Retaking GMAT: Verbal Strategy Improvement?

Question

All,

I am considering retaking the gmat.. So my question is how do I improve from a verbal score of 29 to something respectable such as 40 in under 1 month?

I have completed OG 11the edition, PR both Verbal Workout and the PR standard edition, and Kaplan Verbal and Kaplan Standard, and Kaplan 800 Verbal....

Do I go back and review these and see the errors that I made? Or should I restart my verbal preparation with these books? i.e just redo the entire three books again.. keeping track of errors etc..

Should I do the RC,SC,and CR1000 workout? 

I am confused how to begin the verbal strategy again. 

I think last time I did not do the questions under timed conditions for those books.. But I did three-5 tests in which i scored atleast 35 all the time under timed for verbal..

Anyhelp will be appreciated.. I am sure quiete a few of us are in the same state as where we have done the test once, and we are planning to retake it but with trying to improve verbal?

Thanks a lot!!!!!!!!!!

chiragr · Answer

I am not an expert on verbal but I would do following!

1) Divide task in three parts, SC, RC, CR
Analyze your skills on each of this. And plan accordingly.

1) For SC
Manhattan GMAT book is good, but I would suggest spending time understanding grammar in more details.

You can use following websites...

https://www.dailygrammar.com/
https://wwwnew.towson.edu/ows/index.htm
https://www.agriculture.purdue.edu/agcom ... by.com/64/
https://www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/wri ... artsp.html

You can buy some book also such as Grammar Smart from PR

Spend hour on SC every day, 20-30 SC from 1000 and extra time to understand grammar.

2) For CR
Good Math somehow means good CR but still need to take it sincerely, understand how questions are created and do one LSAT-CR a day from 1000CR.

I used GMAT Critical Reasoning Bible, by David M Killoran, PowerScore. I like this book it helped me improve my hit rate by 20% or so.

3) For RC
I am not sure, I am still trying to figure out techniques but one thing I would suggest is to do few paragraphs a day.

This is kind of schedule I am planning to follow 5 days a week for next three week before D day.

I hope this helps.

chiragr · Answer

One more book name "The Elements of Style" by william strunk jr. and E B white. Gem book, knowing how people write help you to read better

willget800 · Answer

Thanks Chirag... This is definitely a good plan. This should take around 3 hours a day you think?
And probably from Rhyme's experience of loosing touch on math, I should probably keep doing 1 hour of math a day....

I am thinking of giving it again in June end July time frame.. 

Question is in 1 month can you improve grammar by reading these general grammar skills?

Should I consider taking a class from kaplan or pr and give the exam later again?

Or maybe make my own study schedule and do just the sites.. I am afraid if 4 weeks are enough for this now?

chiragr · Answer

I really donâ€™t think classes helps much, to me biggest help were SC-1000 this grammar books and OG explanations

In month plus time frame if you can really spend 3 to 4 hours a day and can spend some time on weekends to study more grammar you can really achieve good results. 

In SC I improved from hit rate of less than 50% to around 70%, most of the improvement is due to pattern recognizection, after doing lot of SC (around 500 of them) I can see some patterns, for eg. in idioms I am quite comfortable with not only but also, as good as or better than, consider XY etc, in S-V agreement I can really pick complex subjects etc. 

Other reason for improvement is just becoming more comfortable with grammar as such, now if I read OG explanation that this is verbal or gerund I know what they mean which helps creating kind of road map in mind what they are up to. 

The overall trick is to find out your strengths and weaknesses and zoom in to them, I now strongly believe that with proper preparation you will at least solve 50% of hard SC. And off course I believe anyone who can score well in Math can score well in CR. 

Now once you are good at SC and CR it will reduce some time pressure on RC and overall performance will improve drastically!

This is overall philosophy I am relying upon; to me, it seems logically correct I hope it will practically prove valuable.

meta1234 · Answer

I have the same problem. I got on my first try 
Verbal 25 / 38% 
Quantitative 48 / 86% 
Total 600 / 70% 
Analytical Writing 5.0 / 74%

Obviously i need to improve my verbal score. I just bought the Manhattan verbal workbooks, and the 11th edition of the OG.

Where can I find the SC-1000? 

also, with which set should I start? and how should I progress?

Any advice is appreciated .. 

Thanks!

- A7mad

gmatmba · Answer

some SC1000 is available on this forum under a sticky in verbal section

willget800 · Answer

CR 1000 has many non gmat question types..

How do we know which ones are the ones we need to look into?

giddi77 · Answer

You should probably ignore the following LSAT question types:
1. All bridges built in 1980 were suspension bridges and some suspension bridges had faulty design and only if a suspension bridge is in San Francisco or New York thousands of insane people could have jumped into the bay .... some crap like that.. Just ignore such questions unless u really want to do a PhD in formal logic.
2. Parallel reasoning questions... Some of them are interesting but there are more interesting things in life too!
3. If A then B. A only if B. ... type of questions.

Focus on assumption/weaken/strengthen/resolve the paradox/arguments of the type Larry resonds to Harry...

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