For all those who fear from Verbal- lets give it a fight

To whom it may concern,

I m not ashamed to declare that I m quite weak in verbal and as you all know without improving verbal we cannot score well on Gmat even if we get Q51. That's why I have created this thread to share verbal strategy.
I cannot let my dream go away just because I don't know basic grammar rules and cannot master reading skills.

I believe anyone can conquer gmat, anyone can get 750+ its all about fundamentals.
Some people are good at quant and some at verbal, and those lucky kids who are good at both they don't need much time to conquer Gmat. Ultimately we have to build strong fundamentals for either of them to get good score.
Some worked hard during high school and some like me have to do NOW. The reason why few of us score below 700 or 600 is lack of fundamentals and confidence. They ask for just simple english SC and reading skills with high school level quant. Can't we tackle that simple thing? Yes we can but we need to know where we stand and what we want and do the Gap analysis. Be honest with your preparation. Hard work done now will bring fruitful result later just like working out at gym.

One golden advice : Do not practice questions unless you have built strong base of fundamentals, that will be wastage of time and might affect confidence. If you don't believe me just go to "share my gmat experience " section and see how people have improved from even 400 to 700+.

I would like to invite all those who are weak in verbal to share their issues and those who are strong & can help us keep going.

I m coming to the point now.
Verbal has three parts SC, RC , CR.
As per experts SC is very scoring and very easy to improve if we learn the basic rules and practice.
But we cannot neglect the portion of CR and RC. If we can master reading text from the screen I m sure this will improve other two sections as well.

I have read Mgmat SC once though very quickly with no practice. I m going to read it again until I grasp it completely( With help from wren and martin grammar book). Side by side reading fiction books as suggested by BB will be part of my daily routine. Reading those books will not only improve RC skill but also SC section as well.We will get quite familiar with the sentence creation and our ear will detect 50% of the errors. This study of books should not cut the daily study schedule. I will be following 30-70 % rule for quant and verbal. 30% of the time will be spent on gmatclub forum posts and weekend club tests. 70% of the time for Manhattan SC book for SC and powerscore CR bible for CR. For verbal I will follow the slow down strategy given by many experts. In the beginning we should not look for solving the question in 2 minutes, we really cannot do and this will decrease the confidence and we will ruin our preparation.

As per the expert advice creating your notes is very important, if possible on paper. Make proper notes and please don't mind investing some time on it as it will bring fruitful results in future. Next day for 10-15 minutes review the notes and try to remember the things and mark those which are forgotten. Third day again review it and try to remember especially highlighted notes which was difficult to remember.

I m going to follow this strategy blindly and if any one want to join for the improvement of verbal , he is most welcome. I m going to follow manhattan SC and powerscore CR only for SC and CR section.
For RC: Fiction books + daily 1 RC passage.
I apologize for weak grammer and vocab used above.
I hope one day my debrief will have no Grammar mistake.

Suggestions and criticism are must. Please spare a minute for it.

PS: Everyone is different and we have to find our own shortcomings. Try to find it and give it a good fight and those who have similar issues like me can follow this. I m an Indian and ENGLISH is not my mother tongue.

Regards
Gurpreet Singh
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Important suggestions by other users.



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Great initiative - I hope you keep up with the plans. There is a GMAT Calendar hanging around somewhere -take a look.
I would set 1 or 2 days as days off from GMAT to give you mental rest and also so that you would not feel guilty not to study.

Other than that, take one step at a time - get good in something and then move on instead of just moving on to move on. If you are not good/comfortable - go back.

Good Luck!
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I see it as a reasonable approach!

hey dude ... im with u .. lets rock and roll ... i guess i will also follow the same approach for verbal

Im in

I m in.

I am also working on my CR improvement by CR Bible and I am posting my learnings and steps to conquer CR topics step-by-step.

You can refer my link below and can add some more insights to solve CR questions.

I must say a Great Post...Thanks Dude...I am In..
I have to score..and I will score..
I recently gave Gmat and score 640.(Q 50, V 27)..prepared for 1 months..daily 14-15 hrs...
and got lowest score in verbal in the main test itself...

Anyways...failure gives us learnings..and one more chance of improvement..

Again energised myself...and planning to target RC as my performance in RC was fluctuating.
Going to read books suggested by BB...

Plan is like read lots of stuff...and everyweekend..give one test..
Anyhow...somehow...manage office..and get atleast 3 hours of dedicated study..

Thanks Once Again Dude...

Excellent plan!!
I definitely think that you are going to beat the verbal part
Keep posting updates of your progress and what you do.

Wou!
good job dude, I woul like to join your team.
English is not my native language too and I am struggling a lot with Verbal part of GMAT.

I would like to highlight the importance of golden rule, I have commited this mistake during my prepartion, trying to solve difficult CR and RC questions in less than 2 minutes. DO NOT REPEAT MY MISTAKE! learn fundamentals first and than practice, practice, practice and practice!

Good luck!
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gurpreetsingh,

Long time, no updates?
Well, I have started working on my plan to give GMAT on 24th June 2010.

I am working on Verbal (30 SC, 20 CR and 3 RC) and Maths(20) questions daily + 1 hr reading.

Hi,

Those who want to try online tests based on OG10, OG12 and other good verbal scources, then visit the following link:

https://www.litesee.com/gmat.htm

A great array of questions.

Thanks gurpreet for sharing your plan with us..

I really like your plan but with my full time job won't have sufficient time to go through it in entirely. Hence will tweak it according to my time plan.

Got busy at work so couldn't spend much time here.

Currently I m revising powerscore CR and I m quite happy I have improved a lot.
I was practicing untimely on Kaplan book( 50 questions) and got accuracy around 75-80%.
I know its not at par but I was even below 50.

I m done with 50 questions of RC ( 50 questions not passages) from kaplan , and its quite fluctuating.
Side by side I m reading one Indian novel and once its done I will start again with SC Mgmat.

One very important thing which was told to me by Bb and even I have observed while revising Cr bible is, when we do the same thing again we are more likely to remember as well as able to implement on the questions. So for me the key to success is revision lol....

Though literary I m not successful but for me success is continuous improvement.
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It sounds like this group is pretty determined! But for those prospective examinees who struggle with verbal, I recommend (as always):

BOOKS:
1. Manhattan SC - Quite simply the best out there. Read this at least twice, preferably three times.
2 (a). Powerscore CR - Fantatstic product. Easy to read, informative, and extremely helpful.
2 (b). Powerscore LR - If you truly need to toughen yourself up, or simply enjoy pain, then opt for the LSAT LR guide instead.
3. Powerscore RC guide - Better than the Manhattan RC book. It contains over 100 RC questions and some practice exercises.
4. LSAT Superprep - This book has 100 RC questions and 150 LR questions. If you have time and need extra practice, then this is a decent source.

QUESTIONS:
1. OG Verbal
2. Brutal SC series
3. Manhattan online tests and questions banks
4. GMATClub forums

READING PRACTICE:
1. GMAT Fiction - Read at least 500 - 1000 pages worth. This should be seen as a nice way to wind down your day and still sharpen your RC and SC skills.
2. The Economist - Try to read an article every day. Very good practice for the GMAT and business school.

For Powerscore, make sure to pick only ONE guide: LR or CR. Studying both is not a wise investment of time, energy, or money. In my opinion, the CR guide should be enough. Also, GMATClub forums are a treasure trove of questions. Use this to your advantage!

My list may be unrealist in its entirety for some with hectic schedules, familial and job obligations, and so forth. Still, try to squeeze in as much as possible. For instance, avoid TV, and never go to the bathroom without a book in your hand to pass the time.

Good luck!

nice post guys....good to see so many experiences shared....I have completed CR from Power Score Bible..but I have grasped SC concepts from Kaplan and Princeton....going steady at 85% performance in both the sections in the tests that I had taken....now targeting the 90% bracket in these sections.

RC is the space where I am lagging quite a bit...only able to clock 65% in tests....so that's where am concentrating now.

me too having very hard time dealing with verbal...

A week back gave a Test without any verbal prep n got just 17..
accuracy in all the 3 sections was around 60 %.. Doing SC for last 10 days but not able to see much improvement...

Still fighting...

I will share an idea which I had implemented in earlier stages of SC preparation, for modifiers in SC.

What I used to do is take time to understand the sentence, translate it to my native language, locate the subject or object which is getting modified and re-run the entire sentence in my native language. This helped me to identify correct position of the modifiers.

i started with Manhattan SC... very good book but was unable to crack most of the OG problems..

so i went 1 step more down n started Cliff's Grammar book... after 10 days of labor on both MGmat n Cliff's , still not able to get more than 50-60 % correct... finally thought of giving it a break...

so started with CR for the time being.. Power score CR bible... now doing it... initially found that im understanding well the concepts.. but when difficult Q comes in Power score , not able to do that... cant understand even how the answers r being explained n related to the Stimulus sometimes when difficult Q comes n even sometimes in easy Q..

Do i need to relate everything in - stimulus..? as im just looking for Boundary Words , Extreme words in ans or Stimulus , Contender - loser technique etc only to find the answer WITHOUT any relation of the premises present in the stimulus...

Plz need some help in both SC n CR... Thanks

I have faced similar situation in CR when I did it for first time.

Read the book thoroughly and solve the questions untimed. DO NOT worry about the time. Do not touch SC for time being. Once you are done with this CR book, do 3-4 questions daily and side by side start Mgmat SC.

Once you wind up MGMAT SC, do 3-4 questions of both CR and SC daily.
when you are done with SC, start CR bible again. Keep doing both the question types daily. Reason why i m asking you to do CR bible again is my accuracy was increased from below 50% to 80% just after my second revision. If required I will revise CR bible and SC multiple times and would like to advice you the same.

Another important thing - do not move to the next section unless you have grasped the previous one. DO NOT rush, build your fundamentals first and do not practice much questions. Once your fundamentals are built, practice as much as you can.
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Thanks a lot gurpreet...

One more Q.. how much time you think it would take me for improving my verbal score from my current level around 17 to 44-45 levels if im able to give 2-3 hrs daily..

so that i can book my gmat exam accordingly.. my targets are IIMA PGPX n ISB...