rg1 wrote:
Hi All,
Can someone help answer this classic question? How many questions should one practice for improving accuracy in SC/CR? Does someone like me has to go through 1000SC, 1000CR documents to improve?
I had finished OG12, Knewton, 2nd edition Verbal Guide, and
MGMAT and yet scored V25. It's really easy to say that one hasn't grasped the concepts after seeing V25, but how to improve from here on. I feel that I know the strategies, but find it very cumbersome to apply all the strategies during any practice or real GMAT test. During my verbal preparation, I felt hitting the ceiling
.
Thanks
RG
Here is my take on your situation. (I apologize it took me quite long to get to it. Last week was crazy!)
Going through 1000SC or CR is not going to help. Do fewer questions but understand them really well. Analyze them properly. (I just got done with an exam yesterday. While preparing for it, I was taking mocks to gauge by weak areas. It used to take me 6 hours to take the mock and 18 hrs to analyze all the correct and incorrect questions inside out - I would analyze every answer option to know exactly why each is incorrect/correct. I am quite certain it paid off!)
SC - Has maximum scope of improvement for many people. I would recommend going through the free online version of 'The Elements of Style' by Strunk and White found here:
https://www.bartleby.com/141/It will take just a few hours but is surprisingly relevant. Also read up on things tested often e.g. Dangling Modifiers, Participles, Parallelism etc. Know their usage inside out. Then work on
Official Guide SC and figure out why each option is correct/incorrect in your own words. Make sure you break down the sentence into its components and understand its structure (Ok, so this is the subject here and its verb is this, this is a modifier which modifies that and here we have a clause joined by and etc...)
CR - If you are good in Quant, this should be quite easy since it is just an application of logic and reasoning. Read the question stem to identify the type of question. Know what you should focus on and what you are looking for while reading the stimulus. Say it is a strengthen question - focus on the conclusion. You have to strengthen the conclusion. Find the option that does just that and be sure that the other options do not do that (there might be an option which will strengthen a given premise but that will not be the answer since premises are anyway taken to be true). CR is the section I would actually bank on, if I were you.
RC - Read the passage thoroughly the first time itself. Write just a couple of words that form the main point in each paragraph. It helps you in two ways - helps you stay focused since you are answerable to yourself at the end of each paragraph and helps you know exactly where you will find the answer to a question since you have written down the organization of content in the passage. Practice some long, tough, technical passages too. If you are wondering where to find such passages, then you can check out Veritas RC book. It has quite a few high level RC passages (and medium ones too) and if you are comfortable with the passages in it, there is no reason why you should not be comfortable with any passage GMAT gives you.
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