Dear Student (
goalISB55 ),
Thank you for your query.
It appears you haven’t yet fully harnessed the potential of
e-GMAT's 3 Step Approach to SC. The challenge you’re facing is not uncommon. In fact, it applies to every skill that’s taught through a multi-step approach. For instance, if you’ve ever been coached on any sport, you must have noticed various drills for individual skills, such as shooting a basketball, freestyle swimming, or even batting in cricket. Each of these skills are taught in stepwise increments, from your posture to the way you move your hands and feet, till you execute the movement properly. It takes weeks, if not months, of practice before you're able to execute all the steps to perfection. And, one fine day, you just take that shot or swim across the pool without thinking. All the steps fuse into one fluid and seamless motion, performed to perfection.
The
e-GMAT 3 Step Approach (a.k.a. Meaning Based Approach) to SC is no different. Your ability to solve an SC question in 30 to 90 seconds depends on the stage of preparation you’re in and the degree to which you’ve practiced each step of the process. The following tips should help you pick up the pace, according to the stage of preparation you’re in.
Stage 1 If you’re only in stage 1, learning the concepts and the methodology of solving SC, and are clocking 3 to 4 mins per SC question, then you have nothing to worry about; this is quite good actually. Conscious application of each of the steps actually takes that long. Rest assured you’re spending your time judiciously. The skills learned in this phase will last you a lifetime.
1. Do not try to find shortcuts during this phase; it’ll only sabotage your learning.
2. Perform detailed Answer Choice Analysis and not Process of Elimination. It will strengthen your ability to detect all errors in every choice.
Stage 2 If you’ve started cementing your SC skills and are struggling to complete the quiz in standard timing, then observe the following:
1. By now, you should have completed Master Comprehension and practiced deriving the sentence structure several times enough to do it effortlessly and subconsciously. At this stage of prep, structural analysis, meaning analysis, and error identification happen simultaneously. Identifying pause points should come naturally to you, and you should proceed to the next pause point only after comprehending the previous segment. You should be able to read every sentence, be it the original sentence or an answer choice, effortlessly and with comprehension. If you’re still doing structural and meaning analysis separately and consciously, it means that you haven’t practiced these enough.
2. By now, the grammatical and logical errors should stand out automatically as you do the meaning analysis during your first read itself. You should not be relying on a checklist of grammatical errors and eliminating them one by one. You should know the concepts like the back of your hand. Only then will they stand out automatically, helping you save precious time.
3. Care should be taken in deciding when to complete meaning analysis of the entire original sentence even though you’ve already identified glaring deterministic errors. In easier and purely grammar-based questions, we can save time by jumping to ‘step 3’ without analyzing the entire original sentence. We jump to the choices, eliminate the incorrect ones till we’re left with the best of the given choices. However, in medium and hard questions, this usually spells disaster. Even if you’re able to eliminate a few answer choices, you will still need to do meaning analysis of the rest of the original sentence. This creates ‘back and forth’, which causes delay. So, improve your judgment. Either way, even if you make a bad decision, your overall speed should be high enough to not suffer a major loss of time in such cases.
4. Use Process of Elimination and not Answer Choice Analysis. This stage is all about speed. You’ve already learned all the errors. Now is the time to get to the best answer in the least amount of time. For this, you only need to find ONE deterministic error in each incorrect answer choice. We read all answer choices vertically and simultaneously, not one-at-a-time. We eliminate the incorrect choices as we detect errors, till we’re left with only one choice.
5. If you’re left with 2 close choices, it means the question is difficult. It could be because of a grammatical rule or a logic issue. Either way, you’ll have to identify the split and quickly identify the better version keeping in mind the logic and intended meaning of the sentence.
6. Always use timed tests. And always push yourself to your limits. If you can solve a question in 3 mins, try doing it in 2.5. If you can do it in 1.5 mins, try doing it in 1:15.
7. Eliminate regression (or re-reading). We re-read sentences owing to low confidence and lack of concentration, both of which can and must be eliminated.
I hope these tips help you. They certainly helped
Ayush,
Nishant, and many others reduce their solving time to 30 to 45 seconds.
Lastly, please make it a point to write to us on
support@e-gmat.com, or even post such queries on our internal forums for quicker resolution. Our in-house experts are at your service.
Best wishes,
Team
e-GMAT _________________