Don't hate it...Love it!

Hey, all..I will be talking about my experience on taking the SAT 1 and Critical Reading(CR) in the lab. Honestly, I detest CR. I do not like reading..it is not my thing. I did not manage to attain a good score for my CR in my first attempt(in fact, it was the lowest among the three sections in my SAT 1). However, one of the ways to improve on CR is to learn to LOVE it! So, I am trying my best to not hate it. I think you should too if you are going through this as well. XD

I think the vocabulary questions are not too bad if we really go through the words which are usually found in SAT reference books. For me, the passage based questions are the intricated ones. I noticed that my interpretation on the passages are wrong at times. I think this had happened to me because I do not read a lot. Most of those who excel in CR are those who loves reading(of course) and those who are expose to American styles of writing.

During my first attempt, I seriously struggled. I was forcing myself to memorize the vocabularies and the quotes for essays. Truthfully, I have expected myself to obtain a mediocre score as I did not see much improvement from the practices that I have done. I could not even finish a section of CR in 25 minutes...hahaha. Instead, I took more time in seeking the meanings of the words in the lexicon and understanding the passage itself.

When we were told to do CR in the lab/itms, I was shocked because I would not only face the trouble of straining my eyes reading the convoluted passages on the computer screen but also to apprehend them! Gosh! I had a difficult time..Being a slow reader, I really need a quiet environment and more importantly, TIME! Amazingly, I had manage to finish them and I am glad that I improve a little compared to my CR in my first attempt.

I will surely try my best to achieve a full score for CR(trying to be optimistic..=D). Therefore, you should aim for it too!

All the best ya!

when itms freezes you to death

haiz...had another long day which ended fantastically with everyone's favorite cr...found myself staring blankly at the screen after finishing 1 section...doing 3 sections of cr non-stop can be disillusioning...best of all, the itms lab that we used was like a freezer...i was shivering most of the time that i couldn't concentrate on the passage...as if that wasn't bad enough, some people just couldn't stop talking...it became quite noisy and yu jin tried his best to control the class...huhu...

my body was aching so badly as i just realized that itms has terrible chairs...most of them look fine, but once you sit, you realize that the back of the chair doesn't really support your back! it just falls behind, finally resting on your friend's table, while your whole back aches like crazy...i wonder where they found such great chairs...coz i had fun doing 2 hours of cr while sitting on a backless chair! bravo uniten...

after doing 2 sessions, my eyes were blurry, my mind flew somewhere else...so i clicked my life-saver, the button break....after massaging my own back and stretching up a bit, i decided to go to facebook for a while...managed to update my status on how i was suffering in the freezer doing endless cr...checked some notifications, and even got comments from fellow friends who were taking break themselves...lol!


after a few minutes of facebook( a great way to release stress you know, even the body aches were gone afterwards...hehe...), i resumed my test...finally, i managed to finish all 3 sections...my result was not so impressive...but it was slightly, mind you, only slightly better than my real result during the 1st attempt...i saw improvement in myself...although i am still stuck when it comes to vocab, i did better in passage reading...fewer mistakes than before, more understanding i would say...glad to know that passages are not really that scary...gotta improve on vocabs i guess...

so that was pretty much about our session today...i do wish that mr.yu jin will stop asking us questions and talking to us when we are in the middle of the test...seriously, lost my focus a couple of times coz of that...hehe, no offence sir...just hoping that all those questions can wait till we finish our tests...

~saw improvement, although small~

McGrawHill sample test

had our 1st CR mock test kinda thing today...uhhhh 2 exhausting hours...it was bad timing, from 2pm till 4pm coz most of us were obviously sleepy...lol...some started falling asleep in the middle of the test...it has been quite a while since i did CR in that kinda environment...vocabs seemed so foreign and i could hardly keep my eyes open...only managed to do 3 out of 4 sections...

the 1st section was sentence completion...i got 14 out of 18 which was considered good...for the 2nd section which was also sentence completion, i got 12 out of 18...hehe...it was considered marginal laa...not so good...lol...i realized that my main problem was vocab...i was stuck coz i didn't know the meaning of many words...was kinda expecting that laa but didn't know it will cost me so much marks... questions with 2 blanks to fill were more challenging...especially when i didn't know the meaning of most of the words...hehe...so i guess i gotta work on my vocab...

for section 5 which was grammar, i got 24 out of 34...hehe...nice number huh? it was considered good but i gotta improve on that...most of the mistakes were not coz i was careless, but i couldn't identify the mistake in the sentences...so should work on grammar as well laa...(^^)"

overall, it was a good experience coz i got to see where i stand...more of this kinda exercise will better prepare me for SAT i guess...

~tired laaa~