Native Speaker, strong on language, poor on questions

Question

Hi

So I'm a native English speaker and have done lots of English tests throughout my life, but the actual testing of GMAT seems to be my undoing. So I am able to get any difficulty of question right as you can see in my attached picture. I've done 2 Manhattan tests and my Verbal is a pretty mediocre score around 30 both times, I haven't started any Verbal study and have mainly been doing Quant. So I want to know where is the best place for me to start with studying Verbal, I have the manhattan books but their a bit boring and straight forward for most topics on verbal. Also is their a separate guide for learning how to answer the Verbal questions.

imgur. com/a/LhDw4

As I've said, I just  get  the Verbal questions regardless of difficulty, but then I get the easy ones wrong. As opposed to Quant where, I struggle to get 700-800 q's but the lower ones are quite easy.

Thanks Sean.

pushpitkc · Answer

Hi SeanMurphy

Please see the following plan and try and understand which
of the resources might help your preparation.
https://gmatclub.com/forum/study-plan-f ... 98342.html

For CR, I would recommend you to go through the PowerScore CR Bible
to get a basic understanding of how the CR section works. For RC, you
could refer to the below-given link
https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-club-s- ... 83101.html

As for practice, you can find all the questions here at GMATClub. You should
use the Timer feature to time yourself while practising questions. Whenever
you make a mistake, write the reason why you made the mistake. This will
help you improve your scores quickly.

Hope this helps you!

akela · Answer

Hi! It'd be also very useful to take the official GMATprep test. You'll see what section you have to focus on. You can get free software here: https://www.mba.com/global/store/downlo ... tware.aspx

tinyinthedesert · Answer

Hey Sean
The very top verbal scorers (v47+), I have noticed, tend to have a critical thing in common. They read a lot. Have a look through the debriefs and the 99%club thread to see what I mean.

I got a v47 with about 20hrs verbal study, and I'm a science major. I credit that to years of reading, leading to what has become almost an innate skill at the stuff tested in verbal.

On top of your verbal study i suggests you read more in your free time. What to read? The topics that come up in the gmat - politics, economics, business, history, science, strategy. Economics and American history comes up all the time in RC. There is a very good list of books on the forum and I also recommend the following journalism
The London review of books
The economist
FT
New statesman
New scientist
The Atlantic
Foreign Policy
Foreign Affairs
Monocle
HBR
New York Times Long form pieces

No one else seems to recommend the Princeton Review book but this is what I used for verbal outside of 2018 OG questions, and I found it pretty decent.

If you're getting certain easy SC ones wrong then it's probably to do with some gmat specific grammar/idioms that you use differently in your everyday life. A good example is "consider X to be Y" which gmat classes as incorrect but personally I use quite frequently. So it may be that you need to unlearn certain things.

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Native Speaker, strong on language, poor on questions

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