SOS! Paying attention to grammar reducing SC accuracy!

Major help needed! In my last GMAT attempt, I did not study for the verbal section AT ALL and went just 'by my ear', simply because I had no time. This time around, I aim to improve verbal score (from 33) to somewhere in the respectable >42 zone within the next 25 days. My problem is, now that I have started studying grammar and paying attention to subject-verb agreement, idiomatic expressions or 'wordyness', my accuracy has tanked! Admittedly, I wasn't a genius before, but its disconcerting to realize that 6 out of 10 responses are now wrong!

What should I be doing differently? Should I continue struggling with grammar and try to master the monster or should I go with my previous instinctive-response approach?

Many thanks for your views and suggestions!

Hi,

Don't worry – it is normal to learn new things and to have your score decrease temporarily as you figure out how to use the new tools. However, play to your strengths. You do not need to memorize every grammar rule to be good at sentence correction. I would focus on the major things: agreement/parallelism/modifiers. Start there with every SC. Then you can branch out to other things that you know (idioms, verb tense). Also, focus on the meaning of the sentence. There is a balance on the GMAT between rules and common sense. When you don't know rules we use common sense but when we start learning rules we forget about common sense. It is important to have both. I hope this helps.

Happy Studies,

HG.
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HG,

Many thanks. Great advice, I intend to do just that. Have spent the past 2-3 days just learning the rules and tonight will take them out for a test drive, along with common sense as a pillion. Will let you know how it goes. Thanks for the encouragement!

/sns