SC Section help

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SC Section help

by kkadvent » Sat Feb 09, 2013 2:40 pm
I have my GMAT in 2 weeks and biggest challenge I am facing is Sentence Correction and scoring only 40%. I have gone through Manhattan SC multiple times and I am not able to apply all the rules such as Subject-Verb agreement, Parallelism, Modifier error etc and answering the questions by instinct.

Can you please suggest what can I do to improve my SC.

Appreciate your response

Thanks
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by David@VeritasPrep » Sat Feb 09, 2013 5:39 pm
Sentence correction is essentially a process of "narrowing your focus." Knowing the rules that you have stated is essential but do you actively practice focusing on the parts of the sentence that matter and looking past the modifiers, prepositions, and clauses that are not involved in the particular question?

One of the most important thing to do is to focus on the differences in the answer choices. Do you focus on these?

Do you check the sentence without the modifiers to quickly see the subject-verb agreement problems and other grammar errors that the modifiers might hide?

Remember that you want to make the smallest decision possible - rather than comparing entire answer choices compare phrases or individual words such as this singular verb compared to this plural verb.
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by brianlange77 » Sun Feb 10, 2013 12:47 pm
kkadvent wrote:I have my GMAT in 2 weeks and biggest challenge I am facing is Sentence Correction and scoring only 40%. I have gone through Manhattan SC multiple times and I am not able to apply all the rules such as Subject-Verb agreement, Parallelism, Modifier error etc and answering the questions by instinct.

Can you please suggest what can I do to improve my SC.

Appreciate your response

Thanks
I've always liked thinking of SC as if you are building and then filling up a giant toolbox. By the time you get called to go do a job, you're never quite sure what sort of tools you might need to 'fix the problem', so you bring the toolbox. But, the toolbox is only as good as ensuring you've got the right variety of tools at your disposal. So, you need to get good at 'lots' of tools to ensure you've got good enough coverage for what you're likely to encounter on the exam.

Take a look at this link and see if your process matches up with what's in the article.

https://www.manhattangmat.com/articles/GMATprep-SC.cfm

Let me know what you think.

-Brian
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by hutch27 » Sun Feb 10, 2013 12:55 pm
depending on ur ability, 2 weeks may not suffice. I think what david said could be really helpful in ur given timeframe. but i think another really important thing u should remember is to read carefully the original sentence while looking for errors. A helpful strategy that worked for me is to take a bunch of OG practice questions and slowly read each original sentence and try & figure out what its trying to convey.

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by EducationAisle » Sun Feb 10, 2013 10:31 pm
I agree with hutch27. Unfortunately in SC, as in most other things in life, there are no magic potions. All strategies, all frameworks depend upon your thorough understanding of the fundamental concepts.

Understanding of the fundamental concepts is a two way procedure:

1. Your knowledge of these concepts (from your post, it looks like you have this)

2. Applying those concepts to actual GMAT problems (looks like you are having problems with this aspect).

2 weeks is a tad too short. Based upon how much you are currently scoring overall, and what your target score is, you might have to take a call to defer your exam.
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Now! Preview the entire Grammar Section of Sentence Correction Nirvana at pothi

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by Tommy Wallach » Sun Feb 10, 2013 10:32 pm
Hey Kkadvent,

I wanna jump on this too, if you don't mind. It sounds to me like you know what you have to do, and you're not doing it. When you say "I'm going on instinct," I would say: "Well stop!" In other words, if you can't do it with grammar...don't do it at all. Review it after the fact and learn what the grammatical issues were. Then do that same question again, a week later. This time, you should know the grammar. If not...rinse and repeat.

Final thing: Go through the entire OG and categorize every question without solving. In other words, keep a running list on a separate piece of paper, like this:

1. Modifiers, SV Agreement
2. Parallelism, Modifiers (meaning?)
3. Pronouns, Parallelism
4. Verb Tense

Do the whole thing that way, then check your work in the back of the book. Remember, you aren't solving any of them, you're seeing how quickly you can categorize. Give yourself 20 seconds max on each question to find the categories, then move onto the next. Do 20-30 at a time, then check yourself. This'll help you get into the mood in terms of categorizing. Good luck!

-t
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