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Strategy to attempt long underlined word question

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Strategy to attempt long underlined word question

by aji12 » Mon Mar 13, 2017 6:17 pm
In long underlined question, the cognitive overload is too much. I generally forget the meaning and specially details while skimming through options after reading sentence. Taking notes while reading the question will waste time. Re-reading also wastes time.

Most of the time, while try to read whole sentence quickly, I miss the details e.g. supposed changed supposedly, remind changed to reminded.

I understand there can't be one strategy that suits all. But just wanted to know options. What strategy should I follow? Can I improve through practice?
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by ceilidh.erickson » Tue Mar 14, 2017 5:28 pm
Hi Aji,

I've moved your question to the SC forum, where you can get more feedback from a variety of experts.

I agree that SC questions in which all or most of the sentence is underlined are more challenging than those that have only a few words underlined. Here is my advice:

1) simply allow yourself more time on these. Not every SC question needs to be done in the same time frame, and you really can't move through these quickly and still maintain accuracy.

2) you won't be able to "read vertically" and compare individual words, as you can when only a few words are underlined. You'll need to change your strategy a bit.

3) instead, focus on identifying the topic being tested. Do you notice parallelism or comparisons? Subject-verb agreement? Don't rely on splits between answer choices to tell you what's being tested. Try to identify that as you're reading the sentence.
Taking notes while reading the question will waste time. Re-reading also wastes time.
4) I agree with the first statement, but I do not agree with the second. I re-read almost every sentence with a long underline! First, read for the gist of the sentence. Then go back and look at the structural pieces.

5) Review deeply. That's the best way to improve - pick apart every practice question you've done in detail, and start tracking your errors. Are you missing modifier issues most often? Or pronouns? You can then train yourself to look out for these things.

Good luck!
Ceilidh Erickson
EdM in Mind, Brain, and Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education
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by ceilidh.erickson » Tue Mar 14, 2017 5:38 pm
Most importantly, make sure that you know your grammar rules, and that you're not just relying on your ear. Here's an explanation for why a good ear isn't good enough: https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... orrection/
Ceilidh Erickson
EdM in Mind, Brain, and Education
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by thecriticalreader » Wed Mar 15, 2017 7:04 am
3) instead, focus on identifying the topic being tested. Do you notice parallelism or comparisons? Subject-verb agreement? Don't rely on splits between answer choices to tell you what's being tested. Try to identify that as you're reading the sentence.
To that I would add, make sure that you know all of the most common error types cold so that you're aware of what tip-offs to look for. Ideally, things like "it" vs. "they," present tense vs. future tense, and "due to vs. because" should jump out at you when you read through a set of answer choices.

If you're not pre-attuned to those kinds of splits, however, you might not notice them -- your brain will simply sort them into the category of "more information" and gloss over them.

In addition, while some questions do require that you think about the interplay between grammar and meaning, others depend on a single key piece or two of grammatical information. So while it would certainly not be advisable to ignore meaning entirely, it's also not a good idea to (hyper-)focus on the minutiae. In some cases, things you find confusing might not actually be relevant -- and by focusing on what you don't understand, you risk overlooking the fact that you actually have sufficient information to answer a given question.
Author, "The Complete GMAT Sentence Correction Guide - https://www.amazon.com/Complete-GMAT-Se ... 0997517808

Complete GMAT sentence completion rules -
https://thecriticalreader.com/complete-g ... ion-rules/
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