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Please advise.

by jain2016 » Tue Oct 13, 2015 7:46 am
Hi All ,

Yesterday I have given the full length mock from GMATPREP downloaded from mba.com and got 640 (Q 49 and V 27). I really need to improve in Verbal section ( SC , CR , and RC). I am planning to write GMAT next year. My target score is 720. I have ordered Aristotle grail for SC just to understand the basic and then will go through Manhattan SC. Is this right approach for SC?

For CR I have ordered power score CR bible.

I am confused that should I join online verbal course or not.

Also please advise some strategies to study for GMAT, how many hours should I study daily as I work 8.30 hours a day with 3 hours of travelling.

Please guys advise me and help me . I really need to improve verbal mainly SC.

Thanks.
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by MartyMurray » Tue Oct 13, 2015 8:29 pm
The key thing you need to realize in order to score high on the verbal section of the GMAT is that it is a logic and reasoning game.

People often prepare for the the SC questions as if they were constituting an academic test, maybe one that tests grammar knowledge. GMAT SC is not, however, really like an academic test. Grammar and sentence construction concepts and conventions are merely the building blocks of the questions, which are really testing one's vision and logical skills.

In essence SC is a test of one's ability to assess situations.

So as you are using those books and learning about all the concepts discussed in them, remember that the test is not really about those concepts and prepare accordingly.

I have seen people who can talk all day about SC "rules" and concepts and who still do not get more than around half of SC questions right. On the other hand, there are people who don't know all that much about the "rules" and concepts and get a high percentage of SC questions right, because these people are good at seeing the logic of what is going on and at assessing situations.

So essentially, if you had to choose between one and the other, probably you would be better off just learning on your own how to judge the effectiveness of sentences created via using SC answer choices than just learning a bunch of rules. I am not saying to do that. I am seeking to make clear the importance of being good at judging the effectiveness of sentences.

In a similar vein, I have seen people struggle with CR because in their quests for right answers they were seeking to somehow rely mostly on strategies they had heard about rather than seeking to truly understand the logic of CR questions and answer choices. If you don't understand the logic of the questions and answer choices, no strategy, other maybe than using psychic abilities, will get you to a high CR hit rate. For example, one person I have been working with had been preparing for the GMAT for about a year and still had a low CR hit rate. Why? Because he had sought to get better at CR by learning about strategy after strategy without realizing that the core of getting CR questions right is understanding their logic. As soon as he did realize that and started approaching the questions with that in mind, his hit rate soared.

So remember that GMAT verbal is basically a logic and reasoning game and prepare accordingly.
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by jain2016 » Wed Oct 14, 2015 2:45 am
In essence SC is a test of one's ability to assess situations.

So as you are using those books and learning about all the concepts discussed in them, remember that the test is not really about those concepts and prepare accordingly.


I am not saying to do that. I am seeking to make clear the importance of being good at judging the effectiveness of sentences.


So remember that GMAT verbal is basically a logic and reasoning game and prepare accordingly.
Hi Marty ,

Thanks for your reply.

What I get from your reply is that SC is more of assessing the situations and judging the effectiveness of the sentences. Now please advise that beside reading the book what else should I do to get master of assessing the situation and judging the effectiveness.

Please help me on this.

Thanks.
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by MartyMurray » Wed Oct 14, 2015 7:54 pm
jain2016 wrote:What I get from your reply is that SC is more of assessing the situations and judging the effectiveness of the sentences. Now please advise that beside reading the book what else should I do to get master of assessing the situation and judging the effectiveness.
One thing you could do is to go back over that GMAT Prep test you took and see what you missed about the SC questions you didn't get right. You can look at SC as a game you want to get better at, and by seeing what you missed you will get a better idea of what you need to improve about the way you play the game.

Beyond that, find a good source of practice SC questions and play the game.

One source of decent, if sometimes quirky, SC practice questions is the Veritas Question Bank. Those questions definitely force you to think and to look for solid decision points.

At first take your time and really analyze questions and answer choices seeking to get right answers no matter how long it takes. In other words, it does not really help to do questions on a timed basis when you would have trouble getting them right on an untimed basis. So first learn to get them right and then speed up.

When you don't get one right, here are two key questions you could be asking yourself.

"What do I need to understand in order to get a question like this one right the next time?"

"How could I have figured out the answer without learning anything new?"

The second question may be more important than the first. For one thing, many GMAT SC questions include multiple ways to eliminate answer choices. So if you are not sure about one decision point, often you can find another. In addition, just by carefully considering what sentences constructed using answer choices actually convey, one can often hack one's way to right answers without using any particular rules or concepts. If you do know about rules and concepts, even better. Still hack your way to right answers.

Often people think they way to get more right answers to SC questions is to learn more rules, concepts or strategies. What they are missing is that possibly even more important than their knowledge of sentence construction rules and concepts are their processes for hacking their ways to right answers.

So practice playing the SC hacking game and refine your processes for getting right answers.

(By the way, if you decide to get the Official Guide, get the e-book version. E-books are less destructive and better karma.)
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by jain2016 » Sat Oct 17, 2015 11:09 pm
Beyond that, find a good source of practice SC questions and play the game.

One source of decent, if sometimes quirky, SC practice questions is the Veritas Question Bank. Those questions definitely force you to think and to look for solid decision points.
Thanks for your reply. One thing if suppose I don't get the right answer, then how should I improve this?

I really want to improve.
(By the way, if you decide to get the Official Guide, get the e-book version. E-books are less destructive and better karma.)
I have OG13. From where can I get E-book version?

Also can you please tell the difference between OFFICIAL GUIDELINE VERBAL REVIEW 2nd EDITION and OFFICIAL GUIDELINE GMAT FOR VERBAL RIVIEW 2016? Because I am planning to buy only for verbal.

Please advise.

Thanks.
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by MartyMurray » Sun Oct 18, 2015 2:00 pm
jain2016 wrote:One thing if suppose I don't get the right answer, then how should I improve this?
When working on GMAT sentence correction questions, if you don't get a right answer, there are multiple things you can do.

One of them is to improve your SC hacking skills. One way you can do this is by looking over a SC question you didn't get and asking yourself, "Is there a way I could have figured out which is the correct answer without learning any more SC rules or concepts?"

Most GMAT SC questions feature multiple decision points in the answer choices. So even if you are not sure about a certain grammar rule or idiom, you may be able to get a question right by finding another way to decide which answer choice is the best.

Even by just looking at what the sentence created using each answer choice actually conveys one can often find the right answer. For example, often people talk about errors in parallelism, but even if you had never heard of parallelism, you could tell that somehow what a sentence is saying does not make sense.

So one thing you can do to get better at SC is look over questions you don't get and figure out ways you could have hacked your way to the right answer.

Another thing you can do is go the obvious route of reviewing SC questions to see what concepts, rules, idioms, or conventions they involve and then go review or learn about concepts that you could have used to get the questions right. For instance, if you don't get right a question that includes a restrictive modifier, then you could go read up on restrictive modifiers and develop better understanding of how they work.

Finally, if you don't get one right, you may have just missed something or done something careless. So go over questions you don't get and see what you may have missed that you could have used to get the right answers. To get SC questions right you need to have an eye for key details.
I have OG13. From where can I get E-book version?

Also can you please tell the difference between OFFICIAL GUIDELINE VERBAL REVIEW 2nd EDITION and OFFICIAL GUIDELINE GMAT FOR VERBAL RIVIEW 2016? Because I am planning to buy only for verbal.
Amazon.com has e versions of the Official Guides. They are set up for Kindle, but if you don't have a Kindle, you can download from Amazon software that enables reading Kindle books on devices such as PC's and tablets.

The 2016 Verbal Guide has new content that is not in the second edition.

Here is the Amazon.com Kindle edition of the 2016 Guide For Verbal Review that I get to from my location. If you can get to this page, notice the Read On Any Device Kindle App button on the left.
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by jain2016 » Mon Oct 19, 2015 1:06 am
The 2016 Verbal Guide has new content that is not in the second edition.
So i can choose 2016 verbal Guide over second edition right?

Thanks..
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by MartyMurray » Mon Oct 19, 2015 3:37 am
So i can choose 2016 verbal Guide over second edition right?
I believe so.
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