Okay, part of your problem was that you weren't doing the AWA on your practice tests. You were prepared for a 2.5 hour long test, and then suddenly you had to take a 3.5 hour long test, with the verbal as the last 75 minutes of that. Your performance during that last hour is going to drop.
From now on, always do the essays - it's important to build your stamina!
It would be a good idea for you to identify some sources that will help you to learn what to do with CR and RC. Ask people / look in a book store and decide what book(s) you like best.
You can get some new official questions by using OG12 (just published a few months ago). A lot of the questions are the same (as in OG11) but there are some new ones. You're not actually done studying from OG10 / OG11, either - you still have some learning to do if you can't articulate:
- why each wrong answer is wrong
- why someone would be tempted to choose that wrong answer
- why the right answer is right
- why someone would be tempted to eliminate that right answer
Be able to explain this for every single problem. If you're not sure, search here to see if the problem / particular answer choice has already been discussed. If it hasn't, post yourself and ask!
Also, if I were to show you a particular difference in answer choices but NOT show you the full problem (or even the full answer choices), would you be able to tell me which rule is probably being tested? You can probably do this for some things right now (eg, "has" and "have" would be a pretty straightforward split), but you can also probably get better at this. The splits, or differences in the choices, are the major clues that (should immediately) tell us what rules we need to think about / apply for that choice. That will help with both your speed and your accuracy.
For SC, try this exercise: approach these as you would a math problem, to some extent, where you see certain "symbols" and that causes you to categorize the problem in a particular way. The "symbols" you'll see are the differences in the answer choices, and those "symbols" should be your immediate clue that a particular rule is being tested.
Keep a log in a file or notebook and make two columns. On the left-hand side, write down the name of a particular grammar error (eg, subj-verb agreement). On the right-hand side, write down what the splits tend to look like for that type of error (eg, nouns that sometimes include "s" and sometimes don't; verbs that sometimes include "s" and sometimes don't).
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Stacey Koprince
GMAT Instructor
Director of Online Community
Manhattan GMAT
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