how to master 700 level questions in verbal ?

Question

I have been working hard improving my accuracy in verbal and i have been successful under 700 range questions.
The issue now is 700 level questions for sc / cr / rc .
I am practicing religiously and analyzing as much as possible, keeping a personal error log for my quick revision.
But the fact that every 700 question comes with its own trick and there is too much to absorb now.
Experts please help with the correct approach. I have exactly 1 month in hand and all i have to do is improve my score. My syllabus is done.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi nlx23,

About 1.5 months ago, you posted that you were studying for your second attempt at the GMAT (which you were planning to take in late-June) and that you had not taken any additional practice CATs yet. At that time, you were focused on "700-level" SCs - and now you've broadened your focus to include all "700-level" questions in Verbal. The question right now is the same as it was back then: should those subjects actually be what you should be focused on right now?

Before we discuss how to best approach these issues, it would help if you could provide a bit more information about how you've been studying over the last 1.5 months:

1) What study materials have you been using?
2) Did you take the Official GMAT as planned (and if you did, then how did you score?) or did you push back your planned Test Date?
3) How have you scored on your CATs/mocks over the last 1.5 months?

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

AjiteshArun · Answer

That really should not be the case. Are you working through official questions?

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi nlx23,

Have you taken any recent official practice exams? If so, can you share the dates and score breakdowns of each exam?

nlx23 · Answer

AjiteshArun   ScottTargetTestPrep   EMPOWERgmatRichC

Hi Finally took the exam on 29th August and got a V34. I believe i can score more as I got disturbed by my fellow neighbour while giving verbal section and that really pissed me off. The major damage that happened due to this nuisance was that I could not perform well in my quant as i thought anyways this attempt is ruiend and ended up finishing quant 5 mins earlier and a score of Q46.

I was expecting a V20-25 due to all this nonsense that happened. My previous Gmat attempt score was v27 Q48 one year back so i certainly believe i can score more.

Frankly speaking i have been ignoring Quant all through my prep as it was my stronger leg. I want to correct this mistake and make it reach Q50/49.

Want to know how to go about it. Also improving further on verbal to reach a V38 if possible. I want to give another attempt before the end of October and looking for a plan.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi nlx23,

Here is some advice you can follow to improve your verbal skills. I’ll start with CR.

when studying Critical Reasoning, you need to ensure that you fully understand the essence of the various question types. Do you know the importance of an assumption within an argument? Can you easily spot a conclusion? Do you know how to resolve a paradox? Do you know how to properly evaluate cause and effect? Do you know how to properly weaken or strengthen an argument? These are just a few examples; you really need to take a deep dive into the individual Critical Reasoning topics to develop the necessary skills to properly attack any Critical Reasoning questions that you encounter.

As you learn each Critical Reasoning problem type, do focused practice so that you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you incorrectly answered 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 Reading Comprehension, 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 New York Times, 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, you likely will have to work on all three of those aspects. Furthermore, the likely reason that your Sentence Correction performance has not improved is that you have not been working on all three of those aspects. 
 
Regarding what you know, to be successful in Sentence Correction, 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 less than 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 none of those reasons are 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 answers were always the ones 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 meanings that make sense. 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 put in the necessary time to see the differences between answers and to 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 to arrive at that answer and what you could do differently 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 do 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.
 
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!

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi nlx23,

I'm sorry to hear about the distractions you faced on Test Day. Most Testing Facilities offer some type of noise-blocker (typically, headphones or ear plugs), so you might want to consider using whatever option your Facility offers during your next Exam (and by extension, you should practice with that same noise-blocker during your studies, so that you get used to it).

Since that Official Exam was over a month ago - and you were distracted during that attempt - it's not clear what your current 'ability level' was at that time (nor what it is right now). In a prior post, you stated that your Score Goal was 730+; is that still your Goal? I ask because if your current level is in the mid-600s, then it will likely take at least another 1.5 - 2 months of consistent, guided study to get to the point that you can consistently score 730+. However, you would have no more than another 4 weeks of study time if you wanted to retest in October. This is meant to say that if you pushed back your retest date into November or December, you would likely have a better chance of hitting that Score Goal.

1) Since you took the GMAT in August, on what dates did you take EACH of your CATs/mocks and how did you score on EACH (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?
2) Going forward, how many hours do you think you can consistently study each week?

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

Peare1972 · Answer

great post, nice information you provided.

VerbalBot · Answer

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how to master 700 level questions in verbal ?

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