Create Your Own Answer Explanations to Improve Your Performance on the Verbal Section

As you’re preparing for the GMAT Verbal section, you’ll read many answer explanations. Reading answer explanations can certainly be helpful. However, reading other people’s explanations will get you only so far.

In fact, I’ve seen GMAT students read literally hundreds of answer explanations without achieving Verbal score increases. Why? Because every Verbal question is different. Every question has its own subject matter and “quirks.” So, you could carefully study dozens of answer explanations and not still master GMAT Verbal because you’ll inevitably see new questions to which the explanations you’ve studied don’t apply.

Creating your own answer explanations is another story. In fact, in preparing for GMAT Verbal, your goal is essentially to learn to explain Verbal questions choice by choice. After all, to get Verbal questions correct consistently, you need to be able to articulate exactly why each answer choice is incorrect or correct.

With that in mind, even if you get Verbal questions correct, you shouldn’t be satisfied unless you can fully explain what is going on in them. Learn to explain Verbal questions as an expert would, and guess what? You’ll become an expert at answering them!

To create your own answer explanations, read every component of each question carefully, and ask yourself the following:

What do I need to see to get this question correct?
Why exactly is this answer choice incorrect?
What exactly is the effect of this answer choice?

Using your concept knowledge and careful choice-by-choice analysis, explain those key aspects of the question. With time, you’ll see your ability to efficiently “decode” Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension questions soar.

Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep