Timing in the Word Translation problems

[Abdulla]

I'm spending too much time to translate the question into equations. Just now I finished my first question Bank of the World Translation and I fixed the timing to 2 minutes for each question, but I could not solve except 4 out of 25 questions.
Can anybody help me on that, What shall I do ?

[StaceyKoprince]

First, don't fix the timing to 2 min per. You're supposed to average 2-min per; it's okay to go over sometimes (only sometimes, though - not 21/25, obviously!). If you need to fix the timing again, fix it to 2.5 min per.

Second, some of our word translations problems are a bit too time-consuming, so part of it is our fault. (But not 21 out of 25 of them.)

You must FORCE yourself to answer the question within the given timeframe. Even if you have to make a guess - make a guess and move on to the next one. You can take all the time you like (and you should) to try the problem again afterward and to analyze what was going on.

This test is not asking whether you can do this question in unlimited time. Nor is it asking whether you can do the question in 5 min or 4 or even 3. It's asking whether you can do the question in 2 min (average - most of the time, you'll take between 1.5 and 2.5). The test WILL give you stuff that you cannot personally do in 2 min or 2.5 or even 3. You still have to find some way to eliminate some answers, guess, and move on.

Go back over those problems again and make a log. Why were you slow on the problem the first time around? Did you forget the material it was testing and you were trying to remember? Did it take you awhile to figure out what the question was asking? Did you know what it was asking but didn't know how to set it up or what to do to get to the answer? Were you slow with the actual calculations? Did you make a mistake and have to do the calculation again because you didn't find your answer among the answer choices? Etc. There are all kinds of reasons why we might be slow on a problem - we have to figure out why for any particular problem before we can then do something about the situation.

Next figure out: what do I want to remember about a problem of this type for when I see similar problems in the future? Is there a shortcut here that I didn't spot the first time, but now I realize that this part of the problem over here points to a shortcut? Great. What are the words that point to the shortcut? Is that the only way a problem could provide a hint about that same type of shortcut? (Probably not.) What is the general principle here that allows me to use this shortcut? How will I recognize a similar set-up in future, even if it uses different words? (You can also use this idea of "recognizing" something to recognize what approach to use with the overall problem in the first place - much better to recognize some stuff than to have to figure everything out from scratch!).

Some subset of the questions should be labeled: I don't think I can do this in less than 2.5 min. (And, maybe, I'm not even sure I can do it given unlimited time.) This is always going to happen - don't fall into the trap of thinking you have to know how to do everything. No matter how good you get, the test can throw something harder at you. So some stuff should be: I should just really make an educated guess here and move on. What's an educated guess? Well, that's just identifying (and eliminating) some wrong answers. Lots of times, when you don't know how to do a problem correctly, you do know how NOT to do the problem, and you can use that to eliminate some choices. Or you could use estimation to eliminate some choices. Etc. So learn how to make educated guesses on all of the major problem areas. Tip: it's a lot easier to learn how to make educated guesses on problems you get right. Then you apply that educated guessing method to harder problems of the same type - eg, rate problems, or number theory problems that allow you to test numbers, or problems in which the numeric answer choices are really spread out (in which case, I can probably estimate to get rid of some choices).

[Abdulla]

Thanks, this was very clear explanation and I will work hard on that strategy.
After analyzing the questions I figured out that most of the 700-800 questions even if I had more time I could not translate the question right and bellow that level I could if I had more time..
I think If I just focus on the 600 level questions and bellow to build my foundation and speed and after that trying 700-800 level questions would be much better than struggling with hard questions, which is affecting my entire performance.

[StaceyKoprince]

you're welcome! let us know how it goes.