Word: verbal
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...families in the top quintile in income level. Critics of the current SAT believe this demonstrates the degree to which test scores are determined by background and preparation. In fact, this does not actually explain the numbers. A 2005 College Board survey found that, on average, SAT tutoring raised verbal scores a mere 10 points and math scores only about 15-20 points. This is hardly a mind-blowing difference...
Countering a charge that upper-class tax increases would hurt the economy, Joe Biden launched like a mad bus driver into a breathless verbal tour of his hometown, beginning with Union Street and a mom-and-pop restaurant, accelerating through all the stops—the current administration, taxes, Iraq, education, health care—taking a slight detour to note his (working-class, blue-collar) predilection for Home Depot, and wheezing back into the station with a promise of change from Obama. To viewers at home, Biden’s brief but intimate portrait seemed to say much more...
Sarah Palin’s brief replies were similarly revealing. Her impressive verbal architecture ensured the maximum number of catchy phrases per minute; when there’s so much to say, who has time to conjugate verbs? And she did succeed in conveying her dedication (to buzzwords, if nothing else). When the moderator asked what each candidate considered to be his or her Achilles’ heel, Palin assured the audience of her “experience as an executive” and “connection to the heartland of America,” before conceding that...
...Still, debates are all about verbal discourse, which happen to be both Biden's foremost strength and his foremost weakness. As a boy, he had a pronounced stutter, which took years of hard work to overcome. As a young superstar Senator - elected to the country's greatest debating forum at just 29 years old - he burnished his reputation with dramatic speeches about the struggles of working-class Americans. (Speeches that Palin herself alluded to earlier this week in an interview with CBS's Katie Couric, joking that she had heard them back when she was in grammar school...
...final piece of advice, valuable to both Obama and McCain: Never forget you're on camera. McMahon says he used to tell Dean to prepare for new debates by watching tapes of old ones with the sound off, because viewers judge performance as much by visual cues as by verbal ones. "You have to remember that how you look and how commanding you appear is often more important than what you say," says McMahon. "And don't forget the cutaways. When your opponent is answering, you tend to think you're off camera. But you're not. If you scowl...