Verbal - Strategies, tips & tricks

Hey guys,

I´ve realized that the verbal section of the GMAT does come much easier to me than quant and so I thought I might share a couple of things that helped me so far.
I don´t claim that I have invented all of the strategies below and videos from Veritas Prep and GmatNinja on their respective YT channels helped me a lot!

Below collection of thoughts is what was helpful for me, if you disagree on certain things please let me know as this creates a more holistic picture overall.

Although this might appear very simple, its really helpful:

Write down the respective choices a,b,c,d,e on your scratchpaper and cross out an answerchoice once you have eliminated it. Especially if you are forced to reread a passage or sentence this is going to prove very helpful and saves valuable time.

1. CR

If you read a certain passage make sure you try to identify the respective argument and the flaws it might contain. Once you read the question, try to think some 10-15 sec. about whether you already have an answer in mind. This is going to help you structure your thoughts as well as to avoid some of the trap answers the GMAT be might throwing at you.

For strengthen/weaken questions, try to create the inverse of the respective argument in your head. This is going to help you understand the significance of an argument and you might often find the correct solution considering the results in case its opposite were to be true.


2. SC

Make sure you focus on the right decision points, just because some phrase does not sound right does not mean its wrong. Especially for the harder questions, it is very helpful to look for flaws in the meaning and not only focus on the grammar or style.

Once you have identified and error try to look for answer choices which repeat this mistake. Often you can eliminate between 2-3 answer choices by spotting one error!
This tactic is not only going to help you become faster at solving SC questions, but I would also argue it improves your accuracy.

The following question provides a very good testing ground for the related strategy, please let me know which error patterns you were able to identify:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/the-thousand ... 94493.html

Last but not least, don´t overlook the non underlined portion!
Especially in longer SC sentences one easily gets caught up in the underlines portion and the part of the sentence that comes before it. However, often the end of the sentence contains valuable information about the tense or the meaning and should not be overlooked.


3. RC

I personally became much better at RC once I started reading the passages carefully. While there are some strategies out there which tell you too skim through everything that has not worked too well for me. By saying carefully I don´t encourage you to focus on every detail, but make sure to get an understanding of the meaning and the context of the respective passage. Ideally, try to understand the authors perspective as this comes up in questions quite frequently.

Especially for non-native speakers:

Try to increase your exposure to English texts, ideally via high-quality newspapers, scientific articles or books. This is going to make you more comfortable with reading in general and ideally also increases your vocabulary. Once you become comfortable try to increase your reading pace as you go along articles and see up to what pace you are still able to get the meaning out what you are reading.

TOEFL

I know this is not part of the GMAT, however as this might be relevant for a large number of international students I am going to link the TOEFEL requirements of various popular schools below:

https://gmatclub.com/forum/toefl-score- ... 80110.html


I hope this post is helpful for a couple of you guys struggling with verbal. As I go along in my studies I will try to edit and add further tips and tricks to this article.

Best regards,
Chris