well thanks for the compliment and the advice. i'm sure I can write a good essay if I have 4 hrs instead of 30min!
Are you applying to OU? we may be classmates next year 😀
Yes I am 🙂
This is what I was told about the writing section: They don't grade you like how english teachers/professors grade you, instead they just want to know if you're literate. If you can write something with very little spelling and grammar mistakes and you know how to clearly organize you ideas then you should be fine. Also pharmacy schools don't really look at your writing score, in fact, it's not even included in the composite score.
To know for sure how much you need to spend on the writing section, just write something and find someone who has taken the PCAT to grade it and give you some input on it.
Practice! I'm sure if you Google essay writing prompts, you can come up with a good number. Write an essay every day, and give yourself less and less time to do it. Don't try to write everything on the subject, or even fill X number of pages. Come up with a cohesive thought, put together a beginning, middle, and end, and write it down.
A lot of writing will help bring your speed in composing your thoughts in a time-constrained essay format. I have the blessing (curse!) of going through an 11th grade English class pretty much all about writing 5 paragraph essays all year. Yeah, we talked about theme and stuff, but guess what we had to write after learning about it? A 5 paragraph essay. So I've literally written dozens of them. I can tell you, I hated it at the time, but the skill has come in useful many times.
If you're not sure how good your essays are / what you can do to improve, take them down to your English department at the school and see if you can find an English teacher with office hours. Explain your predicament and see if they'd be willing to give you their impressions of your short essays periodically. There may even be dedicated resources to help of this manner (I believe my CC had tutors available - I know they did for math & sciences).
