GAMSAT Section I, unpredictable, challenging, frustrating! Wise words below from our Rod Stewart lookalike tutor, Laurence Haward! It’s true that there are strategies for dealing with the kind of specific difficulties that come up on these type of reasoning papers, and we teach them on the GradMed course, just as there are general pointers to bear in mind (like distinguishing between an assertion and an implication), but these are no substitute for the real thing. In this case the real thing is to have to account for the answers given to the questions set. In other words, if you put yourself in the position of having to explain why the right answers are the right answers (assuming they are the right answers of course!) and why the wrong answers are the wrong answers (assuming they are the wrong answers) then you are doing verbal reasoning However, there is an additional reason for practising the process of explanation, which is that the ability to explain things properly is essential for writing an analytical essay, so engaging in this gives you a double benefit, since writing an analytical essay is also on your GAMSAT curriculum. Two pre-requisites for writing a good analytical essay are the ability to think coherently (in other words the ability to do verbal reasoning) and, equally, the ability to explain your thinking clearly. Many of the students I teach have a perfectly sound grasp of the ideas at their disposal – there’s nothing wrong with their understanding - but they would never be able to convince a reader of that fact simply because they lack the skill of being able to explain clearly what it is that they understand. This is usually due to nothing more than lack of practice, but if you do not or cannot explain what it is that you understand then the reader of your essay will either not understand it themselves as a consequence or at the very least will assume that you do not understand it yourself. Either way there is a negative outcome. Therefore this business of practising the skill of explanation is so critical that it’s worth ploughing through some of what follows just to develop that skill Why not try some of our practice questions and see how you do at the test centre on our website – gamsat.co.uk/test-centre1.aspx
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 09:58:10 +0000
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