HOW CAN I IMPROVE MY VERBAL SCORE? PLEASE HELP!!!

Question

I have been preparing for GMAT for 2-3 months now. 
In the recent test i scored Q43, V19. I have my concepts clear, but still i am not able to improve my verbal.

Materials which i have used is Official guide.

KINDLY HELP.

My scheduled test date is almost a month away. I need to improve verbal. 
Any suggestions or guidance will be appreciated.

Thanks,
Vishal

MahmoudFawzy · Answer

I am new in GMAT (2 months so far); and there are some notes I can tell:

1- At the beginning, don't answer with time constrain. take your time in analyzing each choice and try not to answer unless you have clear justifications why you choice is correct and the others are incorrect. later, when you develop your confidence, start timing your answers.

2- go back to the conceptual background of verbals. seek YouTube channels and tutors and take your time to grasp it.
(for example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_3r8nn ... TV&index=2)

3- use the search tool on gmatclub to choose your topics.
(https://gmatclub.com/forum/search.php?view=search_tags)

4- focus on solving easy and middle difficulty questions more than high difficulty ones.

5- try reading an English novel to increase your reading speed and comprehension (try making it a habit).

good luck.
__________

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi Vishal,

Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied?
2) Have you used any other study materials besides the Official Guide?
3) What 'brands' of CATs/mocks have you used so far? How have you scored on EACH of your CATs (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) What is your goal score?
5) What is your exact Test Date? 
6) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
7) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

TheUltimateWinner · Answer

test you concept from "Thursdays with Ron's" videos from youtube. If you still think that your concept is perfectly fine , then you must increase your reading speed and focus on time constraint. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTQlKd ... /playlists

egmat · Answer

Hi vishalsingh2395 , Your score of V19 indicates both conceptual and process gaps. Merely solving problems from the OG would not help unless you build a strong foundation of conceptual and process clarity. I would recommend that you first learn concepts and the approach to GMAT questions. In invite you to attend our free CR webinar this weekend to learn how to tackle CR questions with ease. Register here to reserve your spot. I also invite you to try our Free Trial of 25+ video lessons and 350+ practice questions. I am sharing a few direct links, you can access the rest from your Free Trial dashboard. - Verb-ed Phrases - Verbs or Modifiers - Introduction to Assumption - Main Point Concept 1 Hope this helps! Please feel free to write to us at support@e-gmat.com in case of any further queries. We would be happy to help. Regards, Aditee

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi Vishalsingh2395,

I’m sorry to hear how things went with your GMAT. Since you prepared for a few months but did not see an improvement in your verbal score, you really need to look at HOW you have been preparing, and potentially make some changes. In your previous round of studying, it appears that your prep centered on doing ONLY practice questions. While engaging in practice is a necessary part of improving your GMAT skills, such practice is only beneficial after you have studied the necessary topics on which those questions are based. Thus, you may consider adjusting your study plan such that it allows for linear learning. Specifically, consider using a resource that allows you FIRST to learn the concepts and strategies related to Sentence Correction, Critical Reasoning, and Reading Comprehension, and SECOND to practice with a large number of realistic questions.

Let’s say you begin studying Critical Reasoning, for example. Your first goal is to master the individual Critical Reasoning topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn each problem type, do focused practice so you can assess how well you understand the topic. If, for example, you incorrectly answer a Weaken the Argument question, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

When practicing Reading Comprehension, you need to develop a reading strategy that is both efficient and thorough. Reading too fast and not understanding what you have read are equally as harmful as reading too slow and using up too much time. When attacking Reading Comprehension passages, you must have one clear goal in mind: to understand the context of what you are reading. However, you must do so efficiently, so you need to avoid getting bogged down in the details of each paragraph and focus on understanding the main point of each paragraph. That being said, do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can just read the intro and the conclusion and comprehend the main idea of a paragraph. As you read a paragraph, consider how the context of the paragraph relates to previous paragraphs, so you can continue developing your overall understanding of the passage. Furthermore, as you practice, focus on the exact types of questions with which you struggle: Find the Main Idea, Inference, Author’s Tone, etc. As with Critical Reasoning, analyze your incorrect answers to better determine why you tend to get a particular question type wrong, and then improve upon your weaknesses. You can perfect your reading strategy with a lot of practice, but keep in mind that GMAT Reading Comprehension passages are not meant to be stimulating. So, to better prepare yourself to tackle such bland passages, read magazines with similar content and style, such as the Economist, Scientific American, and Smithsonian.
 
Sentence Correction is a bit of a different animal compared to Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning. There are three aspects to getting correct answers to GMAT Sentence Correction questions: what you know, such as grammar rules, what you see, such as violations of grammar rules and the logic of sentence structure, and what you do, such as carefully considering each answer choice in the context of the non-underlined portion of the sentence. To drive up your Sentence Correction score, it is likely that you will have to work on all three of those aspects.
 
Regarding what you know, first and foremost, you MUST know your grammar rules. Let's be clear, though: GMAT Sentence Correction is not just a test of knowledge of grammar rules. The reason for learning grammar rules is so that you can determine what sentences convey and whether sentences are well-constructed. In fact, in many cases, incorrect answers to Sentence Correction questions are grammatically flawless. Thus, often your task is to use your knowledge of grammar rules to determine which answer choice creates the most logical sentence meaning and structure.

This determination of whether sentences are well-constructed and logical is the second aspect of finding correct answers to Sentence Correction questions, what you see. To develop this skill, you probably have to slow way down. You won't develop this skill by spending under two minutes per question. For a while, anyway, you have to spend time with each question, maybe even ten or fifteen minutes on one question sometimes, analyzing every answer choice until you see the details that you have to see in order to choose the correct answer. As you go through the answer choices, consider the meaning conveyed by each version of the sentence. Does the meaning make sense? Even if you can tell what the version is SUPPOSED to convey, does the version really convey that meaning? Is there a verb to go with the subject? Do all pronouns clearly refer to nouns? By slowing way down and looking for these details, you learn to see what you have to see in order to clearly understand which answer to a Sentence Correction question is correct.

There is only one correct answer to any Sentence Correction question, there are clear reasons why that choice is correct and the others are not, and those reasons are not that the correct version simply "sounds right." In fact, the correct version often sounds a little off at first. That correct answers may sound a little off is not surprising. If the correct answer were always the one that sounded right, then most people most of the time would get Sentence Correction questions correct, without really knowing why the wrong answers were wrong and the correct answers were correct. So, you have to go beyond choosing what "sounds right" and learn to clearly see the logical reasons why one choice is better than all of the others.
 
As for the third aspect of getting Sentence Correction questions correct, what you do, the main thing you have to do is be very careful. You have to make sure that you are truly considering the structures of sentences and the meanings conveyed rather than allowing yourself to be tricked into choosing trap answers that sound right but don't convey logical meanings. You also have to make sure that you put some real energy into finding the correct answers. Finding the correct answer to a Sentence Correction question may take bouncing from choice to choice repeatedly until you start to see the differences between the choices that make all choices wrong except for one. Often, when you first look at the choices, only one or two seem obviously incorrect. Getting the right answers takes a certain work ethic. You have to be determined to see the differences and figure out the precise reasons that one choice is correct.
 
To improve what you do when you answer Sentence Correction questions, seek to become aware of how you are going about answering them. Are you being careful and looking for logic and details, or are you quickly eliminating choices that sound a little off and then choosing the best of the rest? If you choose an incorrect answer, consider what you did that resulted in your arriving at that answer and what you could do differently in order to arrive at correct answers more consistently. Furthermore, see how many questions you can get correct in a row as you practice. If you break your streak by missing one, consider what you could have done differently to extend your streak.

As with your Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension regimens, after learning a particular Sentence Correction topic, engage in focused practice with 30 questions or more that involve that topic. As your skills improve, you’ll then want to practice with questions that test you on skills from multiple SC topics.
 
Ultimately, if you are unable to learn and practice in the manner described above, you may consider looking for additional verbal prep resources. If you are unsure of which resources to choose, check out some reviews here on GMAT Club. You also may find my article with more information regarding
 how to score a 700+ on the GMAT  helpful.

Feel free to reach out with any questions.

Good luck!

EducationAisle · Answer

Hi Vishal, as others have pointed out, merely OG might be insufficient to get a great Verbal score, since OG is largely a compilation of old retired GMAT questions.

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