1 Charles Chaney’s VR Mastery Curriculum for Increasing Verbal Reasoning Scores

2 Chaney’s VR Strategies Why do you miss questions? – Do you misread the passage? Avoid situations where your eyes see what your mind pays no attention to, or when your mind misremembers what your eyes have just seen. Strategies for helping you catch everything on the page accurately: – Read at a pace at which your eyes and mind are comfortable. » Avoid reading too quickly. – Become an active participatory reader. » Use clutch reading strategies.

3 Chaney’s VR Strategies Why do you miss questions? – Do you run out of time? Avoid panicking and then reading too fast. – Give your mind a chance to absorb the material. Pace yourself through careful, deliberate practice and monitoring of your comfortable reading speed. – Proper pacing. » 8 ½ minutes per passage for seven passages. » Keep in mind there will likely be two relatively easy passages, three moderately challenging passages and two difficult passages. Balance time accordingly—9-10 minutes for the difficult passages. Memorize this pacing guide: 60, 51, 43, 34, 26, 17 and 9. Plan on three minutes reading and five minutes answering the questions.

4 Chaney’s VR Strategies Why do you miss questions? – Do you run out of time? Do NOT waste too much time on any one question. Resist the temptation of reading a question more than once. It’s not a bad idea to read each answer choice twice, however. Re-reading material is the number one clock killer for VR test takers.

5 Chaney’s VR Strategies Why do you miss questions? – Do you misread the question stem? Don’t skip key words without realizing it. Deliberately slow down when reading the question stems. – Be sure to fully grasp each word in the question stem and comprehend its meaning. The three-question test: – What is this question really asking? – Where did I read about this in the passage? – Why is this question interesting? » Consider the questions as mini-puzzles to be solved.

6 Chaney’s VR Strategies Why do you miss questions? – Do you misread the answer choices? Don’t skip key words without realizing it. Deliberately slow down when reading the answer choices. – Be sure to fully grasp each word in the question stem and comprehend its meaning. After reading the answer choices, skim answers A through D to confirm your understanding.

7 Chaney’s VR Strategies Why do you miss questions? – Do you misinterpret the passage? Create a mental dialogue by asking the right questions as you read. – Ask various questions about the author of the passage. – Consider questions critics of the passage might ask. – Ask various questions about the passage itself, especially how it’s organized and arranged.

8 Chaney’s VR Strategies Why do you miss questions? – Do you misinterpret the question? Don’t allow your focus to lapse after you complete the passage. Practice reading questions from test passages as much as possible. – Analyze the mistakes you make to identify and correct bad habits and tendencies. Be much more cognizant of the connotations of words in the question. – Overlooking or misunderstanding even a single word in the question most likely results in missing the question and answering incorrectly.

9 Chaney’s VR Strategies Why do you miss questions? – Do you have low reading confidence? Insecure test takers often struggle with reading pacing, comprehension and answering questions because of doubt and the fear/anxiety stemming from it. What can you do to build confidence? – Extensive practice and being comfortable with the test builds confidence. – A positive attitude through positive visualization techniques can help as well.

10 Chaney’s VR Strategies Why do you miss questions? – Do you bring outside ideas and bias into your answers? Correct answers on the VR reflect information provided by the accompanying passage only. Be very wary of passages addressing topics with which you have some knowledge or an opinion.