Hi, I am struggling with science related passages and or stimulus. Science does not come naturally to me. While reading the passages/stimulus, I find myself getting lost and thus struggle to answer the question stem correctly.
Does anyone have tips on how to tackle questions when you are not strong in the topic?
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Also reallyyy not a science person. What has helped me is pretending like I'm my pre-med best friend. I channel her energy as I read the passage and pretend I've taken Organic Chem and Physics. On a similar vein, is just reading with confidence (even if it's fake) bc I noticed that the second I saw the passage/stimulus was science related I was already telling myself that I wasn't going to understand the question, I'm so lost, I'm getting this question wrong, etc etc. When in reality they are never testing you on background knowledge so it's okay if you're not a science person because you don't have to be :) That might not be the most helpful trick ever but when you go into a question already thinking you're not good at - you will in fact do worse!
Only other thing I can think that has helped me was really not get bogged down in the actual sciencey language bc you do not need to even have a remote understanding of how viruses work to do well on a passage about viruses (using an example from this mornings drill lol). You don't need to have a full understanding of the thing but you need to know how that thing relates to the other thing and how the author feels about those things together and whatever the critics say about the things... if you can abstractly pull out the relationships and themes the writers are trying to push - the passage with nine different bacteria names becomes easier
I have heard that reading scientific articles in magazines or journals can help!
I like to take little notes when the passage explains scientific processes because those are often questions, also assuring myself I don’t have to understand the meaning of the vocabulary, and then pretending it’s interesting.
I also struggle with them, I have found that like some people suggest there might a study, theory, or phenomenon that they take time to explain. For me I try to do my best to really make sure I understand that information even taking time to diagram it if possible or just put it into my own words.
Also, if there is some kind of causal mechanisms I like to note that like “higher cholesterol usually leads to head disease”.
These are two things I feel they like to test on, especially more difficult questions, and if you don’t really understand it, it can come back to bite you on the questions.
I like to skim the breakdowns and instead, in my head, be like "okay so evidence of the claim" or "proof it can happen" not like so if a cell exists then it divides and we know this because cell division takes place during blah blah blah.