Help improving my verbal score !! Exam in < a month

First advice, you should give more Official mocks to gauge where you are yet.

For your time-management, I am not sure if you make a grid to keep track of your time. I used to do the following :-

65 - 56 - 47 - 38 - 29 - 20 - 11 - 0 (in mins)
0 - 5 - 10 - 15 - 20 - 25- 30 - 36

i.e. you give a 9 min block for every 5 questions. Though, you need to keep one thing in mind that you can cover a lot of time with a number of SC questions that come one after the other. Since you are already good at it, try to devote that extra time to RCs and you won't have to worry about the timing then.

Practice these skills in the mocks and you will feel more confident.

All the best!!

I kept track of time after every 8 - 15 - 25 questions .I Guess that strategy is not helping me .
Thanks shameekv1989 ! Will try to focus more on RCs .

Also I guess I need to do mixed practice more often so that I am able to solve any type of question the test throws .
Any suggestions where I might be able to do mixed practice ?

So I used to practice here at GMATClub itself. I would open multiples tabs - 10-15 SCs, 8-9 CRs, 3-4 RC passages (from diff levels) and make a note of answer choices on a notebook (start a timer and then pause it when you are done - do not attempt it). Check all the answers at the end of the practice then. This will help more than just attempting questions one at a time while practicing.

Additionally, solving and cementing 600-700 level questions will help you more in scoring high than would 700-level questions. You can get away with answering 700-level qs incorrectly but not the other way round.

And if you feel uncomfortable with some specific topic, then take an incremental approach. First, attempt 10- 600-level qs with 100% accuracy and only then move to 600-700 level qs - score 90-100% in this category and then move to 700-level.

Hope it helps!!

Thanks ! Will follow this approach from now on !

Hi Shrujal,

As you have less than a month, I recommend you to analyze your weaker areas and focus on them more. Your verbal score is pretty inconsistent in the mocks and that probably means that you are struggling with the methodology. There is a certain methodology you have to use for each module of Verbal that is SC, CR and RC. Learn the right methodology and practice a few questions without the time limit first. Once you feel confident about the methodology, you can start taking timed quizzes.

Having said that, I would really like to know your current approach before suggesting you a structured study plan. So, if you can tell me that, it will be very helpful. You can always write back to me here or a better way would be to connect over a call and discuss the same. You can use the below link to get in touch with me over a call.


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Hi

I recently gave the gmatprep 1st mock .
I was pretty good at SC . CR was the weakest area for me.
I wasnt able to manage time properly . ended up guessing on the last RC.

I have studied SC from Magoosh and Manhattan guide
I have studied CR from Powerscore CR bible
I have studied RC from manhattan guide as well
I have practiced questions from GMATCLUB itself.

When I practice CR separately I am able to solve most questions correctly . Because my reading speed is slow , I was not able to solve the CR questions properly(because of time constraint).

It may help to experiment with some time-management strategies
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Hi Shrujal,

It's good that you know your weaker areas. Having said that, if you are struggling with a particular module, practicing questions doesn't help you improve your accuracy. The first step in the process of improving your score is to identify what is going wrong. Once you identify that, it's important to learn the right method and practice a few questions to solidify that learning.

Coming to CR, you have to follow certain steps while solving CR questions.

• Read the argument
• Identify the premise and the conclusion
• Read the question stem
• Identify the missing link (Pre-think the assumption)
• Eliminate answer choices which are irrelevant or out of scope

Identifying the conclusion helps you understand the scope of the argument, which in turn helps you to eliminate answer choices which fall out of scope. And to develop the ability to pre-think, you need to understand the framework on which most CR questions are based. Once you identify the framework, there are certain guidelines using which you can come up with the missing link. You can understand the gist of those frameworks by going through the following recording.



So, I suggest you to first learn this methodology and then move to practicing questions. And while practicing the methodology, make sure you do not time yourself. Once you are confident about the methodology, you can start taking timed quizzes. And it's ok to be left with less time at the end. Make sure you get the questions in the initial quarters right so that the algorithm serves you difficult questions. At the end, if you are left with less time, make sure to take calculated risk by guessing a few and by investing time on the right questions which you can solve. You can find the test taking strategy video on our YouTube channel.

If you wish to know more about the study strategy or have any more queries, feel free to get in touch using the below link.


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God will help you. I advise you to take it and teach yourself. Nobody will help you with the exam.

Yes ! OnlineTutorKnight
will surely work on my time management skills

Probably, you have to do more untimed practice involving analyzing every answer choice of the verbal questions you see in order to learn to see more clearly what's going on in the questions.

Once you are more skilled in seeing what's going on in the questions, you'll answer them more quickly and more accurately.
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Hi GMATWhizTeam ,

Will follow step by step process for CR and will improve my reading and comprehension speed !

Also, I had a few questions about the pacing strategy .

How do I know which question should I guess on to get back on track of time ?
What if the question is crucial to my score ?

Is there any way whereby I can skip a question in between without hurting my score .
Because it might be so that the questions at the end might be the ones which I can actually solve but couldnot solve because of time constraints !

Got it ! MartyTargetTestPrep
Thanks for your valuable suggestion
I will focus more time on analyzing a question and why one answer is correct and the other's are wrong .
Generally, I am able to narrow down to two answers and I always pick the incorrect one . I need to pay more attention to the subtleties .

Yes, if you are narrowing down to two, then you have not yet learned to see the key differences between trap choices and correct answers. You have to notice the difference in the effects of the two statements.
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Hey Shrujal,

Even I struggled with Verbal but I applied the right process and improved my score. I have made a couple of debriefs. You can go through them to know a few tips.

Debrief of my journey from 570 to 720



Scoring a perfect CR 51 ( 97 percentile ) from being an amateur in CR

Hi Shrujal,

You cannot skip any question but the best taking strategy is to focus more on the initial questions so that the algorithm serves you 700 level questions. If you start guessing at the initial stages and you get the questions wrong, you level will go down and you cannot reach 700 level. So, it's important to make sure that you get a string of questions right mainly in the initial quarters, even if you take a little more than the optimum time.

Having said that, do not spend more than 3 minutes if you feel that you cannot get the answer. There's no point spending more than 2 minutes on a question and ultimately guessing it. When you come across a question, you should be able to understand whether you can solve it under 2 minutes or not.

At the end, it's more about smart work. If you got a RC passage at 30th question and you have 4 minutes left, it's better to skip the passage and answer the next questions right because honestly you cannot read the passage and solve the questions in 4 minutes unless it is a short passage. So, it's all about taking the decision at that point of time. If you ask me, try to delay guessing as much as possible.



Hope it helped. All the best
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Hi vamshikaithi ,

Thanks for your advice Will surely follow the CR tricks !

Hi MartyTargetTestPrep,

I am currently working on that . Finding differences between the correct and wrong answers . I am doing untimed practice for that same . I am reading the CR bible once again !

Thanks GMATWhizTeam ,
Will surely follow all these tips !

Try not to worry. Excitement can worsen your performance.