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Experts Please help - Verbal !!!

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Experts Please help - Verbal !!!

by selfmade » Thu Aug 05, 2010 7:07 pm
Experts please help

Need expert opinion - basically to understand what Im doing wrong with verbal section. I have started studying just a couple of weeks back and could not do it on daily basis since I work full day and have home responsibilities as well.
I have taken two full length practice tests and scored 570 on both Sad((((((( --- Big Worry

Manhatten - Q 43 and V 25
GMATPrep - Q 46 and V 23

I am really evry disappointed with this score and feel depressed.Currently I am using Manhatten SC, OG 12th, Kaplan Premier Guides for my preparation.

I am using OG 12 and Kaplan premier as a study guide to learn the CR and RC strategies. Please suggest if I should use any additonal resources for this.
My target score is 780.

Can you please guide me on how should I prepare on verbal. I think one of the reason of low scores on verbal is - I cant concentrate much on RC passages and can't crack them easily if the language is tough. Moreover I feel exausted till I reach Verbal section. SC and RC are a big worry for me. Please help

I am providing the analysis of verbal section of the MGMT test that I took
- I wrote both the essays,never used a pause button and did not take any break.
- CR 48 % correct within expected timeframe Avg Difficulty level 600
- RC 50% correct Avg difficulty level 600 - Some questions took more than expected time and some took less
- SC 48 % correct Avg difficulty level 500 within timeframe.
Attaching the detailed report
Thanks
Arati
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Verbal.xls
Verbal Test Report
(26 KiB) Downloaded 87 times
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by Stuart@KaplanGMAT » Fri Aug 06, 2010 3:25 pm
Hi,

first - always take the breaks! Not taking the optional breaks is the equivalent of running an extra 2 miles before you start a marathon - it puts you way behind the competition. You said you feel exhausted for reading comp - no wonder!

Sentence correction is the most important part of the verbal section, solely because there are more SC questions than anything else. Since that's your most challenging question type, you need to identify why it's holding you back and create a plan to stomp it into the ground.

Do you fully understand the commonly tested rules on the GMAT? You don't need to know every grammar nuance, you just need to know GMAT grammar. As you review your practice questions, identify what types of grammar issues you're not picking up and then make sure that you (1) learn the rules; and (2) train yourself to spot when a sentence is testing you on them. For example, every time you see a pronoun in the underlined part of the sentence alarm bells should go off in your head. Ideally, by test day you're a sentence correction stimulus-response machine. Here are some examples:

stimulus: underlined pronoun
response: check to see if pronoun refers unambiguously to and agrees with only one parent noun.

stimulus: introductory phrase separated by a comma
response: modification issue - check to see if the introductory phrase describe what comes immediately after the comma.

stimulus: underlined list
response: check the list for parallelism.

stimulus: sentence contains "like" or "unlike"
response: check for valid comparisons.

And so on...

The same goes for the other two verbal Q types - you need to identify exactly what's leading to your lower-than-wanted scores.

For RC, read as much as you can - not just GMAT passages, but reading in general. If specific content types throw you off more than others, read in those areas to acclimate yourself to the style of writing and general vocabulary. You certainly don't need to know any content (the info to answer the Qs is always in the passage), but doing more reading will increase your overall comprehension.
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by selfmade » Sat Aug 07, 2010 2:06 pm
Thanks a lot Stuart. This is great advise.

For SC , I have started reading rules and practicing the SC problems. I am using Manhattan SC ( for rules) and OG 12, OG verbal and Kaplan premier ( for practice questions ). Also I have started doing the SC questions regularly in BTG community.

Do you suggest any other resources for RC and CR ( other than above). I liked your suggestion of reading in general, becuase I think that is definitely lacking. Working in IT industry, we don't normally read any other stuff and when I see historical or scientific passages in RC , the enthu goes down. So I will start reading in general.

For RC, there are various posts that I read before on RC techniques. Basically whether we should read complete passage or should use skimming ? Being a non-native person, I am not totally comfortable and confident that I ll be able to answer all of the RC questions right without reading the complete passage. Is that the right way ?
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by selfmade » Sat Aug 07, 2010 6:12 pm
I also analysed my GMATPrep score, and found that I had made lot of careless mistakes in SC :(

Also can you comment on this assumption ( or may be fact I dont know )....

I got some questions wrong in a row ( 2,3,4 then 11,12,13 then 24 to 27 and then 37 to 41 ) .. so bad :(
I have read in one of the Stacy's replies that getting qrong answers in a row is not good ... Does this affect the score to go down drastically ?


I also had a series of wrong questions at the end of the test .. How does this affect to go the score down.

My score summary was - I got 8 SC wrong and 8 CR wrong and 4 RC wrong.
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by Stacey Koprince » Fri Aug 13, 2010 7:21 am
Received a PM asking me to respond - sorry it has taken me so long. I've been sick and am behind on everything!

The first thing I'm noticing is that you said you started studying "just a couple of weeks back" and you've already taken two practice tests. You shouldn't expect much of a change in your score in a couple of weeks - so what happened is basically about what you should expect, actually. It takes quite a bit of time to see any kind of significant score improvement, and improvements tend not to be linear. You don't improve noticeably every day or even every week.

So, to begin with, don't be depressed. :) You've got time and you should expect to need time. You mention that your goal score is 780, which means you want a 200 point increase. That means you're looking at months of study here, not weeks; it's going to take time.

Next, you mention that you're using OG12 and Kaplan Premier to learn CR and RC strategies. I don't know what is covered in Kaplan Premier, but I can tell you that OG12 will NOT teach you CR and RC strategies. OG12 will give you practice problems (good ones!) to test yourself, but it will not teach you how to get better at these kinds of questions. If Kaplan Premier does teach you explicit strategies for CR and RC, great. If Kaplan Premier is more like OG12 (focused more on good practice problems and explanations), then you still need something that actually teaches you strategies and techniques for CR and RC.

In terms of more specific advice, we need more specific detail. Read this article and do the full analysis described. (What you've given us so far is some overall data from your assessment report - that's a start, but it's only about 15% of the depth of detail that we need in order to give you really good, specific advice.) So dig in deeper - it typically takes me 30 minutes to do the analysis described in this article, and I've done it a lot of times, so I'm going to be faster than you!

https://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/09/23 ... tice-tests

Also, just FYI - you mention in your post that you're attaching a detailed report. I don't know about the other experts, but my IT department doesn't allow me to download files from the forums. I can only read / see whatever you put into the body of your post itself.
Please note: I do not use the Private Messaging system! I will not see any PMs that you send to me!!

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