how much quantity is enough to improve CR?

Question

Hi All,

Can someone help answer this classic question? How many questions should one practice for improving accuracy in SC/CR? Does someone like me has to go through 1000SC, 1000CR documents to improve?

I had finished OG12, Knewton, 2nd edition Verbal Guide, and MGMAT and yet scored V25. It's really easy to say that one hasn't grasped the concepts after seeing V25, but how to improve from here on. I feel that I know the strategies, but find it very cumbersome to apply all the strategies during any practice or real GMAT test. During my verbal preparation, I felt hitting the ceiling

.

Thanks
RG

. Thanks RG

Schawjibb · Answer

Though I am not that "expert" to reply to your query, I advise you to move first with SC. As SC tests only a few rules (around 90% of the questions tests only around 10 concepts of grammar! that's it). I think you should re-read and re-re-read the concept discussions of MGMAT SC. And, of course, that should be well backed by a lot of practice. After taking concepts, practising through 1000SC would be a good decision. The CR part is also a challenging section for me. However, I found Kaplan CR concept discussion to be more precise to get the grasp. I haven't gone through the MGMAT and PowerScore CR guides. But, a lot of positive reviews about these two by the members of this forum justify their necessity during building the concepts of CR. And, again, practise should follow the concept building.

Hope this helps. Thank you!

mohater · Answer

Blindly doing questions can be a very worthless approach.

It's apparent you have some fundamental lacking in content understanding. Doing problems alone will not address this. You must address your mindset.

Example:

My biggest weakness was SC. To overcome this, I had to adjust the way I thought in my head. Why? We typically write/speak the way we think. If you think in improper grammar, you will use improper grammar on the GMAT. Overcoming this was the key to my verbal score going from 32 to 38.

Three things to help:
GMAT Fiction
Error Log

windofchange · Answer

How is your CR accuracy when practicing problems in OG12, Knewton, 2nd edition Verbal Guide, and MGMAT? The number of problems you have done is not proportional with your score as mohater has pointed out.

I suggest taking a break for at least 2 weeks and not thinking about GMAT. I feel that you are not still able to figure out your weaknesses. Just spend time to analyze your studying style, what you have done is good, what is bad, then make a new action plan. For example, on CR section: are you able to identify the premises and conclusion in the stimulus? can you identify the out of scope or irrelevant answer choice? do you pick the answer choice that strengthens the conclusions instead of weakening the argument? On SC section: do you eliminate the answer choices using the split method or you just read all the choices and cannot pick the right one? How do you balance the verbal timing?
Actually, those are the questions I asked myself after I scored miserably on my real test. No one understands you as you do; take other people's opinion as a source of reference, but you yourself should find out what really went wrong in your preparation; otherwise, it's difficult to improve your score...

rg1 · Answer

I agree with you @windofchange. I have to do a thorough analysis to pin point my weaknesses. If you ask me various strategies for various type of questions in SC/CR, I can list them easily and probably have them memorized. But when it comes to apply them on a specific question, I failed to do so especially during practice tests. I do apply them during my regular practice but definitely don't apply them consistently enough in practice tests.

My accuracy in CR was around 50-60%. Also, I was missing different types of questions at different times. So I couldn't say that I was missing one specific type of questions.
Given that I have already attempted above mentioned resources, what should be the plan of action? Redoing above resources may not give me a clear picture of my weaknesses or strengths. Should I try GrockIt? I've already wasted money on GMAT Verbal pill

.

Schawjibb · Answer

For me it's also true except that I am having this trouble in Quant section (because I am still going through this section). Wish I could get over it soon! :-(

Thanks, rg1 to state my issues, too, in your words. :-)

windofchange · Answer

I understand your concern. Solving CR problems is not memorizing the rules/strategies. The key point here is KNOWING how to apply the strategies and solve the problem. It's hard to remember all the rules under test pressure. On my real exam, when a CR question popped up, I quickly identified what question type it belonged to, read the stimulus and attacked the answer choices. If I had practiced enough questions, I could have quickly eliminated the wrong choices. I think the POE is extremely helpful on CR section. I am practicing to quickly identify the wrong CR answer choices. It takes time, I know.... Repetition, repetition, repetition. The common suggestion I often read on this forum is: understand why a correct answer is correct and why a wrong answer is wrong. On CR, I think practicing to categorize the wrong answer choices can be helpful. i.e. the common categories are irrelevant (out of scope), exaggerated, and opposite answer choices. If you have gone through those materials once, I advise to do those problems over again with a different approach. Many people used the same materials as ours but scored higher than we did

; that means they approached the problems differently... that's why we should learn from them. I have never tried any prep courses from any prep companies; I study on my own and from this forum. So I can't give you any comments about Grockit. So sorry to hear that you had a bad experience with GMAT Verbal Pill. I used their free RC videos and found their method useful.

Schawjibb · Answer

I also believe the same. This advice is worth million dollars! +1 I have been using Grockit's service for a while. And, till, now, it's really a fun to prep using Grockit. :-)

KarishmaB · Answer

Here is my take on your situation. (I apologize it took me quite long to get to it. Last week was crazy!) Going through 1000SC or CR is not going to help. Do fewer questions but understand them really well. Analyze them properly. (I just got done with an exam yesterday. While preparing for it, I was taking mocks to gauge by weak areas. It used to take me 6 hours to take the mock and 18 hrs to analyze all the correct and incorrect questions inside out - I would analyze every answer option to know exactly why each is incorrect/correct. I am quite certain it paid off!) SC - Has maximum scope of improvement for many people. I would recommend going through the free online version of 'The Elements of Style' by Strunk and White found here: https://www.bartleby.com/141/ It will take just a few hours but is surprisingly relevant. Also read up on things tested often e.g. Dangling Modifiers, Participles, Parallelism etc. Know their usage inside out. Then work on Official Guide SC and figure out why each option is correct/incorrect in your own words. Make sure you break down the sentence into its components and understand its structure (Ok, so this is the subject here and its verb is this, this is a modifier which modifies that and here we have a clause joined by and etc...) CR - If you are good in Quant, this should be quite easy since it is just an application of logic and reasoning. Read the question stem to identify the type of question. Know what you should focus on and what you are looking for while reading the stimulus. Say it is a strengthen question - focus on the conclusion. You have to strengthen the conclusion. Find the option that does just that and be sure that the other options do not do that (there might be an option which will strengthen a given premise but that will not be the answer since premises are anyway taken to be true). CR is the section I would actually bank on, if I were you. RC - Read the passage thoroughly the first time itself. Write just a couple of words that form the main point in each paragraph. It helps you in two ways - helps you stay focused since you are answerable to yourself at the end of each paragraph and helps you know exactly where you will find the answer to a question since you have written down the organization of content in the passage. Practice some long, tough, technical passages too. If you are wondering where to find such passages, then you can check out Veritas RC book. It has quite a few high level RC passages (and medium ones too) and if you are comfortable with the passages in it, there is no reason why you should not be comfortable with any passage GMAT gives you.

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