I am taking the test on April 20. I am having a hard time to bring up my total score due to my very low average verbal score of 25. I have about 50:50 for each of the 3 verbal sections. Do you have any suggestions on how I can improve all 3 of them? Currently, I am practicing the
OG questions, moving next to supplemental GMAC blue verbal book. I tried to time myself when doing the questions, and after that I would come back to understand why my answers were wrong.
I am also taking Veritas Prep class sessions and tried to follow their strategy that works for me to answer the questions:
So, for SC, I did POE and eliminate answers knowing why I did that. I have been keeping logs on all the rules (learned new and always the missed ones) and tried to see the patterns on what is it that I always missed and just not getting them. Just this week, I realized that it seems to be the grey area pronouns, such as "it" or "they". This is the only verbal section that I was pretty confident in, but it seems that I arrive at a range about 50% or 70%.
For CR, first, I read the stem questions to id if the type is a strengthen, weaken, inference, or method (rare ones and usually boldfaced and mostly missed this) question. Then, as I amreading, my goal is to understand the argument. I write notes when doing that to help me understand what the argument is about. I find that doing verbal (esp. on CR/RC) understanding the argument/passage wins you half the way. I also made sure to note the conclusion and premises and took what I understood, keeping the conclusion, and premises in mind to go through the answer choices. I am always stumbled when English structure is written in the not straightforward manner, such as the double negative. I guess less familiarity slows me down.
For RC, I learnt from class to read the passage and understand the per paragraph or group of sentences. In class practices, the method seems to help save many seconds or a minute and still understand the passage enough. I have not tried it yet on more questions since the class this past weekend. I have been doing similar and write notes, again the goal is to understand the passage. I guess the Veritas method to paraphrase in mind of what was read makes me be a more effective reader. I take about 3 minutes to read a passage.
I don't read a lot, in general, big contributor and another one would be that I tend to lose focus with details (but tried to move on). On verbal, the 2 minutes/question give me enough time to read the argument/passage and question choices ONCE (and maybe TWICE on SC's question choices). This means, CR and RC is <=1 minute to go through the answer choices. And last, for certain, I think I just need to do a lot of verbal practice to build that very needed muscles.
Is there anything missing that I need to incorporate to improve my verbal?
I appreciate your help.