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Verbal Strategy Help - Aiming for high score

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Verbal Strategy Help - Aiming for high score

by RumpelThickSkin » Thu Jun 10, 2010 8:28 am
I am aiming for a high score in verbal.

My prep results so far are far as follows:

SC (weakness)

Read through a MGMAT SC Guide which was linked to Question in OG 10

1) Post reading through this guide I did all the Questions in OG 10
Performance - 208/ 268

60 mistakes - was shocked at my pathetic performance but realised that SCs are my weak area. Reviewed each error and continued on to OG 11

2) Did OG 11
Performance - 109 / 138

19 mistakes - I did not want the number mistakes to hit the teens but anyway got 19 WRONG despite seeing so many REPEATS OG 10 (couple of which I got wrong for the 2nd time ahhh) - Reviewed each mistake, realized I suck at spotting pronouns errors and moved on 0G 12

3) OG 12 :-) Have only done the first 50, NO MISTAKES yet (thanks to the repeats i guess)

BTW only got 13 / 18 on the diagnostic test on this one. I liked some of the questions I saw on this test.

Timing is not a problem for me on SC. I could usually 55 - 65 questions in 75 minutes. OG 11 was quicker (upto 65 questions / 75 mins) as I saw a lot of repeats.

CR (my strength)

I only did OG 12 (116 out of 124 8 mistakes) - happy with hit rate and progress. No strategies followed just read the question and answered it. Guess it is all just about eliminating answer choices.

Timing - 35 - 40 questions / 75 minutes


Reading Comprehension

Science passages (about galaxies, metorities , proteins etc) are my nemesis.

Finished OG 12

Performance - 123 / 139 (16 mistakes - thanks to the science passage and inference questions)
Timing - HUGE problem 3 - 4 minutes per questions sometimes. I take 15 - 18 mins on passages with 5 questions.

Also did some 7 LSAT passages from the 1000 RC documents to get better on inference questions. My performance was really good on them. As I felt I learnt something for those passages and enjoyed reading them unlike the dry GMAT ones.


Would be grateful for advice on the following

SC Section :

I am exhausting all the Official prep materials for SC and continuing to make so many mistakes. Very worrying! Post finishing OG 12 I will move on the Verbal Review 2nd Edition. Shall I go through the grammar rules again? Shall I repeat the OG questions (at least OG 12) once I am done exhausting all official questions?

Finally, what should be the next stage of prep after exhausting all OG questions and reviewing them?

CR Section

Is my timing okay? 35-40 question in 75 mins. How representative is OG 12 v/s actual GMAT for CR. I want to keep my uncluttered so no strategies other than timing myself for me on this section.

RC Section

How do I improve accuracy and even more importantly TIMING on this section? I read everything in detail and still make errors on primary purpose and inference questions. I will try skimming. I am going to exhaust OG 10 passages.

Shall I continue with LSAT passages?

Also, I am reading these passages aloud :-) I know this MIGHT sound funny, imagine reading passages aloud on the actual test - lol - but I feel it helps me concentrate. Somehow I have to fight this habit.

Lastly thank you for coming so far and finishing reading my rather long post. I hope some experts and fellow test takers can help me out with their valuable advice. Thank you once again for reading this long post!
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by cbenk121 » Fri Jun 11, 2010 1:41 pm
RumpelThickSkin wrote:I am aiming for a high score in verbal.

My prep results so far are far as follows:

SC (weakness)

Read through a MGMAT SC Guide which was linked to Question in OG 10

1) Post reading through this guide I did all the Questions in OG 10
Performance - 208/ 268

60 mistakes - was shocked at my pathetic performance but realised that SCs are my weak area. Reviewed each error and continued on to OG 11

2) Did OG 11
Performance - 109 / 138

19 mistakes - I did not want the number mistakes to hit the teens but anyway got 19 WRONG despite seeing so many REPEATS OG 10 (couple of which I got wrong for the 2nd time ahhh) - Reviewed each mistake, realized I suck at spotting pronouns errors and moved on 0G 12

3) OG 12 :-) Have only done the first 50, NO MISTAKES yet (thanks to the repeats i guess)

BTW only got 13 / 18 on the diagnostic test on this one. I liked some of the questions I saw on this test.

Timing is not a problem for me on SC. I could usually 55 - 65 questions in 75 minutes. OG 11 was quicker (upto 65 questions / 75 mins) as I saw a lot of repeats.

CR (my strength)

I only did OG 12 (116 out of 124 8 mistakes) - happy with hit rate and progress. No strategies followed just read the question and answered it. Guess it is all just about eliminating answer choices.

Timing - 35 - 40 questions / 75 minutes


Reading Comprehension

Science passages (about galaxies, metorities , proteins etc) are my nemesis.

Finished OG 12

Performance - 123 / 139 (16 mistakes - thanks to the science passage and inference questions)
Timing - HUGE problem 3 - 4 minutes per questions sometimes. I take 15 - 18 mins on passages with 5 questions.

Also did some 7 LSAT passages from the 1000 RC documents to get better on inference questions. My performance was really good on them. As I felt I learnt something for those passages and enjoyed reading them unlike the dry GMAT ones.


Would be grateful for advice on the following

SC Section :

I am exhausting all the Official prep materials for SC and continuing to make so many mistakes. Very worrying! Post finishing OG 12 I will move on the Verbal Review 2nd Edition. Shall I go through the grammar rules again? Shall I repeat the OG questions (at least OG 12) once I am done exhausting all official questions?

Finally, what should be the next stage of prep after exhausting all OG questions and reviewing them?

CR Section

Is my timing okay? 35-40 question in 75 mins. How representative is OG 12 v/s actual GMAT for CR. I want to keep my uncluttered so no strategies other than timing myself for me on this section.

RC Section

How do I improve accuracy and even more importantly TIMING on this section? I read everything in detail and still make errors on primary purpose and inference questions. I will try skimming. I am going to exhaust OG 10 passages.

Shall I continue with LSAT passages?

Also, I am reading these passages aloud :-) I know this MIGHT sound funny, imagine reading passages aloud on the actual test - lol - but I feel it helps me concentrate. Somehow I have to fight this habit.

Lastly thank you for coming so far and finishing reading my rather long post. I hope some experts and fellow test takers can help me out with their valuable advice. Thank you once again for reading this long post!
Hi,

First, I don't think you should be so hard on yourself. Given the mean score on GMAT is, what in the 500s, I don't think getting 200 some verbal questions right out of 268 questions is so inadequate as to be laughable. If you believe it is, then I suggest an attitude change, STAT. It's OK to shoot high, but beating yourself up will cause yourself to only generate bad feelings toward the test.

Now...off my soap box and onto your questions!

SC: How strong do you think your grammatical foundation is, honestly? The thing I felt about the MGMAT SC guide is that it's an exhaustive list of rules...but if you have no foundation to stack them on, they're going to go right out the window as soon as you see an unfamilar question. This was my case: for example, I had never heard of parallelism before, which in hindsight is a pretty basic grammar concept. What I found helped me was to read Power Score's SC Bible. It has a great grammatical overview, that gives you a foundation. That way, when you go re-read MGMAT's book, and they start throwing out terms such as "gerund" (which I didn't know until I studied for GMAT), you'll have that foundation to help you understand all the nuances associated wtih the concept.

CR: 75 minutes for 40 questions seems a little slow, I think if you work the math out, you'll find that you need to answer each verbal question in roughly 1 minute and 40 seconds. But, if overall you're finishing in time, then it doesn't matter (i.e., you're making it up in SC). However, because your SC is a little weaker, maybe you should take a little more time on each of those questions, and then cut time on CR.

RC: My specialty :). Check out this post I made earlier on RC tips: https://www.beatthegmat.com/tips-for-doi ... tml#213652

As for reading aloud, that would be disruptive to other test takers. You need to break that habit, duct tape your mouth shut if need be haha.

Good luck, and go crush the GMAT!
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by RumpelThickSkin » Sat Jun 12, 2010 12:10 am
cbenk,

Thank you for your friendly response. Your link to your post about RC was really helpful. I am targetting a 40+ verbal score.

Some follow up questions:

For SC

I have exhausted all Offical questions (except Verbal Review - 2nd ed and perhaps some GMAT prep questions). What should be next steps for me. As I am far from perfect on this section. Do you reading the powerscore SC bible will help I have already read Manhattan!

CR

Will work on timing. I am pretty good at this section.

RC

Do you recommend the 1000 RC document?

Many thanks for your help,
RTS

PS - I just bought the RC book by Manhattan primarily 'coz I think highly of Manhattan prep materials and also it is cheaper to access to their online tests via buying the book than buying these tests online (got that from Dana's review of this book - https://tinyurl.com/2evjo37 ). The Manhattan SC book I used was a hand me down from a friend so couldn't get access to tests.
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by DanaJ » Sat Jun 12, 2010 12:58 am
Received a PM.

One of the first things you need to do is start reading stuff in English. This will benefit you in two ways:
- better reading skills for RC
- grammar rules come more naturally to you if you see the language in action

If your SC hit rate is bad, I think one of the things you could do is purposefully slow down. You might be getting a lot of wrong answers simply because you're not spending enough time analyzing the answer choices. Of course, SC answer choices do not necessarily need to be analyzed one by one: you can use the 3-2 split (i.e. if you notice an error, like "have" instead of "has", eliminate all answer choices that contain "have") to quickly get rid some of them and focus your attention on the ones that remain. However, do take a bit more time with the answer choices that you have not eliminated: the differences between them are a lot more subtle!

Honestly I wish I could offer an opinion about the PowerScore SC Bible, but I haven't read it yet. One thing I will admit to though: PowerScore material is generally more reader-friendly than Manhattan material. I think it's a question of style and how you relate to it...

You could maybe consider reading a few strategy tips for CR as well, even though your hit rate is more than OK. The thing is, you need to speed up in this department so that you can afford to spend more time in RC and SC!

RC tests the softest skill of them all.... It's a question of your general knowledge of English and how much of a reader you are. Besides this, here are a few tips:
- I always look out for connectors in a passage: because, therefore, moreover, in addition, in contrast, in conclusion etc. These words signal new ideas and it's easy to keep track of the workings of the passage if you just pay attention to how each connector works
- be very skeptical of answer choices that contain entire phrases from the passage, they're usually devised to test your attention. Good answer choices will usually be slightly rephrased
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by RumpelThickSkin » Sat Jun 12, 2010 2:37 am
hey thanks for the advice dana. Much appreciated! Thanks for the note on connecters I will watch out for them.

I am actually going to try note taking in RC - might help me. If it slows me down even further I won't use it. I am going to try this strategy and might help on the primary purpose and inference questions and comprehending the passage better. This won't really help on the hunt and pick question (which I and I am sure most others find easier).

SC - after exhuasting the OG questions? Which set of questions should I do next? Still have 8 weeks to the test so enough time for practice.

Thanks again Dana CBenk for your posts!
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by DanaJ » Sat Jun 12, 2010 3:16 am
Note taking might help, but don't take overly elaborate notes on passages cause it might slow you down even more.

SC questions are not that hard to build, actually... I really don't know what to say about extra practice, you could try a mainstream book (Kaplan Verbal or Kaplan Advanced) or buy access to Grockit (I've reviewed it recently and it has a ton of questions - granted, a bit easy on the medium setting, but generally OK and you can practice from anywhere).
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by RumpelThickSkin » Sat Jun 12, 2010 7:33 am
^ Thank you so much Dana for the post above!
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by Stacey Koprince » Tue Jun 15, 2010 12:46 pm
Received a PM asking me to respond.

I haven't read what everyone else has said, so I may repeat some advice that others have already given you!

Before I dive into the three different question types, I want to talk about something else. The way in which you describe your some of your study (eg, 65 OG SC questions in 75 minutes) makes me think you're spending a lot more time doing and not much time reviewing. (When you first try a problem, I call that "doing"; when you review or analyze something you've already done, I call that "reviewing.")

Reviewing is WAY more important than doing. Probably 80% of your learning comes while you're reviewing, not while you're doing. While you're doing, you're just trying to spit out everything that you already learned before you started that problem; you're not actively learning while you're doing. Not much, anyway. You should be spending at least twice as long reviewing any problem as you spent doing it in the first place (for me, it's not unusual to spend 10 to 15 minutes reviewing a single problem).

Don't confused quantity of work with quality of work. Your task is not about the volume of problems you do; it's about how best to study for this test.

So let's talk about how to do that below.

SC
You mention at one point that you're done with the OG problems but that this area is still a weakness for you. If SC is still a weakness, then you are not done with the OG problems. You may be done with trying them for the first time, but you are not done studying those problems!

Start with this article:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/06/ ... on-problem

Then, go back and practice some already-done OG SCs until you feel like you've got the process down.

Then, move to this article:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/03/ ... c-question

Then, go back to those same already-done OG SCs and start analyzing them according to the process described in this article.

And, of course, do all of the usual stuff. Take good notes. Make flashcards. etc.

Create an error log. In the log, be able to articulate:
- why was the wrong answer so tempting? why did it look like it might be right? (be as explicit as possible)
- why was it actually wrong? what specific words indicate that it is wrong and how did I overlook those clues the first time?
- why did the right answer seem wrong? what made it so tempting to cross off the right answer? why were those things actually okay; what was my error in thinking that they were wrong?
- why was it actually right?

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.

Take 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).

CR
You're not worried, so I'm not either. :) Generally, you can afford to average about 2m per question on CR. (1m15s average on SC, 2-3m average to read an RC passage, 1m average for general RC questions, 1.5m to 2m for specific RC questions)

Re: your OG12 question, that's the latest book published by GMAC, so it's the closest to the real thing.

RC
Try reading something from Scientific American every day (www.sciam.com) - just to get yourself more comfortable with science writing and language. Without a subscription, you won't be able to read many full articles, but that's okay - GMAT passages aren't as long as full articles anyway.

Definitely huge timing problem. Here's an article to help you get better with timing in general:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2009/12/ ... management

Here's one about how to read RC passages:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/04/ ... mp-passage

Again, after you've read and learned the above, first practice with passages you've already done. (Just like I described for SC above.) When you do OG passages, DO NOT do all of the questions associated with a passage at the same time. Either do 3 (if it's a short passage) or 4 (if it's a long passage). Then, put the passage aside for a few weeks or a month; when you come back to it, do other questions that you didn't do last time. (If you do more than 4 questions, you give yourself an advantage that you'll never have on the real test; the later questions are easier to answer because you know more about the passage.)

You mentioned not liking inference questions; use this article to learn how to study those:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/02/ ... e-question

And, yes, you're going to have to stop reading aloud. They will kick you out of the testing room if you do that. And if you're used to doing that but suddenly can't, that will distract you. Try studying in a library or cafe, where people will look at you funny if you start reading aloud!
Please note: I do not use the Private Messaging system! I will not see any PMs that you send to me!!

Stacey Koprince
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Manhattan GMAT

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by RumpelThickSkin » Wed Jun 16, 2010 12:36 am
Thanks for the great strategy tips Stacey. Will follow and update on progress. Thanks again for the great tips!!!
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