Why Doing Timed Practice Early in Your GMAT Verbal Prep Usually Doesn’t Work

One problem with doing timed practice in the earlier stages of your Verbal prep is that 2 minutes or less is generally not enough time for a novice to fully analyze a question and arrive at the correct answer.

When people do timed practice early on, they tend to rush through questions and get many incorrect. Then, they either get the missed questions correct the second time around or try to learn from answer explanations what they need to do to get the questions correct.

This process does not reflect what test-takers have to do to get questions correct when taking the actual GMAT. You won’t get second chances to answer questions or have explanations to refer to. So, practicing in this way, people don’t really develop their Verbal skills.

A second problem with timed practice is that it lets you off the hook. Rather than deal with the mental and emotional challenges of working your way to correct answers, you give yourself an excuse to say, “Oh well,” and move on to another question. Your time is up, so you just have to guess and call it a day, right?

With that kind of easy out, how will you ever train yourself to do what you need to do to find correct answers? How will you hone your analytical and logical reasoning skills and build your stamina and mental toughness? How will you sharpen your eye for nuance and detail? You won’t!

That you’ve learned about a question type doesn’t mean you’re ready to answer those questions at test pace. A more accurate view is that, having learned the concepts and strategies related to a question type, you’re ready to start training to answer those questions, in whatever amount of time you need for each question.

Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep