Patterns in SC ????

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Patterns in SC ????

by the nona » Fri Mar 08, 2013 4:04 pm
"Pattern Recognition" is a commonly used term and a key skill for GMAT .By practice , I could observe clear patterns for right and wrong answers in RC and CR , but never in SC .I just observe splits/decision points and re-split after exclusion . Any advice ???

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by aditya8062 » Fri Mar 08, 2013 7:54 pm
pattern recognition for CR !! i dont get u . if all u mean is that u have done OG once and then u sometimes get same type of question ( in terms of premise ) but differently worded then i dont think that going to happen in real gmat .yeah it can happen if u solving questions from some prep company question bank !! but for real gmat i guess they are always innovative with premise ,atleast at good 720 level!!

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by the nona » Sat Mar 09, 2013 5:43 am
aditya8062 wrote:pattern recognition for CR !! i dont get u . if all u mean is that u have done OG once and then u sometimes get same type of question ( in terms of premise ) but differently worded then i dont think that going to happen in real gmat .yeah it can happen if u solving questions from some prep company question bank !! but for real gmat i guess they are always innovative with premise ,atleast at good 720 level!!
Yes in CR I found several repeated patterns of wrong answers in the OG

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by GaneshMalkar » Sat Mar 09, 2013 6:28 am
If we think pattern in CR is the premise - conclusion and its underlying assumption if any then its true that we can recognise such patterns. In most of the CR questions we can easily identify the scope shift between the premise and conclusion. The real excellence of GMAT is they dont ask us to identify the underlying assumption but to go one step further and identify its role in the conclusion :).

For RC I am not able to find any patterns :( Inference being the tough to crack :(
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by sana.noor » Sun Mar 10, 2013 3:13 am
yes, CR and RC have patterns, but for SC we have rules, general guidlines and strategies.
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by sana.noor » Sun Mar 10, 2013 9:19 pm
Nona! have you gone through Manhattan verbal foundation? you should before touching SC correction guide...these two books helped me a lot...try to understand the meaning and construction of sentecnes. And the most important thing...go through OG verbal review in detail...try to highlight that why 4 out of 5 choices are wrong? use beat the gmat and gmat club forum and then give diagnostic tests. you will find a lot of books for practice. Cheers!
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by the nona » Mon Mar 18, 2013 4:27 pm
sana.noor wrote:Nona! have you gone through Manhattan verbal foundation? you should before touching SC correction guide...these two books helped me a lot...try to understand the meaning and construction of sentecnes. And the most important thing...go through OG verbal review in detail...try to highlight that why 4 out of 5 choices are wrong? use beat the gmat and gmat club forum and then give diagnostic tests. you will find a lot of books for practice. Cheers!
yes I do have it .. my problem is not the content it is in observing any repeated patterns of wrong answers to help educated guessing

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by Brian@VeritasPrep » Tue Mar 19, 2013 9:28 am
I'm really glad you asked this - Sentence Correction has enormous opportunities for pattern recognition! Patterns can help you very quickly identify common decision points - you'll still have to make the decisions, of course, but there are several structures that should immediately clue you in to the type of decision you need to make, including:

-If the beginning of the sentence includes a description and a comma, and the underline touches it, you're dealing with a modifier. It will look like:

The description is underlined, the noun is fixed (you have to pick the description that fits the noun)

The description is fixed, the noun is underlined (you have to pick the noun that fits the description)

The description is underlined, and so is the noun (you can mix and match, but you have to find a compatible pair of description/noun)


-If the answer choices use different versions of it/they or its/their, you'll have to find the antecedent and match it in singular/plural. And if some of the answer choices don't use a pronoun, give them special attention - often the best way to fix a singular/plural pronoun error is to not use a pronoun at all.

-If the first words of each answer choices show you a decision point (its vs. their, have vs. has, etc.) that's a likely decision point. But more importantly, check the LAST words of each answer choice - that's often a decision point and since people don't see that as immediately you get a little bonus in time and accuracy when you see those quickly.

-If there's a pronoun outside the underlined portion, it's often a signal that there's a singular/plural noun or verb distinction to be made, and that pronoun may be the key to knowing which to use.

-If you see a word that signals time, like "since X" or "from A to B" or "after..", there's a good chance you'll need to find a verb compatible with that timeframe.

-If you see a word or phrase that splits a sentence into two parts ("both" or "either" or "not only...but also" or "just as...so"), you'll have to make a parallelism decision.


There are plenty of others but hopefully this gives you a start. Make sure that you're not just learning rules, but you're looking for patterns of when to employ each rule. Sentence Correction is as much about these clues - about knowing which decision points are important - as it is about anything else.
Brian Galvin
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Chief Academic Officer
Veritas Prep

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