When Practicing GMAT Verbal, Treat Every Answer Choice as a Question

For best results, stick with each verbal practice question you see until you fully understand why every choice is incorrect or correct.

This tip involves the following key difference between GMAT quant questions and GMAT verbal questions. In most cases, when you answer a quant question, you’re concerned with only one of the five answer choices, the correct answer. On the other hand, when you answer a verbal question, you have to consider all five answer choices to eliminate four of them and choose one.

What this difference means is that, for best results, you should practice answering verbal questions differently from how you practice answering quant questions. Specifically, it means that, when you’re training for the GMAT, you should treat every verbal answer choice as a question to be completely understood and answered.

For instance, when answering a certain Critical Reasoning question, you might get the impression that choice (B) is the correct answer, and you might be correct. However, are you clear about why choice (C) is incorrect, or about how choice (A) relates to the argument in the passage? If not, then, for practice purposes, you haven’t completed the question, and here’s why.

Even if you get a verbal question correct, if you don’t clearly understand why every incorrect choice in that question is incorrect, then you have gaps in your knowledge or skill set. Right? For instance, if you get a Weaken the Argument Critical Reasoning question correct but aren’t really clear about why one of the incorrect choices doesn’t weaken the argument, then next time you see a similar choice, you may incorrectly decide that it does weaken the argument. Similarly, if you aren’t really sure why a Sentence Correction choice is incorrect and eliminate it just because part of the sentence “sounds funny,” you likely have a gap in your SC knowledge or skill set that you need to fill if you’re going to correctly answer Sentence Correction questions quickly and consistently.

So, your move when practicing is to stick with each practice question and wait to select a choice until you fully understand why all five choices in that question are either incorrect or correct. Practicing in that way, you’ll develop strong skills and truly master GMAT verbal. And, by the way, you’ll also get more value out of each practice question and be less likely to run out of verbal practice questions before you’re finished with your GMAT prep.