lunascape wrote:Hi, everyone: My name is cao jingdong, means kick a ball into the door
I am a new beginner in learning GMAT, and In GMAT SC. there are two technical words called idioms and split in 5 choices, and I actually don't know what is the meaning of these two words, but I heard the experts said that if we have seen the idioms and split, we can eliminate the wrong answers immediately, and get the right answer quickly, so could you kindly tell me what is the actually meaning and how does them work, I'll really be happy to hear you soon. Thanks in advance!
Dear Cao Jingdong,
Nihao!
Those are great questions, and I am happy to help.
First, if it's relevant, here's a free three-month study plan:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/3-month-gm ... beginners/
Idioms are combinations of words unique to a language. For example, if we use the English word "
able", and we want to talk about an action following that, then
able to do X is the correct idiom
able for doing X is 100% incorrect according to the rules of idioms
There is no real logical explanation for most idioms --- an idiom is just the combination of words that "sounds natural" to a native speaker. They can be hard for folks learning English to master. In particular, English has many idioms involving prepositions --- verbs that take a specific certain preposition. Here's a free idiom ebook to help you get started learning English idioms you will need for the GMAT:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/gmat-idiom-ebook/
Idioms are one of the eight major subject areas on the GMAT SC. They are an area of content. By contrast, "splits" are about a technique or strategy used to solve SC. The basic idea is ---- it is far too time-consuming to read the prompt carefully, and then read through each of the five answer choices carefully. An approach of that sort will take way too long. Instead, one should read the prompt carefully, then scan the answer choices for meaningful differences. For example, suppose 3 of the answer choices have "
is" and 2 have "
are" ---- that's a very clear specific difference that would be easy to spot. If you see that, then you have to look at the sentence, determine the subject, determine whether "
is" or "
are" would be correct, and immediately eliminate the answer choices with the incorrect verb. In other words, you would use this difference to "split" or separate the answer choices into a correct group and an incorrect group. That difference between "
is" and "
are" would be one split in that particular SC problem. Then, we would need another split, on some other point of content, to further subdivide the answers --- the goal of course, is to narrow down to just one correct answer. A typical SC question has about two to four splits, on various points of content.
One point of content that could be the subject of a split could be a question about idioms. For example, consider this super-easy sentence correction question
Mike is able for explaining SC split about idioms.
(A) is able for explaining
(B) are able for explaining
(C) is able to explain
(D) are able to explain
In this simple question,
Split #1 is a verb split, "
is" vs. "
are". Mike is singular, so we need the singular verb "
is". For more on SV agreement, see:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/subject-ve ... orrection/
On the basis of this split, we can separate answers
(A) &
(C) from answers
(B) &
(D) --- that is, we can "split" them --- and we can determine that
(B) &
(D) cannot possibly be correct, because they contain a SV Agreement error.
Split #2 is an idiom split. The correct idiom is "
able to do X", with an infinitive, not "
able for doing X", with a gerund. This allows us to split
(A) &
(B) from
(C) &
(D), and see that the former pair must be incorrect, and only the latter pair could be correct.
On the basis of these two splits, we can isolate
(C) as the best answer.
Here's an article about using splits in SC questions:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/using-spli ... orrection/
Here's a free SC practice question that uses idioms and can be solved with splits:
https://gmat.magoosh.com/questions/3264
When you submit your answer, the next page will have a video explanation of that question.
Please let me know if you have any further questions. Best of luck to you, my friend.
Mike
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