?Q:A? Reading for the author?s viewpoint - MCAt

lorelei: There is a big different in reading passages for the VR section of the MCAT versus the two science sections. In the sciences, you try to read a passage primarily for comprehension (what the author is saying). In verbal, not only do you have to understand what the author is saying, but also why s/he’s saying it and how s/he forms the argument. So when you are reading your practice passages, try thinking about the following questions:

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Google Reader

I have been using Bloglines to keep up with my RSS feeds for as long as I can remember.  I decided to play around with Google Reader today to see if I liked it better, and I have to say I liked it a lot better.

I like the way Google Reader enables me to click on a feed and see all the posts in that feed, even if I have already read them.  In Bloglines, I had to go through an extra step (selecting from the drop-down menu next to “Display items with the last x”) to view feeds I had already read, and even then, I couldn’t figure out how to review just one feed instead of all the feeds in a folder, which I frankly didn’t want to do.

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Kurt Vonnegut

1922-2007

America lost one of its great twentieth century writers last night. Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron” has long been a staple of my American literature classes, and my students really enjoyed his tips on How to Write with Style (pdf), too.

Sometimes, when I have a male student — a certain kind of disaffected youth who has trouble finding books he likes — I recommend that he read Kurt Vonnegut.

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