Express-Verbal-Experience

I recently took my GMAT, and as I promised to few fellow gmatclub members, I am sharing my express-experience and -advise for verbal (especially SC).

For SC only concept that helped me allot during exams was parallelism; there were no subject verb errors in answer choices or any apparent common error that we normally see in OG. Therefore, whatever I noted in my diaries since last 1.5 year (various rules or concepts) appeared obsolete during exam (No concept helped me in identifying any answer, not even any multi-step process or Ron's gyan). I think GMAT decided to explore zones beyond conventional concepts and more on sentence structure; GMAT is presenting sentences written in structures that we do not normally see (see, use or read in academic books). Further, I remember that in one question it used "which" as restrictive modifier and other choices were so bad that it literally forced me to go with "no comma+which" option; usually we say "without comma which" is wrong on GMAT land, but in exam, GMAT crossed that rule as well. Most of the questions were governed by parallelism or modifier rules encapsulated in weird sentence structures (structures, not even published in any version of OG).

Also, I noted that first option in 30% SC problems were (complete train wreck ) so weird that it was difficult for me to understand what sentence was trying to convey: there were splits between that and he; and which (relative pronoun) and and (coordinating conjunction). Usually we see splits of same level or category, but in current SC sentences splits are completely nonsensical as somebody randomly threw something in fill in the blank. I think some new agency is writing GMAT SC problems, one who completely ignoring conventional splits in answer choices.

Following is my self created sentence, but I saw a sentence in which similar underlined part was present in every choice; usually we say how can a term can include a object and we are used to of seeing many examples in guide portraying examples in different sense that we feel such usage is generally incorrect, but such expression is not wrong.

the term "super computer" may include computer works on xyz os or computers work on pqr os.

So just don't limit your thinking to rules. GMAT SC is taking advantage of what we know, by throwing parallel correct sentences (acceptable meaning) which we don't know, to confuse us. Try to choose best out of worst choices, and in exam, with free mind you can manage to eliminate all train wreck sentences.

Further, I would add; Do not waste time in reading forums, writing rules or practicing old problems published by GMAT; just solve GMATPrep SCs/ Exam Pack SCs and Question Pack SCs, and don't even buy OG for SC. GMATPrep SCs adequately covers parallelism rules that GMAT is testing, so only concentrate on that part (learn how parallelism is being tested) "either ... or ...." / not only ... but also... etc kinds. But, definitely be prepared to get such parallelism encapsulated in weird sentence structure (with many commas + or adverbs in between) .

I collected following sentence structures from nytime.com, which may resemble to what I believe I saw in exam.
(I)
modifier........................> as a X, that blah blah ..... as .......blah.......
modifier........................> as a X, he blah that blah more than...... blah blah.........
(II)
.............. blah blah blah....., adverb, ...... blah blah ..........., or adverb, blahh...........

I would say that GMAT is giving additional advantage to natives and to those who read allot from JK Rolling's HP, Lords of the rings to Shakespeare's work.

So question comes, how one can improve score ? Here is good news: GMAT has not modified pattern of CR and RC, and thus by shifting focus from SC to these two areas one can definitely improve one's score. Verbal CR and RC is all about temperament and more about how you do active reading under time pressure and that's the only thing on which one should work to improve score. For, SC trust your ears and instinct + parallelism + modifier rules and leave everything on God .

Further, question comes why GMAC is not publishing these new problems? most apparent answer that I believe is GMAC wants to encash its established monopoly to generate more revenue from multiple attempts and failures of students in exam (pure business dirty tactic). Even GMAC recently got opportunity to publish such new SCs in OG15, but it didn't. It knows how to encash much value as an electronics company knows how to encash much from old products before releasing new products. So definitely it is in its favor not to release new SCs. Moreover, who hates more revenue??

At the end again, I would say don't waste time on SC, instead work on CR and RC, and read allot, because published material for SC is obsolete, and we do not know exactly what to prepare. Give as many mocks as possible to improve your reading under time pressure.

Thanks for reading.