Verbal is killing me :|

Question

Hi dears I took my first CAT today. and I got 650 (Q50, V27) I have one month to big meet with GMAT! Please help me. What should I do to improve my verbal? To provide some more information for u: 1. I am non-native english 2. I need 700+ 3. I read Manhattan SC and Critical Reasoning Bible. Do all the questions of OG12 and verbal reveiw 4. I did nothing for RC, and I don't have significant problem in this area. My problem: 1. Based on my exam results, I found that my critical difficulty is SC, SC, and SC. 2. Time management. I chose all 7 last questions on verbal part randomly because I ran out of time

(and all of them were wrong!!!) My questions: 1. I plan to work on my weaknesses. So for every SC question or CR question i need to know some people (in this club) so that i can ask my questions from them by email or forum discussions. I know those people on Quant, but not on verbal. So i would really appreciate if you introduce them to me. 2. I plan to solve 7 sets of verbal questions on GMAT Club Tests (untimed) this week. Is it enough to improve my verbal? (the quant sets were really brilliant. Thank you

) 3. In summary, Please advise me. Really really really thank you

KarishmaB · Answer

If I were in your situation, this is what I would do:

At 27 in Verbal, there must be problems in at least 2 of the 3 sub sections. First of all, I would go through the concepts of RC and CR very properly so that I understand the various kinds of questions there are, what they require, how to approach the options, what to focus on each question type etc. Then I would practice questions of RC and CR regularly, say 10-15 questions of CR and 3-4 sets of RC everyday. I would like to be extremely strong in these two sections since I have a certain comfort in them. If I am strong in 2 of the 3 question types, I should be able to manage 35-36 in Verbal without any problems.

Side by side, I would start going through the concepts of SC too - the most common types of errors (e.g. modifier errors, subject verb agreement errors etc), the strategies required to attack the SC questions etc. I would also practice on 10 OG12 question everyday. The important thing would be to go through each and every option and identify the errors in each one of them. Even if I am average in SC but very strong in the other 2 question types, Verbal 40 is very achievable.

I don't think there is any reason why you shouldn't be able to crack the 700 barrier.

shahideh · Answer

Really appreciate it. Thank you. 
For time management, Do you think that it is a good idea to pass one RC passage (say third or forth RC) on the exam and guess its answers so that i can save my time to do last verbal questions?

KarishmaB · Answer

I wouldn't recommend that. If your reading speed is not very good, I would suggest you to try and steal time away from SC questions. Take only 1 minute and try and do your best in that. They anyway take less time.

The logic is the same - you can manage something fairly well; make sure you do that properly at least. An average/low score in only one subsection of the 3 will not hurt you much. But, say you put lots of time in SC, still get questions wrong and guess blindly on RC where you could have got questions correct is certainly not a good strategy.

Practice reading a little faster and with focus (say, give yourself one RC with 4 questions and 6 mins). CR questions will take 2 minutes or more. You cannot take away much time from them.

Also, don't guess 3-4 questions in a row. That would be as bad as guessing on 3-4 questions in a row at the end.

shahideh · Answer

All of your recommendations are perfecttttttt Thanks alot I will try to do my best

gmatpunjabi · Answer

This is some really good advice I plan to follow this!!

GMATPill · Answer

If you want 700+, you're going to need to get almost every verbal question correct - yes that means being an expert on SC. If you're having trouble, it's most likely because there are rules to grammar that you don't know about and that schools don't teach well. You're going to need to know what they are, work through them. Once you understand, you'll need to go through a learning curve to strategically attack each question.

The verbal score is going to be most sensitive in determining your overall GMAT score. Read more details on the 1 gmat strategy you need to know:
https://www.gmatpill.com/the-gmat-pill-m ... -strategy/

If you want email feedback for questions, I provide that but unfortunately since my time is limited, I only offer that to my students. Best of luck.

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

You may benefit from reading my response to another recent "this is killing me" post. help-needed-sc-is-killing-me-126392.html

As for skipping, I agree with Karishma--you don't want to skip a whole RC passage. If you are on the 3rd or 4th question and you find that you simply can't answer it, that's another story. The best way to deal with time is to practice this skill explicitly and hold very closely to a set of timing benchmarks (e.g. roughly 5 problems every 10 minutes, adjusting slightly depending on whether you have gotten more SC or RC). However, if you must skip a problem (i.e. guess randomly right away), your best bet is to skip a CR that looks time-consuming. You can't really squeeze down the time there, and they are stand-alone problems. If you skip an SC, you aren't saving much time, and if you skip a whole RC passage, it drags your score down. Again, I'm not advocating a great deal of skipping, especially at your level, but you can definitely afford to miss a problem here and there. The best problem to skip is one that you think you might have a hard time with. If you fall behind, you are in a sense letting the test decide which problems you will skip--the last ones. You definitely want to avoid that situation.

Also, don't forget to spend some time on math. You got a 50 last time, and that's great, but you don't want to go up in verbal and down in math. Keep all your skills sharp!

Best of luck!

shahideh · Answer

Thanks a lot dear DmitryFarber
your suggestions will definitely help me

Verbal is killing me :|

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