help with verbal timing strategy

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help with verbal timing strategy

by scoobydooby » Mon Mar 30, 2009 7:49 am
wonder how does one manage time in the verbal portion of the test.

i have been following 2 broad timeposts- i try to reach the 14th or the 15th question by the first 25 minutes and 28th by the 50th minute. this strategy does not always work and i frequently find myself faltering especially when the second RC passage turns out to be discouragingly dense. i lose my rhythm and from then on its a mad rush to the end.

should i mark time separately for each RC depending on the length of the passage? or should i go for multiple timeposts as opposed to the two that i currently follow?

people please share your thoughts.
thanks

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by pJackson79 » Tue Mar 31, 2009 12:04 am
What about adopting a strategy that says you will guess on 2 RC questions that ask about a detail back in the passage where you have no clue as to its location?? In this way, you save time for questions you can answer later. Just a thought...

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by scoobydooby » Wed Apr 01, 2009 2:16 am
thanks pJackson79.
yes thats an option. guessing in RC can prove to be very costly though. i have noticed that verbal scores tend to nosedive when you get quite a few wrongs in a single/all passages.
will have to mark time separately for the RCs in addition to keeping broader timeposts. will try

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by Vitalina » Wed Apr 01, 2009 11:48 am
^^ I agree, mistakes in RC do cost dearly. However, if you read some really heavy stuff, and you know that you do not understand a thing, it's better to move on, as the probabilty that you will hit the wrong answer is quite high. that's my opinion.
And of course - study SCs, the ones that are pretty easy and you can spot them right away, this saves up time as well.

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by pJackson79 » Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:26 pm
Vitalina wrote:^^ I agree, mistakes in RC do cost dearly. However, if you read some really heavy stuff, and you know that you do not understand a thing, it's better to move on, as the probabilty that you will hit the wrong answer is quite high. that's my opinion.
And of course - study SCs, the ones that are pretty easy and you can spot them right away, this saves up time as well.
Yup...I have had friends who swear that they bombed the GMAT verbal b/c they got a tough science passage and they wasted so much time reading it and trying to get it 100% when they should have just guessed on 2 questions and moved on to other questions they could understand.