No Improvement in sentence correction

I second gladiator999, one has to apply the rules some way or the other to increase the hit rate.

I think sentence correction is certainly the most difficult part of the GMAT.

One way to handle this is to diagram the sentence to make sure everything is in agreement. Each proposed modification they have almost always must agree with something else in the unchanging portion of the sentence. If you can decide what variable words must agree with what static words you can choose the answer that makes the most sense.

Alternately, a friend of mine had success with reading the sentence all the way through and then writing a correction on the scrap paper even before he looked at the multiple choice answers. Doing this allowed him to bring everything into agreement without getting tangled in choosing the answers. He then reconciled his sentence with the proposed changes.

I feel the same way. I usually tackle the questions using instinct. I think I do this because I have poor knowledge of grammar fundamentals and have trouble breaking down the sentence into all its components. I'm going to be going through the fundamentals using GMAT Ultimate Grammar book. Hopefully once I can comfortably break the sentence into all its components I'll be able to see the mistakes more clearly.

One key thing here:

The way we think can and will throw people off in SC. If we think in improper grammar, our mind will tread to the incorrect answer because of this.

Keeping an error log helped me monitor my grammatically incorrect thoughts. By forcing myself (over time) to THINK in proper grammar, I was able to overcome certain obstacles in SC and boost my verbal score.

Actually, I would argue SC is the easiest to improve. Improving your RC skills is usually a lifelong path. There are strategies you can use to improve your RC test-taking ability in the short run, but if you really want to improve reading comprehension, it's going to take a lot more time than it would take to improve SC.

You see, with SC - there are only so many types of sentence structures that they can test you on. If you an identify where all the booby traps can potentially be, you'll do a lot better.

Reading the sentence all the way through and then writing a correct version on a separate sheet of paper --mmm, I'm not sure about that. Doing that might be a good exercise. But for the purposes of the exam, if you read the entire sentence all the way through, you would be wasting a lot of time. Remember, the test is timed. If you don't finish it, you'll be HEAVILY penalized. You don't want that.

Remember, you want to study smart, not hard. SC can be hard especially if you're used to using incorrect grammar in your everyday speech. The GMAT guys want things a certain way. All you need to do is understand what they want, and you'll get what you want.

Thank you mohater for the tip on verbal error log. I'll be keeping one as well when I start my Verbal review.

Thanks guys !!!
I am sure knowing the rules is very important , and once you know some things get clearer, so i ma working on it currently.Thanks for your suggestions !!

Agreed it's so difficult! But there is definitely room for improvement.

Shikhar, what materials are you using to study the rules?

Hey I know you posted a while back, but let me share a strategy I used to improve my SC. Grab any old book something you enjoy. Start identifying the subject and verb. Spend like a page doing this. Then move on to these elements:
Parallelism
Pronouns(A bit tough because PNs antecedents are in other sentences, but do it anyways)
Modifiers
Comparsions
Verb Tense
Other Constructions(Manhattan calls it Odds and Ends)

If you spend time doing each one of these individually you will build an eye that lets you see these different elements in GMAT SC. Then once you have enough skill do each of these individually do them all together. This requires committment and time investment everyday, but it will help develop an eye to parse sentences.

Best of Luck,
GMATPUNJABI!

I am using Manhattan GMAt Sentence Correction fourth edition guide 8.
Any other siggestions ? though this is also good ....

The Manhattan Guide is suffiecent. At this level focus on learning whats inside of it.

hey gmatpunjabi, that's a very helpful tip. Can you suggest what book I should read during my free time to look for all these SC patterns. I know there's a separate thread on this forum listing a few fiction books. I'm not sure which one I should read. What was your fav book that you read. Please let me know.

PS- Im not a native speaker

I understand how you feel. The book I read was called Fast Food Nation. Its used in English 101(The First English course in College in the USA). I didnt worry about the level of writing. I worked on being able to identify sentence structure. I did this for about a month and I developed skills that allowed me to analyze SCs. This is additional practice and make sure you keep going through Practice SC Questions. Let me know if you have any questions.

I had the same problem . I went over two grammar books but was still scoring very low. More practice on SC questions rather than going over the same rules over and over again helped me more.

Agreed. Real practice > theoretical knowledge. Be sure to mark questions you get wrong and constantly revisit them to fix your train of thought. Good luck.