Literal meaning issues SC

Question

Hi all,

I’m a native English speaker and am having trouble understanding the literal meaning of incorrect sentences. It’s almost as if I’ll look at them and understand what the sentence is trying to say and so often overlook meaning issues in sentences. Thanks to the  GMATNinja  post on SC strategy I’ve realised that this may come back to bite me on exam day and so am looking for ways to improve this. Are there any hints, tips or tricks that anyone has found accelerates this process?

Best,

R

Posted from my mobile device

Gmatislife123 · Answer

GMATNinja  do you have any thoughts on how to improve this aspect of SC?

Posted from my mobile device

GMATWhizTeam · Answer

Hey,

You are on the right track of approaching the SC questions from meaning stand-point. It's just that you're faltering a little in the process. To understand the meaning of the sentence, it's important that you break the sentence at right intervals and comprehend the meaning. There are certain intervals at which you break the sentence. Below are a few:

Conjunctions 
 Transition words 
 Verb/Verbals

When you break the sentence at regular intervals, it becomes easy for you identify the subject-verb pairs, noun-pronoun pairs and the errors if any. The process might seem tedious at the beginning but it's the best way to improve your accuracy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SGA8bwFNJM

If you wish to know more about how to improve your accuracy and how to approach SC questions, feel free to get in touch using the below link.

Click here to schedule a call

homersimpsons · Answer

Watch all SC gmatninja videos on youtube.

EducationAisle · Answer

That's exactly the tendency what GMAT test makers tend to  exploit .

We read sentences based upon what these sentences  want  to convey, rather than what these sentences are  literally  conveying.

A very simple example:

Barking from the roadside, I was chased by a dog .

Perhaps your native speaker eyes  don't  see anything wrong with the above sentence. However, from a  literal  meaning perspective, this sentence is no less than a disaster! The way the above sentence is articulated, (believe it or not) it means that "I" was barking from the roadside! (who could've ever thought).

Let's talk some grammar here. Grammatically speaking,  barking from the roadside  is (what's called) a  participial  phrase and the grammar rule is that such participial phrases always  modify  (describe/tell us something about) the  subject  of the succeeding clause; in this case, the subject is "I".

In other words,  barking from the roadside  is describing/telling us something about "I", literally conveying that "I" was barking from the roadside!

The reason I went into some details of  grammar  above, is to portray that knowing about these grammar rules is frankly the  only  way to understand the  literal  interpretation of any given sentence construct.

While you do  not  need to be an English grammar  guru , you  do  need to develop a basic fundamental understanding of some grammar concepts in GMAT that get tested quite regularly.

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Literal meaning issues SC

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