Verbal Reasoning

Overview of the section

The Verbal Reasoning section will ask you to read passages of text roughly 250 words long and then answer four questions relating to what you just read. There are 11 passages of text, so 44 questions overall. For most people, this is a very time pressured section, with only 21 minutes allowed for the whole section, so slightly less than two minutes to read each passage and answer the four corresponding questions. There are two different types of questions which are asked in this section:

1) Comprehension questions
2) True, False, Can’t tell questions

Comprehension questions
The comprehension questions require you to read a passage and then answer four questions, requiring your understanding of the text. The four ‘questions’ could be direct questions, or they could be incomplete statements, where you are required to select the correct one.

True, False, Can’t tell questions
The true, false, can’t tell questions consist of a passage of text followed by four short statements. Your response to each statement will be either ‘true’, ‘false’ or ‘can’t tell’.

Our top tips to succeeding in the Verbal Reasoning section:

1) Make no assumptions
The first key to success in the Verbal Reasoning section is answering questions only on the basis of what can be deduced from the text, and nothing more.
You must not make any assumptions.

An example:
In the park, there are 3 dogs in the playground and 2 dogs in the football field.

If the statement that followed said ‘There are 5 dogs in the park’, the answer would be ‘Can’t tell’ as the park may consist of more than just the playground and football field, and there may therefore be other dogs elsewhere.

However, if the opening passage said:
In the park, there are 3 dogs in the playground and 2 dogs in the football field, and there are no dogs anywhere else’

And if the statement that follows said ‘There are 5 dogs in the park’, then the correct answer would be ‘True’.

This highlights the key point of making no assumptions and only deriving conclusions from the information explicitly given.

2) Skim reading and picking out Key Words
The Verbal Reasoning section of the UCAT is incredibly time pressured and, as such, you need a strategy. The second key to success, therefore, is to learn to skim read and pick out Key Words, as you are very unlikely to have time to read the whole passage thoroughly.

Our advice would be to take a stepwise approach to each question as follows:

1) Read the questions/statement that you need to answer, following the passage of text.
2) Identify key words that you can then quickly identify by skim reading the passage.
3) Read the sentence before and after the keyword/s you have identified in the passage.
4) Repeat this for the whole passage, and, following this approach, answer the question.

It is worth noting that key words are likely to be dispersed throughout the passage. This is an exam ‘trick’ to make it harder to identify quickly the relevant piece of text. The most important thing to do, when this is the case, is identify all the times the keywords are used. If you focus too much on just one use, you may miss a later piece of evidence which contrasts or changes the previous point.

Further, instead of dispersing the key word throughout the text, the passage may instead use synonyms of the keyword, again to slow you down. To get around this, we would recommend when you identify a keyword you quickly think of a few different ways this could be said or referred to. As a result, when you are skimming through the text, you are more likely to pick up synonyms if they are being used.

– Depending on your personal preference, you might firstly wish to skim read the passage for just the keyword/s in the question and if this is not found, then re-skim the passage looking for synonyms instead.
– If you feel confident, however, you may prefer instead to do both things at once, skimming for keywords and synonyms in order to save time by not having to read the passage a second time.

3) Master the True, False, Can’t tell questions
As no assumptions should be made, some definitions can be created:

– True = based purely on the information in the passage; the statement is true.
– False = based purely on the information in the passage; the statement is false.
– Can’t tell = from the information given in the passage, it cannot be directly inferred that the statement is true, or that it is false.

In True, False or Can’t tell questions, often certain ‘operative’ words are used in the passage. With practice, you will begin to recognise these patterns, while you are skim reading for the distinctive key words you have selected from the following statements.

Here are some ‘operative’ words to look out for:

– Certain words – these are words which are indisputable and will exclude any other possibility but the conclusion you are looking for. These words often result in a conclusion that is either true or false, as they are definitive. Some examples are:

– Only
– Never
– Impossible
– Can’t
– Must
– Always
– Certain

– Uncertain words – instead of being indisputable, these words indicate more flexibility, including indicate multiple possibilities. As such, the presence of these words hints towards ‘can’t tell’ being the answer. Some examples are:

– Sometimes
– Could
– Can
– Might
– Likely
– Rarely

It is very important to watch out for these words in the answer statements, too, not just the main passage, as a mismatch between the two can provide the key to answering the question. An example of this is:

Passage extract: The library usually stocks books about medicine.

Question statement: The library never stocks history books.

Here the answer must be ‘Can’t tell’. Not only does the use of an uncertain word in the passage hint towards this, but the mismatch between the question statement and the passage confirms it.

When both the passage and question statement use certain words, it is much more likely that the answer will be either ‘True’ or ‘False’. This is of course not always the case, but it is a good place to start when trying to cut down on the time spent on each question.

While ‘operative words’ will not always give you the answer, they are likely to help point you in the right direction. Remember, when you are under the extreme time pressure that you are likely to experience in the Verbal Reasoning section, it is important to have some tricks up your sleeve!

4) Practise some basic number skills
It’s easy to assume that there will be no use of maths in verbal reasoning questions. While numbers are not often used in the opening passages, however, sometimes quick addition or even your knowledge of averages is tested.

For example, if you are told that the average age of students at a party is 19, you might then be faced with the following statement:

‘Some of the students at the party are younger, and some older than 19’

This seems like a very easy question with ‘True’ being the correct answer. However, this is a trick question! It is in fact possible that everyone at the party was 19. As such, the average age would still be 19. So, the correct answer is ‘Can’t tell’.

This sort of thing can easily catch out the unaware, so be aware!

5) Familiarise yourself with the tricks the examiners use!
Rather like the ‘average age’ point made, above, other things may be present in the passage that are there to try and catch you out. Having a working knowledge of these tricks will help you identify them when they come up on exam day, without, importantly, slowing you down.

1) One thing causing another

‘Many people who enjoy watching TV like snacks’

While tempting, then, to assume a backwards causation – e.g. ‘if you like snacks, you probably also enjoy watching TV’ – it is important to recognise this fallacy. While this example may make this principle easy to understand, Verbal Reasoning questions will sometimes purposely use – often familiar – topics which make it harder to spot when you are wrongly assuming causation between two things.

For example:

‘Some people who eat a lot of sweets are diabetics’, is subtly different from, but easy to confuse with:

‘People who eat a lot of sweets are diabetics’.

Further, the examiners may place two key statements alongside each other in an attempt to make you assume causation. When this is the case, it is important to look very carefully for phases which may link the statements, as a lack of these linking phrases could indicate that this is nothing more than a trap.

For example:

Opening passage: ‘A survey was completed about people who enjoy watching TV, and the same people were asked a series of questions about the amount of exercise they do in a week. The survey showed that they did less than average exercise.’
Following statement: ‘Watching TV results in doing less exercise than average’

The correct answer here can only be ‘Can’t tell’. Although we are informed that those who enjoy watching TV also do less exercise than average, there is no indication of a causative link between the two, such that it is possible to say that doing less exercise is a direct result of watching TV. It could, of course, simply be a coincidence that those who watch TV do less exercise.

Further, the statement only proposes a link between ‘those who enjoy watching TV’ and ‘reduced exercise’; there is nothing to suggest that those who have a greater enjoyment of watching TV, also watch more TV and hence do less exercise.

There is a distinct lack of linking phrase/s, or important ‘operative’ words in this statement, despite two key pieces of information being placed next to each other. This is something that, with awareness and with practice, you should be able to quickly pick up, and, as a result, not (incorrectly) assume that the answer is ‘true’.

2) Common topics

Rather like assuming in the earlier example that you might, at face value, take it that people who eat a lot of sweets are diabetics, the examiners know that using common topics that people are bound to know something about, may trick you into making (incorrect) assumptions.

This a key thing to avoid in the verbal reasoning section (and throughout the UCAT)

An example of this sort of trick would be:

Opening passage: ‘Libraries are a place where librarians work, there is often study spaces here for students to sit and work. Textbooks are a type of non-fiction book which are required for students to learn about the subject they are studying’.

Following statement: ‘Textbooks are in the library’.

Correct answer: ‘Can’t tell’. While we all know textbooks are found in libraries, the opening passage does not explicitly (or implicitly) state that textbooks are in this library.

3) Logic statements

We explain this more in our free Decision Making section guide, but one of the keys to succeeding in the UCAT exam is an understanding of the basics of logic.
Where logic becomes relevant in the Verbal Reasoning section of the UCAT is when you accidentally assume that if X equals Y, Y does not automatically mean X.

Example: All tables are furniture, but not all furniture are tables.
– As making assumptions is such a large area where marks are lost in the UCAT, it is key to identify when you are accidentally making these flawed logical assumptions. Practice is key to stopping this.

6) Mastering the Comprehension questions
The same strategy proposed earlier applies to these types of questions:

1) Read the question/statement that you need to answer.
2) Identify key words that you can skim read the main passage for.
3) Read the sentence before and after the keyword/s you have identified.
4) Repeat this for the whole text and, based on this, answer the question.

However, as the answers are not all ‘True, False or Can’t tell’, these types of question can be a little trickier to complete in the tight time frame – the process of skimming and scanning can take longer.

In order to explain how to succeed in these questions, we are going to split the explanation up into the different type of answer statements you can have for each passage in Comprehension questions. These are:

1. Identifying if something is true or false.
2. Consequences and Causes.
3. Finding the correct ending to an incomplete statement.
4. Reaching a conclusion or definition from the main passage.
5. Creating your own judgement.

True or false
You should apply the skills learned from the previous ‘True, False Can’t tell’ questions here. While this can be more time consuming, because you need to treat every answer option like a separate question, you can of course make time back by stopping as soon as you find the correct answer. We do not recommend wasting time by checking the other answers if you have already identified the correct answer, as there will not be two correct answers.

Consequences and Causes
Examples of this kind of question:

– What is the consequence of _?
– What is not a cause of _?
– Does _ cause _?

Some key definitions to be aware of:
Causes and consequences occur due to the relationship between something (an event/condition/decision), the cause, and the events that follow, the consequence.
While it is very easy to fall into the trap of assuming a causal relationship, you must never assume that something is caused by something else unless it is explicitly stated in the passage. As explained earlier in this guide, be careful not to connect phrases in your mind unless they are explicitly textually linked. Remember, just because statements are placed close to each other in the text, do not assume this means they are conceptually linked.

Finding the correct ending to an incomplete statement
Here, you will be given separate sentences which frequently do not relate to each other, but, instead, are associated with different parts of the passage. You are expected to select the option which completes the statement presented in the question.
Once again, we suggest tackling these as individual ‘True, False or Can’t tell’ statements.

Conclusion or definition
Based on the opening passage, you could be asked what the definition of something is, or what conclusion can be drawn from it.

For example:

– What is the definition of _?
– What can be concluded on _ based on the passage?
– What is best supported by the passage?

This, again, tests your ability to identify what logically follows, without making any assumptions. As such, we would recommend you work through this type of question using the same process adopted for the ‘True, False, Can’t tell questions. And, again, you do not need to determine if every answer option is true, as there will only be one. Instead, stop as soon as you find a (‘the’) correct answer. You should only need to pursue every answer option if it happens to be the very last one that is correct.

Your Judgement
While most of the Comprehension questions test your ability to infer logically, and not to assume anything, some questions rely on an element of your own judgement. In such instances, it is important that you read all of the answer options carefully, and not stop after you find one you think is correct. For this type of question, you need to assess the validity of the statement/answer in relation to the other answer options. We recommend you mentally cross off all options which are definitely not correct, and then compare and contrast those which are left.