how can I beat VERBAL GMAT?

Kaldanina,

I think between your first and second test you concentrated on the quant part and this had an effect on the verbal part of your score.

For verbal start off by attacking SC questions. It is easiest to improve your accuracy on SC questions after a short period of time. Get yourself a copy of the Manhattan SC guide. It's the best book out there and you will be surprised by the effect it has on the way you look at SC questions.

The CR and RC portions of the test are more difficult to improve upon.

For, CR get yourself a copy of the Critical Reasoning Bible. The book is comprehensive and has details on all the types of critical reasoning questions you are likely to encounter in the GMAT.

Lastly for RC I'd suggest you read through all the passages in the Official Guide & the Verbal Review and analyze each one of them separately. Develop a framework to analyze RC passages.

- What's the main idea and purpose of the passage ( Is it a competing idea passage / Is it an explanatory passage / etc.)
- What's the structure of the passage ( E.g - Passage One: Intro; Passage Two: Further Details; Passage Three: Flaw etc.)
- Be on the lookout for portions where there is a change in the line of thought (e.g - generally words such as 'However', 'On the contrary', 'In contrast', 'On the other hand', 'Yet', 'Nevertheless', 'But' etc. will signal a change in the line of thought).

While reading fiction might help you to develop a reading habit it might not be very useful for purposes of the GMAT. You would be better off if you read articles from magazines/newspapers such as Scientific American, Nature, The Economist, the Wall Street Journal that closely resemble the passages in the GMAT.

If you are thinking of starting to read Fiction books in order to improve your score, sorry friend, that will not work (unless you are planning a year long preparation). What might help is a focused study plan: Identify your weakness areas and address them at the same time polish your strength areas.

The comments made by akaydee sound very reasonable in this context...

how do you address the weak areas while polishing the strength areas? i have problems doing that because when i focus on the weak areas by doing lots of practices, i forget about or don't have time to polish the strength areas. any advice?

Maybe you were exhausted, Maybe you had trouble focussing.

It might help if you took drinks like redbull or gatorade before verbal, I didnt tested it till now but i read on these forums.

Try working on giving full length tests.

You have several options for improving verbal-Manhattan SC, Powerscore CR, GmatPill, Knewton, Manhattan gmat, so on.

Try to visit the forums and work on the problems posted as well when you find time.

It sounds reasonable when I consider it today. Red Bull might have helped I had to be burned out.

I did not score this low even when I first heard of GMAT and took a diagnostic test. I was shocked when I saw the results

I have been learning day and night for three weeks and in the end I was really exhausted but anyway I didn't take rest even a day before the test. Now I see it one should take at least couple of days before the test to relax after intensive learning

At the moment I think reading fiction is a good idea since I began reading The Great Getsby and there are plenty of words I could use on GMAT That's for sure, I can't rely only on fiction books and alongside them manhatten SC and RC seem reasonable to begin with.

Thanks for advice the site is really helpfull and there is a lot I of staff I may find helpful

It's pity I found this site too late

Hi akydee,

I checked the online magazines according your advice and articles in them are really very GMATlike

Thanks for advice, they may prove very helful for GMAT RC

I'm in same boat

Q48, V17!!

me too...

Q48 , V23 !!!

yeah, I did terrible on the verbal as well as quant lol. MGMAT SC is pretty good I have to say.

Absolutely no doubt about it. The Manhattan GMAT SC book has helped me bring my verbal score to the mid 30s.