BASIC APPROACH

1. It is best to tackle each chapter at least 3 times.

The first time you should skim the chapter, noting topic sentences,
words in bold print, all tables, diagrams and summary charts. This is
best read before the lecture.

The second reading should be in more detail, studying each area and
not proceeding until each section is understood. Reread each section
as of many times as necessary until you understand its meaning.
Mastery can take minutes or hours or days.

The last major reading is for writing down terms and definitions and
important concepts (see #6 below).

HOW TO READ

2. Talk to yourself as you read. Explain what you have read aloud and
make up your own examples to better understand what you have read.
Rereading the material aloud, especially in your own words helps
clarify the information. Hearing yourself makes a lot of difference.

3. Create tasks for yourself as you read the text.

After reading an example and working it out for yourself, try to

think of other examples that would fit the idea being discussed.

WORDS AND SYMBOLS

4. Words and symbols of biology have specific meanings.

Each time you come to a new term or concept, cover up the text
and see if you can express the idea aloud in your own words.

Write down all the words you don't know. Emphasize words in
bold type.

Whenever possible write out the definitions in your own words.

Strive for understanding the definitions so that you can easily
state them in your own words; you are more likely to remember
them that way. By saying it out loud and writing it, you are more
like to recall it later, when needed.

DIAGRAMS AND CHARTS

5. Study all diagrams and charts. They condense a lot of valuable

information.

Cover up and see if you can visualize them.

END-OF-CHAPTER QUESTIONS
 6. If there are study questions at the end of the chapters, be sure you can
answer them. They are good practice for the exam.

https://www.butte.edu/cas/tipsheets/studystrategies/studybio.html
You prob did better than you feel as long as you didn't random guess the section. aI've found
B/BC to contain descriptive passages (i.e. convoluted pathways and relationships) or completely
experimental - some were mixtures of these 2 types. Your goal should be to perfect a strategy
appropriate for both types; to do so, start with a detailed method and do some passages slowly
and carefully (w/o considering time). Figure out what helps you comprehend the passage well -
if you are a visual person, make diagrams; if you are auditory, whisper quietly; if you HAVE to
read twice practice skimming and rereading quickly.

Here's what helped ME:

Whenever I see a passage with no diagrams/graphs OR if it's a background paragraph to
experimental passages, I get into my "concept diagram" zone. I quickly make a concept diagram
made of abbreviations of molecules; horizontal arrows signify a causal/correlational (if in
psych/soc section) relationship; up arrow means increase and down arrow means decrease; I
would write inhibitors/stimulators abbreviation on the side - a line leading to the target
molecule will contain a (+) for stimulator or (-) for inhibitor. I do this b/c I'm extremely visual
and hate rereading. This also helped me accurately answer questions dealing with these aspects
of a passage. This may seem time consuming but point is to practice it consistently to do it
quickly. You can also practice this with intro paragraphs of research articles.

The other type of passage is experimental. Here you really have to understand the scientific
method as applied to biology. This site helped me very much: https://explorable.com/scientific-
reasoning . From here, the point is not to "read" a passage - instead your main goal is to answer
a few ready-made questions: what is the hypothesis/purpose? what are the
independent/dependent variables? visualize the samples (for both B/BC and P/S sections). does
the graph/figure/table data agree with the hypothesis? You should be able to answer these in all
the AAMC experimental passages. I know this looks like common sense, but the process of
passively reading the experiment vs. actively answering these questions makes a huge difference
in what you retain in your working memory. This is while doing the TIMED passage; when you
review the passage, go a step further: how does the experiment give new knowledge? what are
potential confounding variables? evaluate the sample: do you see any biases? internal vs.
external validity? are the results still correlational or did we get closer to causation? This helped
me become much more comfortable with research passages. The essential idea here is you build
some mental schemas beforehand so you can conveniently store/understand all the passage
info. Practice this with KA passages, EK in-class exams, and research articles.

As you do more and more passages, look for heuristics. For example, AAMC likes asking about
causation; the 3 requirements for this are temporality (A causes B and not vice versa),
covariance (when A changes, B changes), and lack of confounders. Then question would ask
what lowers the internal validity of experiment; I've found answer choices consisting of potential
confounders are most frequent. When a serious confounder is not mentioned, you have to prove
covariance: if NOT A, then not B - this simplified at least 3 such questions from AAMC FL. You
should find your own heuristics.

Also, when reviewing QUESTIONS, try your best to pick apart the logic. This means simplify in
as few words as possible, put question in visual form through concept diagram, etc. I found
many of the subtle "logic" problems in TBR physiology much easier to answer when I put it in
visual form; e.g. gaseous oxygen in lung in equilibrium w/ dissolved oxygen; then this dissolved
oxygen is in equilibrium with hemoglobin and so on. The point is to use this to understand the
core logic of the question. Kaplan and EK1001 bio have these sort of logic questions to practice
with.