SC Help: Pronouns and Modifiers

Many people would probably suggest to just go and practice more. Do question after question. While I see why from a mental point that might sound good, you feel like you are working through material and making progress etc., I would instead recommend going through all the wrong answers to questions you have already answered. Really try to understand why those are wrong. You can answer SC questions by finding the right choice directly, sure if you are good you can do that, but for most of us, narrowing down the choices by first identifying all the obvious wrong answers within seconds will allow you to devote way more resources to finding the right answer from may be 2 answers you are left with. As an extra benefit, you are going to see a lot more wrong than right answers on the GMAT (4:1 to be precise) and they repeat all the time, so being able to spot those really quickly will help you a lot. Over time you will start seeing the patterns, but for that you really have to 'understand' the right and the wrong answers

If you are reading the SC book and seeing little results, my guess is you are reading the book and one of two things is happening:

- You read it without fully understanding the topics
- You read it, understand it, but are unable to apply it

I had many issues with the verbal section (bullet point #2). One thing that helped me was attempting to apply proper written English in all aspects of life. Whether it was email (personal and professional), small talk with friends, etc, I would try and force myself to be aware of my though patters and my speech patterns. This helped create a better sense of awareness and through this awareness you will improve your verbal score.

The fiction reading list will also help here as when you read proper English it is easier to become familiar with the proper idioms as well as the overall form for sentence structure.

There is no "more direct approach", there is no "magic pill". Some people simply have a knack for proper written English while some people (like myself) do not.

my tip is to do as many practice problems as you can get a hold of... but the catch is to spend more time reviewing than actually doing the problems: usually a 60/40 time split on reviewing/doing.

i try (usually force myself) to spend about 1 hour reviewing for every 50 minutes of working through the problems... this hasn't been too consistent, but i still try to hit that target.

Thanks everyone.

Aldafu - I agree with the review part. I spent about 2 weeks consolidating all of my notes for each verbal section and continually reading over them. When I did the practice problems I noticed I improved around 10% in accuracy across the board, versus my old study method (which was to do as many problems as possible to learn). Review and understanding topics is very important before jumping into practice questions...