Don’t Attempt to Master GMAT Verbal by Practicing Questions and Reading Answer Explanations

Here is a popular but ineffective Verbal preparation strategy. A student answers a couple dozen Official Guide Verbal questions with a timer going and gets many questions wrong. Then, the student reads the solutions to find out how to answer the missed questions correctly. I know of students who answered literally hundreds of questions in this way and didn’t see their Verbal scores budge.

The thing is, many test-takers—particularly native English speakers—underestimate the difficulty of the Verbal section. They figure that simply answering a bunch of Verbal questions will prepare them for test day. But GMAT Verbal is no joke, even for native speakers. Increasing your score by, for example, 5 points can require significant work.

So, unless your baseline Verbal score is very close to your goal, doing practice questions probably won’t suffice to prepare you for test day. After all, you likely won’t learn the numerous requisite concepts and strategies by simply reading solutions to questions you answered incorrectly.

Completing lots of practice questions before you’ve mastered the concepts and strategies they require is like hitting golf balls at the driving range without first learning how to properly hold a club. Will you improve your swing that way or just solidify bad habits?

Moreover, reading an explanation of what you could’ve done isn’t the same as knowing what to do and putting those steps into practice. Also, in your practice, you probably won’t immediately apply what you learned from a solution. Rather, you’ll move on to questions requiring different skills. And there is a good chance that you won’t think to use that prior information by the time you see another question to which it applies.

Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep