Hey everyone!
My apologies for getting this email out late -- it's been a long weekend!
If you did not complete Full-Length #1, do it by our next class! If you start falling behind now, you will find it very difficult to catch up in the remaining time!
Now that I've inundated you with exclamation points, I wanted to further explain the two questions we discussed on Thursday (page 343):
For question 2 ("With which of the following statements would the author of the passage most likely agree?"), we were debating two answers: (C) "Incidents was most popular among women readers when it was published"; and (D) "Novels can provide valuable insights into the history and politics of an era". To discount (C), the best sentence we get is "But perhaps the most important reason they insisted Incidents was a novel was an inability to accept that the women depicted in the book ... could write a work so rooted in the melodramatic literary tradition popular among female readers and authors of the time." This sentence tells us only that this literary tradition was popular among women; it does NOT tell us that Incidents, specifically, was most popular with women. It is not out of the question, given the gravity and importance the author ascribes to the book, to imagine that Incidents was also very popular among men despite the fact that this literary tradition was usually female-heavy. Answer choice (D) is supported in the first paragraph. As the author writes: "Originally published in 1861, Incidents ... was long regarded as a powerful argument for the abolition of slavery in the United States." The phrase "long regarded" makes it fair to say that even when Incidents was believed to be a novel, it still had this significance to Americans (note that Yellin's research was in the 1980s, and while it may be a judgment call to say that "long regarded" has to account for at least some time before the 1980s, I think that's a pretty safe assumptino here). Thus, answer choice (D) is verified. Even when it was a novel, the author still believes that Incidents gives us a good window into the history and politics of the abolitionist cause.
For question 3 ("Each of the following is used by Yellin to support the idea that Harriet Jacobs wrote Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl EXCEPT:"), we were between (C) "Discussions of sexuality were deemed inappropriate for a woman in 1861"; and (B) "Lydia Maria Child was listed on the title page as its editor". Let's start with (B). Where is this fact given to us? In paragraph 2 - "The title page provided no name other than that of its editor, Lydia Maria Child, a noted abolitionist and novelist, whose previous novels had included plotlines and themes similar to those in Incidents, fueling speculation that she was the author." What is the role of this sentence? To tell us one of the reasons 19th century readers believed Incidents was a novel. Indeed, that's the purpose of this whole paragraph. Yellin at no point uses this as evidence for why Harriet Jacobs is the author; in fact, Yellin doesn't use this information as support for herself at all. The closest she gets is in paragraph 4, as it points out: "... Yellin ... decided to re-examine the claims of [Incident's] authenticity made by the narrator and Lydia Maria Child. ... Yellin went one step farther, meticulously documenting the existence of people and events in the book. Studying the paper of Lydia Maria Child and others in her circle, Yellin found among them Jacobs' letters and other documents that led to general recognition of Jacobs as the writer." Carefully interpret this paragraph. Yellin may have used the fact that Child was on the title page as a reason to check out the papers and ultimately discover Jacobs, but she never uses the fact that Child was on the title page to support her argument that Jacobs herself must be the author. So where is the answer choice (C) discussed? In paragraph 5: "And the author's anonymitiy was explained in large part by the fact that the book discussed the unique and difficult situation faced by slave women: the sexual predations of male slave owners and their powerlessness to exert on their own behalf society's standards of chaste womanhood. Such matters would be deemed inappropriate for a woman to discuss publicly in 1861, but Jacobs saw the necessity of reaching out to her female readership in this manner." Let's interpret: "... the author's anonymity was explained" by Yellin. The real clincher of this sentence is that opening phrase. It is what allows us to understand that Yellin was using this fact to support her central argument -- that Jacobs was the author. Understandably, our reaction to Yellin could be "Sure, that explains why she's anonymous, but why does it have to be Jacobs?" But that doesn't really affect the answer to the question. The question is merely asking what evidence Yellin provided, whether or not is "good" evidence. Based on that opening line, these sentences are part of Yellin's explanation and evidence. The anonymity (and explanation thereof) are part of that argument, and therefore (C) cannot be our answer to the question. Remember -- think like the MCAT. They want you to focus on structure and how arguments are made. If a fact is in paragraph 2 ("why people thought Incidents was a novel"), it isn't part of Yellin's evidence. If it's in paragraph 5 ("Yellin's evidence"), it sure is!
Let’s start by discussing our upcoming session, Physics III. Your required homework is:
- Physics Review Notes Chapters 5, 10-12 (Fluids & Solids, Light & Optics, Atomic Phenomena, Nuclear Phenomena)
- OWQ: Atomic & Nuclear Phenomena Workshop
- The Lesson Book does not devote a lot of class time to Atomic & Nuclear Phenomena, so if you’re pressed for time prioritize completing the chapters associated with Fluids & Solids and Light & Optics over the other two. Mercifully, Unit III is lighter than Unit II but the topics tend to be heavily tested.
A lot of times, people start feeling a little discouraged after MSCT II because they often see score decreases on their first full-length and are worried that the class is starting to get into the last unit. Thus, I have a bunch of good tips below to hopefully help motivate you and keep you focused on Kaplan’s methods and the MCAT!
1. Approach the test with a sense of adventure, not a sense of dread.
2. Knowing when to give up is a strategy, not a failure. It’s better to take a good guess than to spend lots of time on one question which you might get wrong anyway. There's another question to come, and another chance to gain points.
3. Stay flexible. Your prediction doesn't fit any answer? Can’t even make a prediction? Hang loose and let the question and answers help you.
4. Utilize the shrug factor. What’s that? It's when you shrug your shoulders and say, “whatever.” You'll just do the best you can. Experience shows that students who use the shrug factor often do quite well on a passage; much better than they expected. It’s a much better approach than getting all stressed out and nervous. The brain doesn't work well under those conditions.
Tips Especially for Verbal
1. It’s all about the author. Let me repeat that: it's all about the author. Most MCAT passages are author-driven so most questions are about the author. Find the author's voice, even if it's neutral. It pays off in points. Have you ever counted how many questions in a passage revolve around the author? Try it - you'll see that most do.
2. The bottom line for getting the right answer on the MCAT verbal section is (a) find the author's voice (you knew that) and (b) stay in scope. If you just do those two things, you've got pretty much everything you need for correct answers.
3. The harder the passage, the less you want to struggle. What happens when you're stuck in quicksand and you struggle? You sink deeper. Same thing with a killer passage. The more you try to understand it, the deeper you're going to sink into the quicksand. Here's where the shrug factor comes into play.
4. When you don't understand a paragraph, map anything. Grab a word or two which seem to be unique to the paragraph, and leave it at that. You don't need to understand it if there's no question on it, and if there is, you'll know where to go back in the passage. You still don't need to understand the full, philosophical meaning of the paragraph. You just need to answer a specific question, and that's a whole lot easier.
5. Think like the testmaker. Did you encounter an odd word, a difficult phrase, a strange turn of ideas? Wonder why they're there? So does the testmaker, and he's likely to ask you about them. Be alert to how the MCAT is designed and you'll know what's important. Most important, of course, is the author's voice. You can bet on several questions about that.
6. Have no doubt that a detailed passage, usually in science, will have several detail questions. Try adding a few details to your paragraph map to make it easier to find them when you need to do research, especially with scattered detail questions.
7. There are lots of deduction questions on the verbal section of MCAT, and most of those are inference questions. An inference is an implied conclusion, and the conclusion is the author's voice - you noted that in the "purpose." When you have an inference question, just look to the author's conclusion and choose the answer which says exactly the same thing, but in different words.
8. Why does the author have inferences anyway? Why doesn't he just write everything he wants you to know? Because he thinks the inferences and assumptions are obvious. If you're told that Kaplan is the best place to prep for MCAT, then it's obvious that Kaplan provides MCAT prep. It's so obvious that it's not going to be stated, thus it's an inference. When doing inference questions, look for the obvious, and don't go out of scope. That's the testmaker's favorite wrong answer for inferences.
9. When you're stuck between two choices, don't guess. The correct answer is reflected in the passage and the incorrect one isn't. Each and every time. Count on it. Look at each answer separately (don't compare them; there's no such thing as better and best, only right and wrong), then ask yourself: ok, where is this in the passage? If it isn't in the passage, it's wrong.
See you in Unit III!
