Finding it hard to nail SC

Paddy1234 · Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 2:17 am Post subject: Finding it hard to nail SC

My prep for GMAT is going on fine... I score anywere between 44 - 48 in Quants but a dismal 24-30 in Verbal...

My problem: I Believe I have a descent exposure to English - generally speak and write well.. But SC is one area which is cornering my scores.. I Use MGAMT SC book. I do well with the concepts, solve all their excercise problems correctly and often score 13/15 in all their sectional tests ( Subject-Verb Agreement, Pronouns, Modifiers etc..)

But when i get on to the Real GMAT ( Preps ) i fail to identify the right errors/ pin point whether its a Parallelism problem, Subject -Verb agreement related one or a question based on Modifiers... I am not able to comprehend/apply the concepts/learnings when attempting a full paper...

Can some one help me with this??? Any strategy... This is a de-motivating experience altogether...

lunarpower · Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 2:56 am Post subject:

here's the problem:
you know exactly what to look for once you know what problem type you're dealing with.
it's no surprise, then, that you do extremely well on the In-Action problems at the end of each chapter (the things you're referring to as "sectional tests"): they're organized by chapter!!
in other words, it's not that hard to do well on subject-verb agreement problems when they're labeled as part of a subject-verb agreement chapter. it's not that hard to do well on modifier problems when they're labeled as part of a modifiers chapter.
etc.

so, here's the diagnosis:
you have to figure out the SIGNALS that tell you what problem type you're dealing with.
some of these are pretty easy. for example, subject-verb agreement is a dead giveaway, because you'll notice a "number split" in the answer choices: some of them will be singular, and some of them will be plural. if you notice such a split among nouns, you should immediately set out to discover the verb for which those nouns are ostensibly the subject; if you notice such a split among verbs, you should immediately set out to discover the subject of those verbs.
other errors, such as modifier errors, are harder to spot, because you can't find them just by looking at splits in one single location.

but here's a good way to improve:
* put a sentence correction problem on the front of a flash card (or a whole piece of paper, if you don't like small print), unadorned with any highlighting or decoration.
* on the back of the card/paper, HIGHLIGHT or UNDERLINE each SIGNAL in a different color of highlighter/pen. then, in the same color, WRITE the type of error involved in the split.
for instance, if you notice a split in which 3 of the choices feature "creatures" and the other 2 choices feature "creature", then you'd want to find the corresponding verb; that's a subject-verb agreement problem, as pointed out before. what you'd do is highlight all 5 nouns in the split in, say, yellow, and then write "subject-verb agreement" in yellow somewhere else on the paper.

do this enough times and you'll start to develop a pretty good idea of what you're supposed to be looking for.

it will be a lot of work, but so is everything else worth doing.