UMAT Section II Preparation: Decoding dialogue (Part I)

Before you study medicine, UMAT assesses how well you study people. The UMAT Test Paper has a section devoted to questions based on conversational passages. These passages are followed by a series of MCQs based on them that make you delve into the intricacies of how the characters interact, how the conversation develops, why they say… what they say, and more importantly, what is being said when nothing is being said at all! In a conversation the silences are as important as the spoken words.

Deciphering what people intend to convey through their speech is an integral part of a doctor’s daily life. In no other profession, does clear two – way communication, gain such importance. If your doctor misunderstands your words and diagnoses you incorrectly, you may end up with a chronic ailment or even lose your life due to improper medication. Analysing conversations is the first step towards understanding people.

The ACER authorities framed the UMAT medical entrance test, after having accepted the importance of the term ‘holistic healthcare’. Diagnosis is no more just curing ailments and eliminating diseases. A doctor – patient rapport has to be developed even before treatment begins. Only when the patient has enough faith in the doctor, does he or she confide and give all the details necessary for a proper diagnosis. So you now know the reason why the UMAT test contains a whole section on ‘Understanding People’. 

But how do you prepare for UMAT Section II? It is not something you have been taught in school classrooms. Neither do you have any textbooks that will tell you the formula of how and why people talk the way they do. So what do you do to prepare for UMAT Section II? Well, you are in luck! As in this series on ‘How to analyze conversations’, we will go through a step-by-step process of learning how to decode dialogue.

It is a really interesting topic to deal with that may seem surprisingly easy to some, while too difficult to others. We shall focus on written conversations, as that is what UMAT involves. It is a slightly different domain in comparison to real life conversations where factors like body language, etc have to be considered alongwith the spoken word. When reading pieces of conversation, it becomes important to analyze each comma, pause, silence or full stop in detail. In the following series of UMAT articles, we will pick up a few instances and analyze them to understand the various facets of human speech interactions. This will help you in preparing for Section II questions of the UMAT Test Paper. So keep reading and keep preparing…