Need Help in Verbal SC & RC

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sahilchaudhary: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 153; Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:13 am; Location: India; Thanked: 22 times; Followed by:7 members; GMAT Score:540

Need Help in Verbal SC & RC

by sahilchaudhary » Mon Oct 21, 2013 12:31 am

I am planning to give my GMAT 2nd attempt in less than a month.

I am getting accuracy of around 70% in SC and unable to get beyond it. I know all the SC rules, but still I am unable to improve beyond 70%.

RC is my weakest area. Sometimes I get 80% accuracy, at other times it varies from 50% to 70%.

Can anybody tell me how should I improve my SC and RC.
Expert help is appreciated.

Sahil Chaudhary
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Source: Beat The GMAT — GMAT Strategy | Mon Oct 21, 2013 12:31 am

Gowri@CrackVerbal: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 123; Joined: Fri Nov 09, 2012 2:34 am; Location: Bengaluru, India; Thanked: 46 times; Followed by:9 members

by Gowri@CrackVerbal » Mon Oct 21, 2013 4:31 am

Sahil,

I'm afraid 'accuracy' is a very poor metric to gauge your level of preparation. What you really need is Analysis.

Pick up 10 questions from SC and CR and 2-3 RC passages, and give yourself 2 minutes per question. Pretend this is a Verbal sectional test and solve all the questions. This will take you around 50 minutes. Spend the next hour going over every question, trying to understand:

1. What concept was tested? (In SC, parallelism? comparison?)
2. What question type is it? (In RC, Big Picture type? Anchor-phrase? Inference-based?)
3. If you were between D and E, picked D, and E is the OA - what is the difference between the two? What did you think was wrong with E? What was wrong in D that you missed?
4. What kind of mistake did you make? (Conceptual? Timing? Silly mistake?)

Do this level of analysis and maintain an error log. Read more about the error log here: https://www.crackverbal.com/nailed-it-mi ... crewed-it/

Once you have a log for 100-200 questions, you can see the patterns in your mistakes - the concepts that trip you up and the type of mistake you are making. Knowing this will help you focus your efforts to fix these gaps and improve your score.

You can also check out this article on making your prep more effective: https://www.crackverbal.com/effective-gmat-prep/

Hope this helps.

Gowri N Kishore
Verbal Specialist & Mentor
CrackVerbal

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sahilchaudhary: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 153; Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:13 am; Location: India; Thanked: 22 times; Followed by:7 members; GMAT Score:540

by sahilchaudhary » Mon Oct 21, 2013 4:48 am

Hi Gowri,

I have read the link provided by you and it is helpful.

I usually do questions in sets of 10. If I am doing SC, I do 10 at a time. Same is for CR. For RC, I do 1 RC at a time. I always review my all my questions irrespective of whether I got them right or wrong. I try to understand why I got it wrong and try to avoid that mistake in the future.

In RC and CR, I sometimes (20% of the questions) get stuck between 2 options and can't find a way out. In my actual GMAT, I got stuck in SC and CR in around 7 questions and ended up in scoring 15 on the verbal. This dropped my overall score to a great extent.

I rarely do silly mistakes. Though sometimes I make mistakes in RC, it is due to time constraints. To answer a inference, I end up reading around half of the RC again and waste my time. I use MGMAT strategy for solving RC questions.

Please provide any suggestions if you have.

Sahil Chaudhary
If you find this post helpful, please take a moment to click on the "Thank" icon.
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Gowri@CrackVerbal: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 123; Joined: Fri Nov 09, 2012 2:34 am; Location: Bengaluru, India; Thanked: 46 times; Followed by:9 members

by Gowri@CrackVerbal » Mon Oct 21, 2013 11:20 pm

sahilchaudhary wrote:Hi Gowri,

I have read the link provided by you and it is helpful.

I usually do questions in sets of 10. If I am doing SC, I do 10 at a time. Same is for CR. For RC, I do 1 RC at a time. I always review my all my questions irrespective of whether I got them right or wrong. I try to understand why I got it wrong and try to avoid that mistake in the future.

In RC and CR, I sometimes (20% of the questions) get stuck between 2 options and can't find a way out. In my actual GMAT, I got stuck in SC and CR in around 7 questions and ended up in scoring 15 on the verbal. This dropped my overall score to a great extent.

I rarely do silly mistakes. Though sometimes I make mistakes in RC, it is due to time constraints. To answer a inference, I end up reading around half of the RC again and waste my time. I use MGMAT strategy for solving RC questions.

Please provide any suggestions if you have.

Hi Sahil,
Practicing 10 SC questions or 1 RC at a time is not very taxing - you need to focus only in short bursts of 10-20 minutes. This will not help you improve your pacing and time management on the GMAT. Secondly, you are focusing on only 1 area at a time - SC, CR or RC. On the actual test, you could get any question in any order. So, try to follow the Verbal sectional test approach I suggested where you are solving mixed bags of SC, CR and RC questions.

It's a good thing that you are reviewing all your questions and identifying your errors - the next thing to do is to go over your error log and see if any error patterns emerge. Are you tripping up on the same kind of questions over and over? If this is not happening at an overall concept level, it could be something more minute. For instance, you get most modifier questions right, but slip up when absolute modifiers are tested. Or you tend to go wrong on CR questions that involve statistics. Take your analysis one step further and work on specific problem areas.
I'm sure this will help.

Gowri N Kishore
Verbal Specialist & Mentor
CrackVerbal

If you find my posts useful, please hit the 'Thank' button.

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Brent@GMATPrepNow: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 16207; Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 6:26 pm; Location: Vancouver, BC; Thanked: 5254 times; Followed by:1268 members; GMAT Score:770

by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Tue Oct 22, 2013 7:05 am

Hi Sahil,

When it comes to Reading Comprehension (RC), I don't believe that there's one approach that works best for everyone. I always recommend that students spend some time experimenting with different strategies to see which one best suits their memory, reading speed and English proficiency.

When it comes to Reading Comprehension (RC), it's crucial that you engage 100% in the passage. Rather than approach a new passage with dread ("I don't enjoy reading it at all"), try to feign interest ("Excellent! This passage is about stock market regulations in Mexico!"). The better your engagement, the better the results.

You'll find additional tips to help you better engage with the passage in this free video: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gmat- ... on?id=1123

If you're interested, we have a free set of videos that cover all sorts of Reading Comprehension strategies: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gmat- ... prehension

Cheers,
Brent

Brent Hanneson - Creator of GMATPrepNow.com

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sahilchaudhary: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 153; Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:13 am; Location: India; Thanked: 22 times; Followed by:7 members; GMAT Score:540

by sahilchaudhary » Tue Oct 22, 2013 1:03 pm

Gowri@CrackVerbal wrote:
sahilchaudhary wrote:Hi Gowri,

I have read the link provided by you and it is helpful.

I usually do questions in sets of 10. If I am doing SC, I do 10 at a time. Same is for CR. For RC, I do 1 RC at a time. I always review my all my questions irrespective of whether I got them right or wrong. I try to understand why I got it wrong and try to avoid that mistake in the future.

In RC and CR, I sometimes (20% of the questions) get stuck between 2 options and can't find a way out. In my actual GMAT, I got stuck in SC and CR in around 7 questions and ended up in scoring 15 on the verbal. This dropped my overall score to a great extent.

I rarely do silly mistakes. Though sometimes I make mistakes in RC, it is due to time constraints. To answer a inference, I end up reading around half of the RC again and waste my time. I use MGMAT strategy for solving RC questions.

Please provide any suggestions if you have.
Hi Sahil,
Practicing 10 SC questions or 1 RC at a time is not very taxing - you need to focus only in short bursts of 10-20 minutes. This will not help you improve your pacing and time management on the GMAT. Secondly, you are focusing on only 1 area at a time - SC, CR or RC. On the actual test, you could get any question in any order. So, try to follow the Verbal sectional test approach I suggested where you are solving mixed bags of SC, CR and RC questions.

It's a good thing that you are reviewing all your questions and identifying your errors - the next thing to do is to go over your error log and see if any error patterns emerge. Are you tripping up on the same kind of questions over and over? If this is not happening at an overall concept level, it could be something more minute. For instance, you get most modifier questions right, but slip up when absolute modifiers are tested. Or you tend to go wrong on CR questions that involve statistics. Take your analysis one step further and work on specific problem areas.
I'm sure this will help.

Thanks Gowri. I will try to follow your suggestions.

Sahil Chaudhary
If you find this post helpful, please take a moment to click on the "Thank" icon.
https://www.sahilchaudhary007.blocked

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sahilchaudhary: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 153; Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2011 7:13 am; Location: India; Thanked: 22 times; Followed by:7 members; GMAT Score:540

by sahilchaudhary » Tue Oct 22, 2013 1:05 pm

Brent@GMATPrepNow wrote:Hi Sahil,

When it comes to Reading Comprehension (RC), I don't believe that there's one approach that works best for everyone. I always recommend that students spend some time experimenting with different strategies to see which one best suits their memory, reading speed and English proficiency.

When it comes to Reading Comprehension (RC), it's crucial that you engage 100% in the passage. Rather than approach a new passage with dread ("I don't enjoy reading it at all"), try to feign interest ("Excellent! This passage is about stock market regulations in Mexico!"). The better your engagement, the better the results.

You'll find additional tips to help you better engage with the passage in this free video: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gmat- ... on?id=1123

If you're interested, we have a free set of videos that cover all sorts of Reading Comprehension strategies: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gmat- ... prehension

Cheers,
Brent

Thanks Brent.
I usually try to engage 100% in the RC passage. I have followed 2 different strategies, but nevertheless the results are the same.

I will watch the above videos and see if that helps.

Sahil Chaudhary
If you find this post helpful, please take a moment to click on the "Thank" icon.
https://www.sahilchaudhary007.blocked