GMAT Strategy

Just happened to give Powerprep 1 last night. Scored 640 with Quant 50 and verbal a miserable 26 (only 24 out of 41 correct). I knew from the start itself that verbal is my weak point and i really need a thump in my head to get my verbal scores moving up. Although i completed verbal section within the time and didn't really had to rush through. Yesterday for the first time also i tried my hand in AWA and without any E-rater or human grader, i can judge them to be absolutely awful. I didnt knew what i was writing...
My exam date is 4th may and as i am trying to improve on verbal scores, it's been disappointing to see them hover around 60-70 % correct only, whether it is kaplan, princeton or timed practices from OG 11. I know if i can get over at least 40 in verbal (with 2 months of prep time), my overall score would improve dramatically because i am pretty confident in quant.
Although i did a big mistake by not analyzing the OG questions which i have tried for past one week, but i will surely do them all over again. I bogged down hopelessly in most of the CR questions in which i didn't even get the clue what the author is trying to say or ask. Also there seems to be problem in RC when the passage is too long or absurdly described to be understood. In SC i am doing just fine.
So verbal experts please help this poor guy out from this pit. How to get along with the verbal part? How to improve writing skills for AWA?