Verbal workout

[rahulg83]

I tried my hand in OG 11 GMAT review, both in verbal and quant. I expected good success rate in quant problems and as expected i got more that 92% questions correct in PS and DS, and that well within stipulated time . As far as verbal is concerned, intial problems were easy so i was scoring almost at 80% questions right. But as i browsed through later part of book, my verbal success percentage dipped exponentially . Now i have decided to dedicate entire time to verbal problems only for next 1 month (Exam date is 4th may). Is this advisable? Moreover, can someone suggest me to strategise verbal study for GMAT. I am planning to scan Kaplan 2009 verbal and OG 11 verbal review. Are these books helpful?

[VP_Jim]

I'd recommend taking a practice test, just to make sure that you can put the quant aside for a little while. If you really are scoring in, say, the 90th percentile on math, it can't hurt to focus on verbal for a month. I wouldn't recommend neglecting math entirely, however.

The biggest pieces of advice I have for studying verbal are this:

1. Learn the top few most common grammatical errors that show up in sentence correction. There are only about 10 of them, and every prep book calls them different things, so just get a prep guide and you'll know what I mean. My estimation is that about 90% of sentence correction problems revolve around one of these handful of grammatical errors.

2. Analyze right and wrong answers in critical reasoning problems. Break problems down and truly understand why every answer choice is right or wrong. You'll start noticing patterns and getting a feel for the way the test writers think.

Hope this helps!

[rahulg83]

Thanks VP_Jim..
Well i guess you are right. i haven't taken any full length practice test yet, so i am not sure actually what could be my approximate score in a full length computer test. Probably this weekend i'll try my hand in one of these. Actually i have gone through few prep books and in SC i was able to find similarily in patterns of various questions. One more thing i'd like to know. How to improve the reading speed and at the same time getting the feel of what is written in RC questions. Mostly i feel that although i am doing most of the questions correct in RC, i am running out of time...

[VP_Jim]

In RC, you have to remember to read for overall structure and main ideas , rather than getting caught in the details. You're only going to be asked a handful of questions about the passage, so learning every detail is a waste of time. Practice skimming for comprehension.