In my pursuit to better my V score, i am focusing on SC. I

Question

In my pursuit to better my V score, i am focusing on SC. I am getting stumped with idioms. The pain is that there are so many of them - MGMAT has like a couple of hundred or more. Some of the docs floating around on this forum are humongous.

Have any of you come across a shorter list? perhaps the high runners? the top 50? the top 100?

Pls help. I am getting killed.

PTK · Answer

my suggestion is to learn those few hundred idioms. You willl not be able to memorize all of them, but as you practice (and read fiction) you will recognize them in sentences. 
than create you own list of idioms, which you always take wrong and learn it by heart. This list will have 50-100 idioms. Creat it by yourself.

There is no room for laziness.

VeritasPrepBrian · Answer

Hey BlitzHN,

I'm always a little nervous when I see a post title like yours! I've long believed (and had my theories confirmed time and time again) that while you  could  know those hundreds of idioms, you don't have to. Much like you  could  solve a quant problem by multiplying together 3 or more 3-digit numbers, but the GMAT is well-written enough that it will reward you for using number properties or divisibility rules to solve it without the extra work.

Some of my favorite GMAT problems are those that trap people into trying to use an idiom, but on which the correct idiom is one that people don't recognize as correct. On these problems, the idiom folks tend to miss a much bigger-picture error. Consider this one:

Immanuel Kant's writings, while praised by many philosophers for their brilliance and consistency, are characterized by sentences  so dense and convoluted
as to pose  a significant hurdle for many readers interested in his works. 
 
A. so dense and convoluted as to pose 
B. so dense and convoluted they posed 
C. so dense and convoluted that they posed 
D. dense and convoluted enough that they posed 
E. dense and convoluted enough as they pose

Hint: You won't like the correct idiom, and you'll probably eliminate the wrong answer without ever considering the verb tense situation at the ends of the answer choices (pose vs. posed).

___________________________________________________________

My recommendation - as you practice Sentence Correction, try to find the major errors first, and save idioms for the end. We're simply not that good at knowing/memorizing all of those idioms, and by definition the lists that any company or website has aren't completely comprehensive...there are thousands of them out there. The GMAT - man, I'd love to say always but there may be a few isolated exceptions - almost always gives you the opportunity to make a decision on something not-idiomatic that's usually an easier way to solve the problem anyway.

Try this - do a set of 20 problems from the OG or whatever book you have and write down your reasons for eliminating answer choices. If you say "Idiom" more than 10 times, go back to those and force yourself to find a more systematic reason. Train yourself to think systematically and not idiomatically, and the test becomes much, much more manageable.

PTK · Answer

Brian,

answer is C, isn't it?

so X that Y.

Thanks. I believe you are right, but I think that often a test-taker may eliminate all but two asnwers and the single difference between the answers will be correct usage of idiom. Sometimes only one or two words may be underlined and exact knowledge of idiom would be required to answer the question. Moreover, GMAT often catches non-natives by the correct usage of idioms. However, I do not negate that solid knowledge of gramatical rules is required to join elite 700 club.

VeritasPrepBrian · Answer

Hey Pkit:

Nope...not C. C has a fatal verb tense flaw - which I think helps to prove my point, right?

Easily the smartest guy I know as far as the GMAT is concerned is Chris, our instructor in NYC, and he told me recently:

"Most of the difficult idioms I've learned I've learned from doing the official GMAC practice tests. I'm usually surprised at the correct idiom, but when I've eliminated the clearly-wrong answers the unique idiom is left, and that's always the right answer. I then search that phrase at NewYorkTimes.com and lo and behold it's correct, but I never would have thought so."

One of the bigger problems with an idiom focus while you study is exactly what you just did (not to call you out! Just trying to help...) - you look for the idiom that you happen to know first, but that doesn't mean that others are definitely wrong. And in doing so you miss a clearly-wrong major category first. On this question, can we use "posed" in the past tense? Did those sentences/writings cease to pose a challenge to readers at some point? "Posed" is definitely wrong...which takes away all the comfortable "so X that Y" idioms.

VeritasPrepBrian · Answer

One more addition - inspired by this thread I made the above question our "GMAT Challenge Question" on the Veritas Prep blog for today:

https://www.veritasprep.com/blog/

Watch...many of the answers will also be C, but the correct answer is  A . Everyone tries to solve this one using the idiom, but the idiom in the correct answer is ALSO correct...just not what you're expecting.

daagh · Answer

No one could agree more with Brian when he says most often in the realm of GMAT, Idioms do play a second fiddle to many other maladies such as S-V disagreements, llism and wrong verb tense usage. On the day of the Test, one may hardly encounter a couple of SC passages that stand solely on the wrong use of an idiom. Idioms indeed are taking more than their due share time.

Coming to Brian’s example, what should strike at first sight is the blatant shift of tense from the present to the past in the main clause in some of the choices. By this token alone, one can instantly eliminate B, C. and D, a three-in one jackpot. Left with only And E, it may not be far fetched to realize that one needs to have the infinitive verb – to pose – either - so as  to pose  or enough  to pose.

E is missing this vital ingredient and hence A is the choice.

One can even delve deeper into this and say that there is subtle change in the meaning in E. The sentences pose a hurdle because they are so dense and convoluted; in other words, hurdles the result of the denseness and convolution. But E means to say that the sentences are dense and convoluted enough as (because) they pose a hurdle, thus unduly reversing the cause and effect.

Delving so deep into logic is one's own choice.

PTK · Answer

thanks Brian and Daagh.

Yeah , I have got your point. It was a silly mistake indeed BCD state that "his sentences ...posed a significant hurdle for many readers interested " - it is wrong because his sentences did not change since than and they still pose ( well, if we assume that people did not become much much clever). and "interested" is an adjective actually, but at first glance it seemed to be past simple form of verb, which is wrong.

BKimball · Answer

BlitzHN,

I think Brian makes a good point on this thread.

I just want to point out also that if you've seen Manhattan GMAT's idiom list already, then you probably noticed that we have a * next to the ones that are tested most often. If you're in a big rush or just need to spend your time on other areas of SC, I would encourage you to review those key idioms.

Best of luck!

Brett

BlitzHN · Answer

Brain,

thanks for your suggestion. you make a great point.

Brett,

yep, I have seen the *'s. But, it is still a long list.

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