08-11-2006, 07:45 PM
I took this recently, and while I don't completely disagree with the recommendation about scanning, there is a caution against it.
I'd recommend reading the passage once through and make sure you understand the general intent of what's going on. There are a couple of passages where there will be a whole paragraph that is a metaphor, and if you just read that, you'll get the question wrong. Many of the questions relate to a particular meaning of a word - often one that is not commonly used, but you may have heard used, or that has multiple meanings.
For example - and this is a made up exampl - there could be story that talks about a person's life, and in one paragraph/stanza/whatever they talk about him planting and tending to a garden - describing in some detail the care of his plants. It would be metaphorical for raising his family, and then one of the questions would say something like "in the passage on lines x-y, what is the man growing" and one of the answers would be food or whatever.
I missed a number of sample questions this way in seeing if I was ready for the test.
Also, while there were specific literary terms you may need to know, there weren't a ton of them - in other words, I wouldn't sweat knowing every form of poetry, metre, etc.
The last thing that helped was taking the test in a fairly noisy room - noiser than I probably would have liked for a math test, but loud enough that I was able to read the passages outloud to myself, which I find helps me follow confusing passages. It was no more than a murmer, but I didn't have to worry about annoying anyone else - although I'm sure someone could have thought I was semi-literate. ;-)
All in all, this is a pretty easy 6 credits, and depending on your school, possibly an easy A.
As a passing aside, I did think it was pretty funny that on a couple of the questions there are footnotes where they explain the meaning of a certain word. It is never a particularly obscure of confusing word and certainly not as obscure as others in the text. Go figure.
I'd recommend reading the passage once through and make sure you understand the general intent of what's going on. There are a couple of passages where there will be a whole paragraph that is a metaphor, and if you just read that, you'll get the question wrong. Many of the questions relate to a particular meaning of a word - often one that is not commonly used, but you may have heard used, or that has multiple meanings.
For example - and this is a made up exampl - there could be story that talks about a person's life, and in one paragraph/stanza/whatever they talk about him planting and tending to a garden - describing in some detail the care of his plants. It would be metaphorical for raising his family, and then one of the questions would say something like "in the passage on lines x-y, what is the man growing" and one of the answers would be food or whatever.
I missed a number of sample questions this way in seeing if I was ready for the test.
Also, while there were specific literary terms you may need to know, there weren't a ton of them - in other words, I wouldn't sweat knowing every form of poetry, metre, etc.
The last thing that helped was taking the test in a fairly noisy room - noiser than I probably would have liked for a math test, but loud enough that I was able to read the passages outloud to myself, which I find helps me follow confusing passages. It was no more than a murmer, but I didn't have to worry about annoying anyone else - although I'm sure someone could have thought I was semi-literate. ;-)
All in all, this is a pretty easy 6 credits, and depending on your school, possibly an easy A.
As a passing aside, I did think it was pretty funny that on a couple of the questions there are footnotes where they explain the meaning of a certain word. It is never a particularly obscure of confusing word and certainly not as obscure as others in the text. Go figure.
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