Verbal Reasoning

Key terms

Passage: This is the section of text which your reading comprehension is based on. You will have 11 passages in total, with four questions on each. These questions can either be posed as a question or a statement.

Question/Statement: This is a question, incomplete statement or statement in which you will answer on the basis of the information in the passage.

Key Word: A specific word which you identify from the question; you then scan the passage for this word to quickly find the information required to answer the question.

There are two types of verbal reasoning question types:

• True/False/Can’t tell (4 of 11 passages)

• Questions/Reading comprehension (7 of 11 passages)

As there are 11 passages in total, 4 questions per passage, and you only have 21 minutes, this gives you an average of 115 seconds per passage or 29 seconds per stem. The hardest part of this section is timing!

We recommend you spend 15 to 25 seconds scanning over the passage to get an idea of the content and structure. Then, read the statement/question and identify one or more key words (this technique is described below). After, scan the passage for the key word(s) - hopefully this is made easier by your initial scan as you know the structure and content of the passage. Remember, a keyword may appear in the text multiple times so scan the whole text. Once identified, read around the key word(s) in the text (the sentence before and after). This should provide you with the information to answer the question.

Never get caught up on a question as this wastes valuable time getting one mark, which could be used to claim more marks on easier questions later in the passage. After 20 seconds on a question, make an educated guess, flag and skip.

True/False/Can’t Tell

These are the easier type of comprehension question and consist of a statement which can be one of three options:

• True: The statement is directly interpreted from the passage.

• False: The statement directly contradicts the passage.

• Can’t tell: There is not enough evidence to interpret or contradict the statement from the passage.

Often these questions are based on facts and require little to no inferences. If multiple steps and tenuous inferences are required to interpret or contradict the statement from the passage, this is a sign that the answer is “can’t tell”.

For these questions, the statement will contain a key word. This is a specific word, which appears in the statement, that you use to find the relevant information in the passage. You should identify the key word from the statement - a specific word which relates only to that statement - scan the passage until you find it, and read around the sentence containing it (see example). This can then be used to conclude if the statement is true, false, or you can’t tell. Be careful, the key word may appear multiple times in the passage and so, time-depending, you want to scan the complete text for the key word until you are satisfied you have found your answer. With practice you may scan for multiple key words. The second you have an answer, select it and move in, don’t waste time checking, you don’t have much of it!

Example Question: Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Currently, there are only three living species of elephant; the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant and the Asian elephant which are distinguishable by their ears. Elephants are characterised by their thick grey skin, ability to communicate through vibrations, and enormous sizes. The heaviest elephant ever recorded was an incredible 11213kg.

1. The heaviest weight ever recorded for an African elephant is 11213kg.

C. Can’t tell

A. True

B. False

In the example above, the correct answer is C. Can’t tell. Using the technqiue above, we would identify “African” and “11213kg” to be key words. Scanning the passage for African and 11213kg informs us:

there are only three living species; the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant and the Asian elephant.

The heaviest elephant ever recorded was an incredible 11213kg.

As we now know the heaviest elephant recorded was 11213kg, but that elephant can be African or Asian (as the text doesn’t specify), we cannot confirm whether the statement is true or false, and thus the correct answer is “can’t tell”

Questions/ Reading Comprehension

These are the more challenging question type as key words can be more difficult to identify, or can be the answer options to the question (therefore, you have four keywords instead of one - see the example). Some of the particularly evil questions types include:

• Questions which don’t have a key word: “Which of these statements can be inferred from the passage?”. These are more difficult as you must find a key word in each of the 4 answer options and scan the passage for them, taking considerably more time.

• Statements which are referred to in several areas of the passage. These require you to conflate information accurately and ensure you have a general understanding of the text.

• Except questions: “All of these are modes of transport in Japan, except,” These take more time as three of the four answers will be validated by the text, and so you have to scan for multiple key words and interpret them in the context of the question.

• Authors view: “Which of these best describes the authors view on obesity”. For this question type, you must have a general feel for the text to understand the mood and tone of the text. Our recommendation for this type of question is to read the conclusion of the passage as well as the start and end of each paragraph. You can then use this to infer the author’s emotions.

In these cases, it is often best to dedicate a small amount of time to the hardest questions, eliminating clear wrong answers, guess between the remaining answers, flag, and skip. This is because these questions are time wasters used to trick students into spending vast quantities of their time. Remember, all questions are worth one mark, therefore, using fifty seconds on one of these difficult questions to get 1 mark, may prevent you from scoring 2 additional marks on future easier questions.

D. Dwarf elephant

In the example above, the correct answer is D. Dwarf elephant. This is a question where you are required to scan for each of the 4 answers, since the question gives us no key words. Scanning for “extinct” in this scenario would not be useful, as it doesn’t appear in the text. On scanning the answers, you will notice “Dwarf elephant” doesn’t appear in the text, and thus is the correct answer (as it must be extinct).

Top Tips

• This is unlike any test you have taken before. With an hour, everyone could score near perfect marks in this section, but that’s not the point. This section is all about pace and time management. Your pace should be a compromise between speed and accuracy; find the fastest speed in which you can absorb information without compromising too heavily on accuracy. Determine this speed by doing lots of practise. When entering the UCAT, here at The Top Medic, we all knew how many passages we would read (often 8, 9 or 10) and we just guessed, flag and skipped the remaining passages. This technique enabled us to come out with some of the highest percentile scores.

• Know when to skip. As mentioned above, we would usually flag and skip one or more whole passages (but not before selecting a guess for each question). A good passage to skip is a long one, one with many difficult questions (see above), and one with a lot of abbreviations and complex terminology. By all means, come back at the end if you have time, but ensure you answer the easier questions (e.g true/false/can’t tell questions) first. You may also want to guess, flag, skip a difficult question about a passage you have already read. In this case, make an educated guess, eliminating the clearly incorrect answers, and then take a guess. A 50% chance is a lot better than 25%!

• Read the statement. This tip seems ridiculous but many marks are missed by not noticing a qualifier or negative. This is the first section of the UCAT and you are likely to be slightly nervous, so read the first few statements/questions twice to ensure you are identifying the correct key words, scanning for the right information, and selecting the correct answer.

• Be careful of qualifiers. These are adjectives which will attribute a quality to a noun. These can be soft (some, few, may, often, can, usually) or extreme (all, never, only, sole). These can often change the meaning of the question/statement and can direct you towards a right answer. These are particularly helpful in true/false/can’t tell. For example if the qualifier is “all” and the text mentions one counter-example, the answer is false. For this reason, extreme qualifiers are more likely to be false, and soft qualifiers are more likely to be true or can’t tell. But be careful, this is not always the case!

• Be prepared to do simple arithmetic. Often to make numbers harder to search for, the passage will express numbers in a different form to the stem. Be ready to convert between fractions and percentages (e.g 1/4 and 25%) or months into days etc.

• Look out for inferences. Some statements are not given directly in the text and, thus must be inferred from the passage. It’s important to have a general feel of the paragraph or even whole passage for questions which mentions “inferring”.

• Don’t ignore can’t tell. It may seem peculiar for questions to be asked where you can’t tell the answer, but this is common for the true/false/can’t tell questions. Unless it is explicitly stated in the passage or can be easily inferred, the answer will be “can’t tell”. Also, be very careful with the wording, the statement may be more specific than the passage as seen with the example above - in these cases, can’t tell is the answer.

Speed Reading

Reading fast and accurately is crucial to achieving a high score in verbal reasoning. In order to increase your reading speed we recommend:

• Using speed reading software which flash words on the screen at hundreds of words per minute. Start at a low level, and slowly work up over time. An app we used is “Spreeder” which offers a 7-day free trial.

• Reducing sub-vocalisation. This is when you move your lips to utter or form the words you are reading. This slows down your reading pace to 250 words per minute (as this is our speaking speed) and without it, you can surpass 600+ words per minute. In order to do this, hum a single note when you read. This will prevent your lips from moving and overtime will reduce sub vocalisation. Eventually, you will be able to read quicker without humming.

• When scanning, scan the passage in a zig zag manner, down the page so that no time is wasted not looking for words.

• When comprehending, “tap” (focus on chunks of nouns and verbs in each line and use peripheral vision to fill in the gaps - e.g I walked my cat to the park with my sister and her friends) or “brush” (move your eyes along the line at a constant speed).

• Be careful of key words or negatives; they are often missed.