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Strategy on SC Questions, Take notes?

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Strategy on SC Questions, Take notes?

by fermar84 » Thu Sep 25, 2014 6:24 pm
Hi, just a simple question. There are a lot of places where I see the following message: "You should not take notes for solving SC questions"
However, when I am practicing and viewing the debrief of a given question, most of the times the notes make the answer a lot more clear.
Being a non-native English speaker I do see an improvement when I take notes, so I would like to know your opinion on this topic? And If you consider that taking notes is needed, do you have any tips (apart from the obvious such as five/six words)?

Thanks in advance,
Fernando
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by [email protected] » Thu Sep 25, 2014 9:57 pm
Hi Fernando,

As you continue to practice, you're going to find that the silliest mistakes that you make will likely happen because you DID NOT take enough notes, so you should keep that in mind when you're trying to decide how much you should be writing down. If you're not sure, then you should take MORE notes.

SCs usually don't involve much "note-taking" activity, but there are still things that you could be putting on your pad. For example, it makes sense to note the answers you've eliminated (by crossing out ABCDE or 5 dashes).

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by David@VeritasPrep » Fri Sep 26, 2014 12:05 am
Being a non-native English speaker I do see an improvement when I take notes, so I would like to know your opinion on this topic?
What kind of notes do you take? Can you give an example of what you write down that helps you?

Sentence correction is 100% a process of elimination so it is important to keep track of the answers you have eliminated. You can do this by writing A B C D E vertically for each sentence correction and then crossing out the answers that you have eliminated.

The point is to trust yourself. If you have eliminated an answer you never look back at it again. This way you do not need to write down the reason that you eliminated just cross out the answer it is stays gone. Be sure to exploit each flaw as it comes up. For example, if one question has a problem with the singular verb and plural noun, see if any other answers share this flaw and eliminate those as well.

In this way there is no need to note the flaw since you have already used the flaw to the fullest and you do not need to say why you eliminated the answer, it is enough to know that you did eliminate it.

It is hard to take notes on Sentence Correction. I am interested to know what sort of notes you have been taking that have helped you get more problems right.

David
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by fermar84 » Fri Sep 26, 2014 4:11 am
Hi, thank you both, I simply write down the tense of each phrase/clause and order them to check consistency (sequencing). Sure, It takes me a bit of time and I do write the ABCDE to cross them out.

Thanks again,
Fernando
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by brianlange77 » Sat Sep 27, 2014 6:57 pm
Fernando,

Thanks for the additional clarity. I firmly support taking appropriate notes during the SC section (and all the 'keeping track of answers' stuff mentioned already), but why are you writing down the tense on EVERY question? That feels a bit narrow -- if the sentence presents potential tense issues, I would consider it, but you are going to have more problems where tense is NOT an issue than you will have examples where it is an issue.

I might try to be a bit 'looser' and flexible when it comes to what you write down.

Hope that helps.

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by David@VeritasPrep » Tue Sep 30, 2014 6:53 am
High scorers on the verbal section generally have a very thorough process for sentence correction that goes something like this:

1) Notice a word or phrase that seems questionable to you.

2) Look for other options for this word or phrase in the 5 answer choices.

3) Select the better of the two options and eliminate the other answer choice.

4) Keep track of the answers that you have just eliminated - usually by crossing off the corresponding letter ( A B C D E)

5) Begin looking for the next possible difference in the answer choices in order to eliminate more answers.

You see the truth about sentence correction is that it is 100% a process of elimination. You do not need to take notes on things like verb tenses because once you use a difference in the answers to eliminate you no longer look back at that particular word or phrase. It is like a disposable can or bottle. You use it and then you forget it and move on to the next one.

The most important thing to know about SC is this...one truly incorrect word or phrase is enough to eliminate an answer choice forever. So if you do find that an answer uses the past tense when it should be present tense, you can eliminate that answer forever and never look back. So you are only focused on one word or phrase at a time. This is why you do not need to take notes.

If you are unable to do this without notes, you need to work on your techniques and practice. Critical reasoning requires that think about the entire stimulus at once so notes can be helpful. Sentence Correction is best accomplished by NOT thinking of the whole sentence at once but instead by making the smallest possible decision, so notes are not as helpful here.
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