PowerScore CR Bible, Prephasing, Timing Trouble

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After I just finished reading the PowerScore CR Bible, I still don't feel I have a better grasp of CR problems. Perhaps it is because I only went through it once. I didn't get all the problems correct in it. I did take lengthy notes from the book, so I plan in reviewing that.

Two of my major problems are prephrasing and timing:

1) I have trouble prephrasing. Either I cannot prephrase anything after reading the passage, or I cannot find an answer similar to my prephrase when I can. I must have bad reasoning skills. That doesn't surprise me; I've always been bad with reasoning in my life. Any advise?

2) I have also got used to doing active reading--taking notes to retain what I just read--on the CR passages like I do on RC questions. Unfortunately, that usually takes me more than the 2-minute time limit to finish the problem, so I stopped doing that. However, it still takes me an average of 2:15 minutes, ranging from 1:10 to 5:10 minutes, to finish the problem and still not get every problem correct. These are the easy problems, too, from the first 10 problems of the OG Verbal 2nd Ed. It takes me anywhere from 0:30 seconds to 1 minute just to read the passage, not the answers. Isn't that too long?

3) Perhaps I should not be timing myself so soon after reading the bible, but I feel like I should because a) I'm always slow at everything I do, and b) my test is in about a month. My highest practice test score is 600, and I need to get at least 650. It is frustrating. Right now, I feel like as long as I can improve my CR score, all the other types of problems including quants will fall into place.

BTW, how many times should I work through all the problems in the OG books? Are all the problems on the real test really that similar so that it is like being tested on a homework problem with different numbers?

Thanks.
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by money9111 » Mon May 10, 2010 2:16 pm
Cinji18 wrote:After I just finished reading the PowerScore CR Bible, I still don't feel I have a better grasp of CR problems. Perhaps it is because I only went through it once. I didn't get all the problems correct in it. I did take lengthy notes from the book, so I plan in reviewing that.

Two of my major problems are prephrasing and timing:

1) I have trouble prephrasing. Either I cannot prephrase anything after reading the passage, or I cannot find an answer similar to my prephrase when I can. I must have bad reasoning skills. That doesn't surprise me; I've always been bad with reasoning in my life. Any advise?

2) I have also got used to doing active reading--taking notes to retain what I just read--on the CR passages like I do on RC questions. Unfortunately, that usually takes me more than the 2-minute time limit to finish the problem, so I stopped doing that. However, it still takes me an average of 2:15 minutes, ranging from 1:10 to 5:10 minutes, to finish the problem and still not get every problem correct. These are the easy problems, too, from the first 10 problems of the OG Verbal 2nd Ed. It takes me anywhere from 0:30 seconds to 1 minute just to read the passage, not the answers. Isn't that too long?

3) Perhaps I should not be timing myself so soon after reading the bible, but I feel like I should because a) I'm always slow at everything I do, and b) my test is in about a month. My highest practice test score is 600, and I need to get at least 650. It is frustrating. Right now, I feel like as long as I can improve my CR score, all the other types of problems including quants will fall into place.

BTW, how many times should I work through all the problems in the OG books? Are all the problems on the real test really that similar so that it is like being tested on a homework problem with different numbers?

Thanks.
Hi Cinji18,

Do NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT think that Quant will fall into place. That is exactly what I did. I focused all of my energy into SC and CR and told myself "I know QUANT I'll be able to do it." I was not able to pull off that kind of feat. With that said... the PowerScore CR book is definitely a book that you need to go through more than once.
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by Cinji18 » Mon May 10, 2010 3:28 pm
Well, maybe it's the wrong phrase fot it, but I have not focused all my energy into verbal. I have put majority of my efforts in verbal, but some are in quant. It's just that in quant, I know exactly where my weakness areas are really well, and most of the mistakes there are careless mistakes, not conceptual mistakes. I get at least 97% of the problems right the second time I go through them. Hence, the problems I have in quant are different from the problems I have in verbal, and are somewhat easier to fix in a way, but just as equally frustrating I guess.