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How good is Wren & Martin for improving your basics in SC ?

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kamalkicks
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How good is Wren & Martin for improving your basics in SC ? [#permalink] New post   16 Apr 2012, 07:30
Wren & martin is basic English grammar book used in most of the Indian schools. my question is how good this book is to improve the basics for non native speakers. Please keep following in mind while answering the questions:-

1. Please do not suggest or compare this book with other grammar books available.

2. Please do suggest the relevant portion/chapters of book that will certainly help in improving the basics.


THANKS IN ADVANCE
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Re: How good is Wren & Martin for improving your basics in SC ? [#permalink] New post   19 Apr 2012, 13:49
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Kamal,

Don't touch Wren & Martin with a 10-foot barge pole! It was written for a totally different audience - with a totally different purpose.

All the grammar you need on the GMAT can be found in any test prep book. You really don't need anything more than that. What you need to focus on, however, is applying those rules. The intended meaning versus what is grammatically correct. Let us take an example:

All primes are odd.

Correct? No? Why? Oh! I forgot you also had 2 in there! So here is the corrected form:

All primes are NOT odd.

Okay? Not okay? Problem here too? Why? Because you now end up saying there exists NO prime which is odd. So what is the correct format?

Not all primes are odd.

That way you are saying some primes are odd. While some are not. (Kinda rhymes :) )

What "grammar" rule will dictate the above? So my suggestion is to just know the basics: modifiers, parallelism, subject verb, pronouns and comparisons will cover 80% of all questions. Rest of it - Idioms, Tenses etc are 15%. It is only the 5% which requires any specialized knowledge. For that practice is the key.

Arun
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Re: How good is Wren & Martin for improving your basics in SC ? [#permalink] New post   27 Apr 2012, 12:57
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I will have to disagree with Arun. I think it really depends on how good you are with your basic grammar knowledge. I think what Arun is saying is you dont have to be a master in grammar to crack GMAT instead need a better understanding of what the sentence is trying to say and see if it really says what it is trying to say. I agree with him on that, however, my problem is you wont be able to get the true meaning of a sentence if you dont have basic grammar knowledge.

Its very easy to say subject and verb must agree. But whats tricky most of the time is to find out what the subject and verb actully are...

So, Long story short, I would certainly say go to Wren and Martin but dont go from page 1 to the end of the book. That is not an efficient way of doing it. What I would do is find what are my weak areas. For example, if I am having diffficulty in determining how a clause modifies the subject then I would go check out the chapters pertaining to clauses from wren and martin, do all the excercises in those chapters and so on.

Use wren and martin as a refrence when you need it rather than a GMAT study material so to speak. A lot of the time GMAT prep material will assume that you know the basics and that is the time where I would refer to wren and martin. Ex: it may say a subject in this sentence is X and not Y and you may not know why X is subject and not Y. If you are in that kind of situation then you certainly need a good grammar reference book and I think wren and martin is the best grammar book for the basics.

Also: Check this out:(I know you said DO NOT SUGGESt other books)
I think this is a great website if you want to nail your basics. it has plent of example to follow and is makes you practice practice practice:
https://lessons.englishgrammar101.com/En ... eword.aspx



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Re: How good is Wren & Martin for improving your basics in SC ? [#permalink] New post   27 Apr 2012, 13:11
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@ Kamal,

BTW, I did buy wren and martin last week and my approch is that I am going to BOOK 2 part I i.e. Composition, Analysis Transformation and Systhesis. Page 139.

I think this is a good place to start for me as I am OK with the part of speeches. My problem starts when all these parts of speeches come together as a sentence. So I am starting here and based on how I do with the excercises I will decide if I should skip this and go on to clauses /and so on. If you think you are good with Sentence analysis and syntesis then you should skip that and go on to BOOK 2,part II i,.e Correct Usage: This is directly relavent to most of the GMAT stuff i.e(SV Agreement;).

Hope this helps.

Hemant

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Re: How good is Wren & Martin for improving your basics in SC ? [#permalink] New post   28 Apr 2012, 02:28
I agree with Arun on this.
IMHO studying from Wren and Martin isn't a very clever idea. Your 670 score reflects that you already have the basics in place.What is now needed is more practice and a familiarity with the GMAT verbal section.
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Re: How good is Wren & Martin for improving your basics in SC ? [#permalink] New post   28 Apr 2012, 06:51
If the time is at leisure, you may consider doing the part 1 and part 3 of the book, which i consider will take more than 30-40 hrs to read diligently and understand thoroughly. However, If the time is limited then you may consider doing the MGMAT SC guide atleast two times supplemented with Ron's videos and e-gmat concepts( free version is also educative).
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Re: How good is Wren & Martin for improving your basics in SC ? [#permalink] New post   28 Apr 2012, 07:11
Could you elaborate on 'Ron's videos'? What are these and from where can we get em?
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Re: How good is Wren & Martin for improving your basics in SC ? [#permalink] New post   11 Mar 2022, 05:22
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Re: How good is Wren & Martin for improving your basics in SC ? [#permalink]
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