Woodencrawdad wrote:
I recently took the GMAT and scored a 41V. I felt least sure about the sentence correction. I'm a native speaker and have studied - but I'm finding it hard to commit the obscure rules to memory.
What do you all recommend for going from V41- 45? I've got a month before I take it again. I've looked at GMATPill and it has some interesting features - I think I could benefit from hearing someone "size up" a sentence and let me in on their strategy.
But what do you all think? Best way to conquer sentence correction?
The best way to conquer sentence correction is one error at a time. The GMAT tests the same errors over and over throughout the exam and if you focus on them one at a time you will be able to conquer each one separately. Most people try to focus on each answer choice instead of each error and thus get lost in a jungle of multiple different error types. Instead, find the trigger words or situations that typically indicate a certain error type is in play and correct each error type one at a time.
for instance if the sentence starts with a verb there is likely a misplaced modifier error. Therefore if the sentence starts with a verb isolate the parts of the sentence that deal with misplaced modifier and decide what is being described and what needs to follow the comma. Then make decisions on every answer choice as to whether it fixes the error (do not deal with other errors at this point). Once you have eliminated all of the answers that make a similar error then move on to the next error - letting the answer choices guide you - for instance is there a pronoun in the answer choice, does it refer clearly to the appropriate thing? Is there an issue with verb tense? then deal with just the one error you find and eliminate. Continue in this manner until you have only one answer choice left.
You can also map this out by using different colored highlighters to highlight each error and the word choice that makes the answer incorrect - use a different color for each error that you find. In most sentence corrections you will find 2 - 4 errors.