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Desperately seeking help with SC!!

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rakp
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Desperately seeking help with SC!! [#permalink] Desperately seeking help with SC!!   21 Jun 2012, 00:31
I am hoping to gain some insight to improve my SC accuracy. Let me begin by saying I am not a native English speaker. Over the last few months I have been preparing for GMAT on and off and struggling really hard with SC. I started with Verbal book and my accuracy for SC was 63%, then moved to OG11, my accuracy was 71% and finally OG12 and my accuracy is only 73%. I am feeling immensely demotivated and with my GMAT date less than a month away, I cannot afford to feel this way. I feel my problem is in not being able to correctly recognize the problem. 90% of the times I have to look at the answer choices to realize what's wrong with the sentence. Also on an average it takes me about 1:30 mins to solve a SC problem. I have gone through the MGMAT SC a few times.

I would be greatly appreciative if you can suggest a method to better understand the SC principles and hopefully improve my SC accuracy.

Thanks!!

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Re: Desperately seeking help with SC!! [#permalink] Desperately seeking help with SC!!   21 Jun 2012, 01:28
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Man, I really feel for you. The good news is that you have been improving. Most importantly, let me start by saying that I strongly feel that recognizing the errors based on reading the answer choices is by far the most efficient method to solve SC problems. Let me be more clear: continue looking at SC problems exactly as you are!

Now, in terms of preparation, the problem you are probably having is with the prose used by GMAC. I have recommended on these forums and continue to recommend that non-native English speakers subscribe to either the WSJ or NY Times and read their chosen newspaper for an hour every day. Doing so will radically improve your ability to recognize and interpret the prose used on the GMAT.

Hope that helps.
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Re: Desperately seeking help with SC!! [#permalink] Desperately seeking help with SC!!   21 Jun 2012, 08:35
Thank you Vandygrad11!! I do try and read The Economist and NY Times daily. Guess at this point practice is my best bet.
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Re: Desperately seeking help with SC!! [#permalink] Desperately seeking help with SC!!   21 Jun 2012, 23:23
In addition to reading more, you can also try looking at some online resources for learning. I would recommend eGMAT or Magoosh. eGMAT is know for Sentence Correction. Both of them have very good reviews and offer a free trial.

https://gmatclub.com/reviews/?fl=menu
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Re: Desperately seeking help with SC!! [#permalink] Desperately seeking help with SC!!   22 Jun 2012, 09:24
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Hi rakp, I don't understand why you're unmotivated. If you get 73% of the problems right, that means you're doing great! Keep up the good work! Remember, because the GMAT is adaptive, it isn't like other tests where you really need to get 90% of the questions right. Many questions are intentionally designed to be difficult even for the best English speakers.

Based on what you said, my advice would be to try and figure out which topics you have trouble identifying in the original sentence, and then identify key words that tell you when those topics are being tested. For example, many people struggle with pronouns; if you do as well, try quickly searching for the words "it/its/them/they/their" in every problem you see, until it becomes something you do naturally.
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Re: Desperately seeking help with SC!! [#permalink] Desperately seeking help with SC!!   25 Jun 2012, 10:11
try to get your hands on a book called - Aristotle SC Grail.
even i had problems in SC in the beginning. i solved Manhattan SC but still wasn't comfortable. Aristotle explains all the rules in a very brief, to the point manner. it has a workbook as well for practise with explanations to all the answers.
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Re: Desperately seeking help with SC!! [#permalink] Desperately seeking help with SC!!   27 Jun 2012, 15:58
I am in the same boat and being a non-native speaker isn't helping me much either. The problems I have are with 'modifiers', identifying noun phrases, gerund phrases (not sure if there are such things), clauses, and run-on sentences. I am so confused with these names that I don't even know what exactly each one means. Its worst when 'comma' is involved. I can't seem to decide whether the words placed between the commas are modifying the noun or introducing a new phrase/clause? I read MGMAT SC twice and Aristotle Grail SC one but couldn't understand the basics. These books provide rules that need to followed but don't elaborate much on basics.

can y'all (gotta love Texas) suggest a good book that can help me understand modifiers, parallelism and other basic concepts. oh! I forgot to tell that I am pressed for time and my exam is in 7 weeks.

Thanks,
Adi

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Re: Desperately seeking help with SC!! [#permalink]
27 Jun 2012, 15:58
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