AjiteshArun
jz4analytics
Not sure exactly, although SC has consistently been my weakest area since I started studying (RC is my strongest - on the GMATPreps I've gotten all 12/13 or 13/13 RC). One area that frustrates me is idioms because sometimes I am able to quickly eliminate choices based on parallelism, logical meaning, and so on, but can't choose between two wordings that seem so similar (for example, on one official question I got down to the choices of but and but rather... how do you tell the difference?). I could also analyze my old wrong answer choices to check whether there is a pattern in the type I get wrong.
My retake is in two months. I'm sure I've made progress but it's hard to tell how much because I completed all the official CATs. I'm working through the "subject specific" GMAT problem sets for more practice. I could take one of the old paper tests as a proxy but I'm not sure how useful those are anymore.
Are you referring to the
Voyager 2 question? I don't remember all the options, but that one definitely had a
but rather. Do let me know (only if your question is a retired question, because you can't disclose any live questions). Asking someone to choose between
not x but y and
not x but rather y (no other difference) is... difficult. I mean,
rather would just add some force to the statement, and that's unlikely to be the
only difference between two options.
Also, I've seen some of your other posts, and I know that you have a strong opinion on idioms. Just take some time to consider a couples of points:
1. Apart from the common structures seen in questions on (for example) parallelism, improving performance on questions that test idiomatic usage is more likely to involve general reading (of good material) than a test prep book.
2. Idiomatic usage is really not
all that important (I know, I know

)! Unless a test taker is very new to the language, the concepts tested on SC are likely to be the low hanging fruit for most people.
Yes, that's the one. I've done the first 70 SC questions in the 2016 Verbal book. I got 6 wrong so far: 28, 31, 40, 42, 43, 59.
I was a little mistaken with the choices. Number 59 had the choices APART, BUT RATHER and APART, BUT THAT OF, which I was trying to choose between. Apparently the THAT OF was unnecessary.
The questions that I got wrong:
28) Parallelism; Rhetorical Construction
Correct = E, Mine = D
(D was described as passive and awkward.. rhetorical)
31) Logical predication; Grammatical Construction
Correct = C, Mine = B
(Wrong modifier)
40) Agreement; Diction; Verb form
Correct = B, Mine = C
(Used HAS, which the GMAT thought distorts the meaning)
42) Rhetorical construction; Logical predication; Verb form
Correct = D, Mine = A
(Appreciative was used instead of appreciable)
43) Agreement; Diction
Correct = C, Mine = A
(Verb agreement

)
59) Grammatical Construction; Logical predication
Correct = D, Mine = D
(Above)
Like I said, maybe I have improved but it's hard to tell without an official CAT... Can you make any recommendations based on this? Thanks!