Help Needed for Verbal strategies

This topic has expert replies
Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat May 17, 2008 5:02 am

Help Needed for Verbal strategies

by braindump1 » Fri Jul 11, 2008 3:38 pm
Hi,
I need your help.I'm unable to devise any good strategy for verbal.
I will tell you all my problem areas.I read your blog as well/verbal strategy but there is no comparisons as I'm doing extremely pathetic in verbal. In Princeton

Review CATS after now 1 month of prep I'm scoring 500-520.In GMAT Prep I scored

470 (After a week's study).

Maths : I'm not that great I scored 37/60 in GMAT Prep, 36-39/60 in PR CATs.I'm

planning to work on it.I do some silly mistakes & have some issues with

rates/percentages/Fractions/Probability/permutations problems etc.I think I can

improve on it with little more hard work.

Verbel: I scored 19/60 in GMAT Prep CAT & 21-26/60 in priceton review.
1) Let me tell you I'm a non native speaker of English.
2) I have a reading speed of 210 words per minute in newspapers.Online when I

read this speed further gets decreased by 50 words.
3) I do lot of re-reading,regression.I have a comprehension Issue.
4) I've read all the books once like MGMAT SC,OG11, PR crack the GMAT/Verbal workout, nothig is helping me.
5) I don't have any effective strategy to handle RC/SC/CR.Nightmare for me is comprehension.I'm very low at it.How can I develop techniques to understand the

complex passages.You know the passages for Princeton CAt are not that difficult still I don't get them or even if I get them I don't answer questions

correctly.It takes lot of time for me to read CRs/RCs, understand it and then answer the questions.for Sc also I get usually those questions wrong where I have

to correct the meaning.
My dream score in Verbal is 40.Please let me know how can I improve it from

20-40.

Help me out with the plan for verbal asap so that I can work on my prep which is

not going anywhere.
I need your help.Please help me.
you can contact me at [email protected]

Thanks in anticipation.
Regards,
Braindump1

GMAT/MBA Expert

User avatar
Site Admin
Posts: 6773
Joined: Mon Feb 13, 2006 8:30 am
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Thanked: 1249 times
Followed by:994 members

by beatthegmat » Fri Jul 11, 2008 4:32 pm
You're in the right place. To start, I would examine the GMAT strategies and verbal resources available on the GMAT Resource Directory.

Next, I would spend some time reading through the 'I just Beat The GMAT' section. There are many stories of successful GMAT students who were non-native English speakers and have similar backgrounds to you.

Finally, there are many experts and amazing community members here to help. I'm sure a few will come across this thread, but if you have more tactical questions--ask and you shall receive.

Good luck!
Beat The GMAT | The MBA Social Network
Community Management Team

Research Top GMAT Prep Courses:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/gmat-prep-courses

Research The World's Top MBA Programs:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/school

Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts
Posts: 198
Joined: Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:16 am
Location: San Francisco
Thanked: 14 times

by mbadrew » Fri Jul 18, 2008 5:31 pm
I highly recommend the gmaxonline verbal review. The sentence correction and RC are thorough and give the necessary strategies to score high on the verbal section. If you're having trouble with RC, then read intelligent articles written by scholars. Read about science, art, business, finanace, health care, technology, economics etc. This is a strategy that I picked up from the gmaxonline RC review section. Some websites to keep in mind,

www.nytimes.com
www.jpost.com
www.washingtonpost.com
www.sciam.com
wallstreet online

Read the opinions written by editors. Read at least 30 minutes per day, longer if you can.

goodluck
Drew

GMAT/MBA Expert

User avatar
GMAT Instructor
Posts: 2228
Joined: Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:28 pm
Location: Montreal, Canada
Thanked: 639 times
Followed by:694 members
GMAT Score:780

by Stacey Koprince » Mon Jul 21, 2008 8:35 am
I agree that if you're struggling a great deal with reading speed and comprehension (especially if English is not your native language), you'll need to step back from the GMAT for a bit and do some general work to improve those skills even before you can hope for significant improvement on the test.

There isn't going to be a quick fix for this - speed and comprehension can take quite some time to improve, particularly if you want to achieve such a large score improvement.

As mbadrew suggests, look for somewhat advanced articles focusing on business, science, and social science. By somewhat advanced I mean leading publications for educated but general readers, not industry journals targeted at experts in that industry.

Scientific American is great for science stuff, as is the Economist for business. Parts of the NYT, Wall Street Journal, and WashPost web sites can be good - just be selective about what you're choosing to read, as a lot of stuff on the more general newspaper sites can be "fluffy."

You'll likely want to read one article multiple times. You may have to start with going sentence-by-sentence or paragraph-by-paragraph - understand the basic message of that sentence or paragraph before moving on. Use your review also to start to absorb grammar - what is the core (subject-verb-object) of the sentence vs. what is just extra info (modifiers)? If you can strip sentences down to their cores, that will help with all three: speed, comprehension, and grammar! And that will help you across all three GMAT question types.

Depending upon the level you're at right now, I would guess this could take you anywhere from one to several months to achieve significant improvement in your overall comprehension and speed. Layer your math study in with this as well, so that you don't go crazy doing only one thing all that time! Read some verbal GMAT questions occasionally to gauge your improvement and, once you start to feel the difference on GMAT-type questions, return to the GMAT for your primary verbal study.

Good luck - let us know how it goes!
Please note: I do not use the Private Messaging system! I will not see any PMs that you send to me!!

Stacey Koprince
GMAT Instructor
Director of Online Community
Manhattan GMAT

Contributor to Beat The GMAT!

Learn more about me