Sentence Correction

upon reading reviews of many test-takers, i find that many of them said they found SC problems difficult. so i thought, i will discuss SC strategy with experts to see whether it is good enough.

many problems are meaning-based and try to trap test-takers. is it a good strategy to read the sentence and try to find the meaning or most-probable meaning and then think what could be made better and then go to options. seeing options at last will help us NOT to be trapped by different meanings that options provide.

also, experts how do you proceed when you resolve an SC question.

Vikram,

Just my take on this - It is interesting to see that most people on these forums think that SC is just a bunch of grammar rules and is independent of meaning.

Both are necessary. The idea is communicate the intended meaning through effective, concise and effective grammar. The interesting angle is that if you choose to ignore meaning and go through just the choices, you might come up with an answer option that is grammatically correct, but alters the meaning of the sentence.

My approach is to read the sentence, understand the meaning and then see where the fault lies in the sentence. Based on that and my understanding of where the fault lies, I approach the options.

yeah but sometimes understanding the sentence takes too much time just because there are too many connotations. e.g. see the below links for an SC question, i solved the sentence but never thought of these things while i was solving. solving the sentence is way easier than understanding these connotations. [@anup - awaiting your reply on 'theropods']
https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/pos ... tml#p46765
https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/pos ... tml#p61339

I would like to know the process that experts follow (ron, mitch, others please enlighten us)

Great question, Vikram - and I'll echo what Anu said when he mentioned that "both" grammar and meaning are important. But let me add a third portion to that - strategy.

1) The first thing I do whenever I see an SC problem is look for obvious differences between the answer choices. You'll often see these in the first word of each answer choice; the last word of each answer choice; or at the appearance of different forms of verbs or pronouns in each answer choice. At Veritas Prep we call those "Decision Points" - if there's an obvious difference between the answer choices (its vs. they; were vs. are; etc.) the test is often guiding you toward the decision you need to make, and you can attack that decision head on without reading the entire sentence all the way through first.

2) If you don't notice an immediate Decision Point, then read through the original looking for errors. But remember - not all words are created equally. So plan to focus on certain elements:

*If you see a modifier, check to see that the modifier is correct/logical. If it is, then ignore it - it's no longer of value to you. For example: Brian, a GMAT instructor from Los Angeles, were typing a response. As soon as you see that "a GMAT instructor..." logically modifies "Brian", ignore it - and "Brian were typing" is then clearly wrong.

*If that modifier is wrong, then eliminate that answer choice. And that also means...

3) Once you eliminate an answer choice for a specific reason (e.g. "illogical modifier") then search the other answer choices to see if you can eliminate any others for the same flaw. Often at least two choices commit the same (or a very similar) error. If you can eliminate multiple choices at once, that minimizes the amount of reading you have to do.

4) ONLY eliminate answer choices for major reasons (modifiers, subject-verb agreement) and save small-picture decisions for later. Beware "false decision points" (remember - just because the idiom or word choice in answer A is correct doesn't mean that a different version in answer B is necessarily wrong). Only when you've gotten rid of the big-picture errors should you narrow your focus - and here is where logical meaning tends to come into play, so really consider the meaning once you've gotten rid of obvious errors.



I hope that helps...