"Verbal Reasoning" tests.

SideWinder · 25 Jan 2011 at 20:39

My girlfriend is going to take one online tonight in the hope of achieving an interview.

Does anyone have any tips or advice? I know nothing about them.

TheCenturion · 25 Jan 2011 at 20:42

Are they going to be anything like the 11+ ones? If so you could look at 11+ papers.

Oh and they do tend to rely pretty heavily on a good knowledge of English.

Tikkabhuna · 25 Jan 2011 at 20:50

I applied for quite a few industrial placements and they keep sending me emails asking me to do them. I've already found a placement so I can do one to see what its like and can report back if you'd like.

Edit: So doing the practice test. It seems like its just read a passage and then pull information out of it and answer a question in a true, false, or cannot say way. Some of these questions are ridiculous. "Helping is never genuinely selfless." True, false, or not sure. Thank god I only had to do numerical and logic tests!

semi-pro waster · 25 Jan 2011 at 21:04

Generally I'd say that she just needs to read the passages carefully and think about her answers - I'm not sure there's too much else to it as from what I recall you're normally stating whether the information given leads to X being true, X being untrue or there being insufficient information to say. It's just designed as a measure of comprehension and reasoning which hopefully she won't find too difficult but there are a few practice tests available if she wants to try beforehand - Kent Uni do one for instance but don't scroll down too far at the start as the answers are there.

jr1104 · 25 Jan 2011 at 21:43

I've been doing a few recently, and one thing to remember is to only use what is in the statement. They sometimes try to catch you out by getting you to make assumptions. An example is I had a statement about the removal of the retirement age, and they asked "Are most people over 65 able to work?". While this might be implied, nothing was said about their ability to work, so the answer would be 'Can't say'.

HardwareGeek · 25 Jan 2011 at 21:50

+1 for the kent uni site, just done the 4 practice Q's and this was exactly like the tests i've had to do before for interviews/applications.

As jr said above "In answering these questions, use only the information given in the passage and do not try and answer them in the light of any more detailed knowledge which you personally may have." - from kent site

Thats the bit that will cause you problems if anything

qwerty · 25 Jan 2011 at 22:39

From the few I've done, 'Can't Say' comes up very frequently as the answer. Watch out for sneaky questions. I had one question where the passage was about the rising price of oranges and one of the questions was "Oranges are a source of Vitamin C". This is obviously true and everyone knows it but it didn't explicitly mention it in the text so the answer was 'Can't Say'.

[FnG]magnolia · 25 Jan 2011 at 22:49

^ Absolutely agreed. "Can't say" does come up more than perhaps you would expect. Don't make the mistake of thinking of it as the "I don't know" answer; you're categorically stating that, given the available evidence, you cannot agree or disagree with the statement.