Found somewhere in an old post might be useful. Please give kudos if useful.
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To whom it may concern,
I m not ashamed to declare that I m quite weak in verbal and as you all know without improving verbal we cannot score well on Gmat even if we get Q51. That's why I have created this thread to share verbal strategy.
I cannot let my dream go away just because I don't know basic grammar rules and cannot master reading skills.
I believe anyone can conquer gmat, anyone can get 750+ its all about fundamentals.Some people are good at quant and some at verbal, and those lucky kids who are good at both they don't need much time to conquer Gmat. Ultimately we have to build strong fundamentals for either of them to get good score.
Some worked hard during high school and some like me have to do NOW. The reason why few of us score below 700 or 600 is lack of fundamentals and confidence. They ask for just simple english SC and reading skills with high school level quant. Can't we tackle that simple thing? Yes we can but we need to know where we stand and what we want and do the Gap analysis. Be honest with your preparation. Hard work done now will bring fruitful result later just like working out at gym.
One golden advice : Do not practice questions unless you have built strong base of fundamentals, that will be wastage of time and might affect confidence. If you don't believe me just go to "share my gmat experience " section and see how people have improved from even 400 to 700+.
I would like to invite all those who are weak in verbal to share their issues and those who are strong & can help us keep going.
I m coming to the point now.Verbal has three parts SC, RC , CR.
As per experts SC is very scoring and very easy to improve if we learn the basic rules and practice.
But we cannot neglect the portion of CR and RC. If we can master reading text from the screen I m sure this will improve other two sections as well.
I have read
Mgmat SC once though very quickly with no practice. I m going to read it again until I grasp it completely( With help from wren and martin grammar book). Side by side reading fiction books as suggested by BB will be part of my daily routine. Reading those books will not only improve RC skill but also SC section as well.We will get quite familiar with the sentence creation and our ear will detect 50% of the errors. This study of books should not cut the daily study schedule. I will be following 30-70 % rule for quant and verbal. 30% of the time will be spent on gmatclub forum posts and weekend club tests. 70% of the time for Manhattan SC book for SC and powerscore CR bible for CR. For verbal I will follow the slow down strategy given by many experts. In the beginning we should not look for solving the question in 2 minutes, we really cannot do and this will decrease the confidence and we will ruin our preparation.
As per the expert advice creating your notes is very important, if possible on paper. Make proper notes and please don't mind investing some time on it as it will bring fruitful results in future. Next day for 10-15 minutes review the notes and try to remember the things and mark those which are forgotten. Third day again review it and try to remember especially highlighted notes which was difficult to remember.
I m going to follow this strategy blindly and if any one want to join for the improvement of verbal , he is most welcome. I m going to follow manhattan SC and powerscore CR only for SC and CR section.
For RC: Fiction books + daily 1 RC passage.
I apologize for weak grammer and vocab used above.
I hope one day my debrief will have no Grammar mistake.
Suggestions and criticism are must. Please spare a minute for it.
PS: Everyone is different and we have to find our own shortcomings. Try to find it and give it a good fight and those who have similar issues like me can follow this. I m an Indian and
ENGLISH is not my mother tongue.
Regards
Gurpreet Singh
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For RC reading habits, here are two things:
1. If one wants to read some thing that doesn't bore them in the initial phase of preparation they can definitely go for fictions and there fiction books available with damn good english like Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged etc.
2. But as everyone knows RCs have very vast range of subject can be from science, sports, history, philosophy or a combination of these. So in later phase when more time needs to be put in practice less one can move on to news paper articles, editorials, opinions etc. These will have double benefit i.e. benefit during exam as well as knowledge for interviews. A very good website for plethora of good articles from all range of topics would be
https://aldaily.com.
My 2 cents..