Confused about my verbal weakness...RC,CR,SC

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nothinglessthan780: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 30; Joined: Mon Oct 13, 2008 9:36 pmFollowed by: 1 member; Location: Kenya

by nothinglessthan780 » Tue Feb 10, 2009 2:16 am

During my practise tests, i have been doing well in quant with my scores ranging from Q42-Q49, but verbal has been ranging V18-V34.....
When i analyse verbal, i have realized out of the three tests i have done, on one test i would get upto 80% correct in SC and may be 20% correct in RC and CR, in another test i would score upto 80% in RC and get a dismall 40% in CR and SC............
Looks like when i concentrate on one area in verbal,the other areas suffer.
On quant, my weakest area is DS....i presume this is making me not get to Q50.......
Any comments?

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Source: Beat The GMAT — GMAT Strategy | Tue Feb 10, 2009 2:16 am

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Stacey Koprince: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 2228; Joined: Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:28 pmFollowed by: 694 members; Location: Montreal, Canada; Thanked: 639 times; GMAT Score:780

by Stacey Koprince » Tue Feb 10, 2009 10:37 am

When you look back at those verbal sections, can you figure out some more detail there? How is your timing - are your percentages dropping in certain areas possibly because you're running out of time at the end and having to guess on a lot? (And then, obviously, you get a lot of those wrong, and if there happen to be a lot of CRs there, for example, then your CR percentage goes down.)

Are there certain types of questions (CR), questions and passages (RC), or grammar rules (SC) that you're particularly weak at - and did those types get tested more heavily on a test on which your performance went down in a specific area?

What are the specific types of things with which you tend to struggle in verbal? Certain grammar rules? Understanding CR arguments or RC passages? Certain types of questions in either RC or CR? etc.

Have you been taking the tests under full official conditions? (30m each for two essays, 10m break, 75m quant, 10m break, 75m verbal) If you have sometimes been doing the essays and sometimes not doing them, did your scores drop when you did do the essays? If so, you need to work on mental stamina so that you can still perform fully at the end of the test.

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shom: Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts; Posts: 21; Joined: Sun Oct 26, 2008 6:54 pm

by shom » Tue Feb 10, 2009 8:54 pm

[quote="Stacey Koprince"]if there happen to be a lot of CRs there, for example, then your CR percentage goes down.[/quote]

Interesting comment Stacey. Can you expand on this please? Is CR weighted more then RC or SC?

This is really important to me because when running out of time, I always skip CR first because it takes longer then SC questions. Even though I am usually a little better on CR, but I always finish them somewhat unsure in comparison to SC. Any thoughts?

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nothinglessthan780: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 30; Joined: Mon Oct 13, 2008 9:36 pmFollowed by: 1 member; Location: Kenya

by nothinglessthan780 » Wed Feb 11, 2009 3:23 am

Stacey Koprince wrote:When you look back at those verbal sections, can you figure out some more detail there? How is your timing - are your percentages dropping in certain areas possibly because you're running out of time at the end and having to guess on a lot? (And then, obviously, you get a lot of those wrong, and if there happen to be a lot of CRs there, for example, then your CR percentage goes down.

My timing in verbal is bad!I tend to overconcentrate on the first questions and i realized when i give the first questions some little bit more time i get most of the questions right, but rush through the second half of the 41 questions.

Are there certain types of questions (CR), questions and passages (RC), or grammar rules (SC) that you're particularly weak at - and did those types get tested more heavily on a test on which your performance went down in a specific area?

On CR:
Am quite good on strenghthen and assumption CRs but poor in weaken, inference and logical completion questions.I get impatient when reading CR arguments

On RC:
I enjoy business RCs more than Science and History ones.I realized if i spent more time to comprehend the RCs, i get the questions right.One thing that consumes most of my time is taking notes, which i end up not refering too..I understand better when i read the whole passage as opposed to skimming.

On SC:
My difficult areas are cases where the verb tenses are mixed.i.e a sentence could have a past perfect tense or a present continous tense and this would give me difficulty.I have no major problems with subject verb agreements,parallelism,modifications and comparisons

What are the specific types of things with which you tend to struggle in verbal? Certain grammar rules? Understanding CR arguments or RC passages? Certain types of questions in either RC or CR? etc.

I struggle most in understanding CRs and history and science RCs

Have you been taking the tests under full official conditions? (30m each for two essays, 10m break, 75m quant, 10m break, 75m verbal) If you have sometimes been doing the essays and sometimes not doing them, did your scores drop when you did do the essays? If so, you need to work on mental stamina so that you can still perform fully at the end of the test.

I have done 4 major tests.Out of the 4, on the 2 that i simulated test conditions inclusing AWA, i scored V27 and V28, whereas on the other 2 that i did not do AWA, i scored V31 and V34.
I have serious concentration problems on the 4th hour of the test, despite taking red bull or chocolate or even coffee.

Its a bit tricky knowing where i stand on verbal at the moment considering i only have 3 days to my exam

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Stacey Koprince: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 2228; Joined: Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:28 pmFollowed by: 694 members; Location: Montreal, Canada; Thanked: 639 times; GMAT Score:780

by Stacey Koprince » Wed Feb 11, 2009 4:53 pm

shom - I was talking about the specific situation of running out of time towards the end. If you run out of time with 6 questions left and have to guess, and 4 of those questions happen to be CR questions, then your CR percentage is going to go down (unless you're really lucky!), because you just got a bunch of CRs wrong.

If you only look at the percentage correct, you'd think, wow, I'm not so good at CR. But maybe you could've gotten those questions right if you'd had time to do them - so maybe you're not weak at CR at all. You just ran out of time. That could happen with any of the question types - it's just the luck of the draw.

nothinglessthan - stamina is definitely an issue for all of us, as you noticed from your practice tests. Generally, I avoid caffeine completely because it is not a steady source of energy and does not last for the entire length of the test. You end up peaking and crashing repeatedly. It's much better to eat food containing complex carbs, protein, and fat. PB&J or tuna fish on whole grain bread, energy bars that don't contain a ton of simple sugars, that sort of thing. Eat a good meal before you go in, until you're about 80% full. Eat something at each break, even if you're not hungry, and drink water. Pretend you're an athlete - feed your body, feed your brain.

And do some stretching on the break; loosen yourself up and get the blood flowing again.

Good luck!

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