Improving timing in SC

Hi there.

As mentioned above, look at how you approach SC. You need to treat SC less like 'reading'--top to bottom, left to right--and more like a 'hunt' for structural pieces. Most people read far too much in SC. You can do a great many questions by looking only at a few important words, and not even looking at, or skimming quickly over, everything else. It's a question about *where are you putting your attention* and how are you deciding that?

This video I recently made talks about what 'clues' you should find in SC and demonstrates how someone who excels at SC will 'hone in' on 'the stuff that matters.'



I also encourage you to watch me take a practice GMAT here:



Skip to the SC questions and pause and try it yourself. Then watch me do the sentence. Compare your approach to mine. What words did I notice? Why did I notice them? Did it help me narrow down answer choices quickly? Notice what words I don't talk about (that doesn't always mean there's not something useful there! Was there? Did I miss something?) Did I ever even read the entire sentence?

When people take too long in SC, it's usually because they're doing too much 'reading' and hoping to 'hear' a mistake, rather than actively 'chasing' the structural puzzle pieces of a sentence.