I am trying to work through the Manhattan SC book, but there

Question

I am trying to work through the Manhattan SC book, but there is so much of the grammar stuff I just do not understand. I have like mental resistance to the subject or something. Do you have any suggestions for working through this mental block, or Sentence Corrections in general?

viks4gmat · Answer

success is not easy :-D

. work hard and practice buddy... and u'll find your way through for sure... also i'd suggest sc grail.. its also a good book

schandok · Answer

You might wanna back off and start w/ KAPLAN Verbal foundations. That's where I started and then, MGMAT SC made sense.

raghavakumar85 · Answer

For beginners, Aristotle SC Grail is a very good source. The language is simple. Once you feel you're confident, you can start Manhattan, which is the best book for SC.

Munhugg · Answer

The best advice I can give you is to see SC as problem solving instead of pure grammar. You have a sentence in front of you that is incomplete or incorrect, and it is your job to locate the problem and improve the given sentence. This philosophy works for me to some extent.

I am currently reviewing Manhattan SC and I can only recommend this book. I find the book to be well written and the content is relatively easy to understand, even though the terminology can be a bit tricky from time to time.

Best of luck to you gmatpunjabi!

parker · Answer

Munhugg gives excellent advice. There are a lot of concepts to learn, but ultimately your task is a search-and-destroy one, not a learn-and-understand-everything-possible one.

That said, if you are lacking in foundational skills it can be really tough to zero in on why something is better/worse than something else. For my students who struggle with the level of content in the strategy guides (and this comes up quite a bit! Grammar is not formally taught in many schools in the US), I give the following advice:

(1) Start with a foundational grammar book BEFORE attacking ANY OG questions. We have a  Foundations of Verbal  book, and there are probably other suggestions on these forums as to what has been useful to other people (I'm not familiar with the Kaplan book mentioned above, but go to a bookstore/Amazon and browse through what's available. Find the book with the style and format that is most accessible to you--grammar can be a tough slog at the beginning, so you don't want to choose material that you're already resistant to.)

(2) Practice whittling down each sentence to its "bones." What parts can you cross off and ignore? What parts are crucial to the structure? Every sentence needs a subject and verb, and you should be able to pick out that subject and verb fairly quickly. You can copy sentences down and literally cross off inessential parts to help train your mind to think this way.

(3) Only after you feel like you have a grasp of the basics, start with your "standard" content materials (for us, it's the Sentence Correction Strategy Guide). Go SLOWLY and practice the content subject-by-subject. Apply that knowledge to OG questions that fall into that category (we provide a breakdown of these to our students, and other companies may do the same). Trying to do too much here can get you in over your head.

This is very important: accept that at the beginning, you will miss questions because you haven't hit all the topics yet! Sentence Correction questions rarely test only one topic--there can be as many as 4 or 5 areas tested in the splits! If you've only worked on subject-verb agreement, and correctly eliminate based on that split, but get bogged down because of a pronoun issue and you haven't had pronouns yet, that's okay. That is, in fact, a cause for celebration! You got the thing that you've studied right, and the thing that you haven't wrong. Pick up the rule that you didn't know, make a note of it, and move forward with confidence. Save that question for later though--make a notecard, or use whatever your preferred system is-- so that when you *have* studied all those content areas, you can go back and practice your sharpened subject verb AND pronoun skills. At some point it will be helpful to get some process help, not just grammar help. It can be with a tutor, a class, a friend, or a book--just make sure you have a clear and repeatable way of attacking questions that uses your time efficiently.

After substantial subject-by-subject studying, start mixing content in drills. It is much harder to solve a question if you don't know exactly what you're looking for. As you're working, make a list of "clues" that help you identify the key issue (for example, "and" is a huge parallelism trigger, etc).

And finally, throughout this whole process--assess assess assess! Burning through questions is the *least* effective way to make progress. Spend just as much time (or more time) reviewing your work and assessing your progress as you do working on actual questions. Be honest with yourself, and never gloss over things you only "kind of" understand.

Good luck!

crick20002002 · Answer

I will recommend the following two things: 1) Get a copy GMAT Ultimate verbal guide - A jewel

of GMAT Club. What is unique about this book is it goes into details layer by layer and by the time you are done, your performance would have definitely improved. 2) Whenever you come across a concept you find difficult check this out: https://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/index.htm

soul123 · Answer

Hi,, i think you are also on the same boat on which i was some time back.. its really hard to go through basic grammar specially when you are picking this stuff after years. i would suggest you to go through Manhattan SC book only as its best guide available for GMAT SC. don't run through it. take your time do one chapter a day and solve OG questions along with. try and understand each concept thoroughly and as always make error log for each of the question that you do wrong. there is no easy way out for non native people like us to do SC. and if possible do OG11 if you want to save OG12 for latter.
 Best of luck

Soul..

gautammalik · Answer

I would suggest that you read MGMAT SC book slowly, chapter by chapter. Don't rush!
Go to a library and try to concentrate when you read.
Make your own notes so that you can revisit them later.
After each chapter there are few grammar questions in the book. Try to attempt all of them. 
Start OG questions when you are done with MGMAT SC book. MGMAT SC book is a bible.

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I am trying to work through the Manhattan SC book, but there

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