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28 Mar 2020, 02:35
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The right sequence for Verbal Preparation
While interacting with many students who are in the initial stages of their preparation, I get to hear that I study SC, CR and RC alternatively on X, Y and Z days of the week. I strongly recommend not doing so because it is not the most effective way to prepare specially for non-native speakers of English. To understand why I recommend so, let us first understand what are the skills tested on GMAT.
Skills tested in GMAT Verbal
There are primarily 3 skills tested on GMAT Verbal - Comprehension skills, Analytical Reasoning skills and Ability to Identify the Main Point. These skills are inter-dependent and should be built progressively. For example, unless your Comprehension skills are good, if you try to work on something that requires Analytical Reasoning skills, you will struggle. Why? Simply because if you don't understand the exact meaning you will struggle to focus on the right elements while drawing inferences. Similarly, if you can't read between the lines and draw the right inferences, you will struggle with Identifying the main point.
Which sections test which skills?
- Sentence Correction - Acing SC requires mastering only 1 skill that is Comprehension skill. Your focus is on understanding the meaning of only one sentence and conveying the intended meaning clearly. You might think that isn't SC all about grammar? Not really. Most of the questions in GMAT SC can be easily tackled by focusing on the intended meaning because Modifiers, Parallelism and Comparison are the most commonly tested concepts on GMAT. These grammatical aspects are mostly meaning driven and hence while you learn them you should focus on understanding the logical reason behind the rules.
- Critical Reasoning - Acing CR requires you to master 2 skills – Comprehension and Analytical skills. You not only need to understand the meaning of each sentence well, but also need to understand how multiple sentences are linked and then only you can identify logical gaps. Hence, mastering SC before CR makes your life easy while preparing CR as you only need to develop the Analytical Reasoning skills then.
- Reading Comprehension - Acing RC requires mastering all 3 skills, and hence I strongly recommend doing RC at the end. Obviously for some people (avid readers), RC is much more natural, but I will still recommend keeping it for the end.
So, what is the right sequence for studying Verbal?
If you're a non-native speaker, I would strongly recommend that you follow the sequence SC followed by CR followed by RC. Don't move forward to the next module unless you're at least at 70% accuracy level in the current module. Additionally, when you move to CR, you should dedicate 20% of the time every week to revise SC, so that you stay in touch with SC. Similarly, when you're studying RC you should revise SC and CR.
Added advantage of this Progressive Learning Approach
Another reason why working on 1 module at a time is highly beneficial is that it allows you to put focused effort on one area. This is more important for working professionals as they have hardly any time to study on weekdays. Dividing that small amount of time across multiple modules is not advised. Go in depth on one module and revise other modules as suggested earlier. That’s enough.
What about Fine-tuning Phase?
Now once you have covered all three modules, then you should practice all of them simultaneously. In this scenario, you can probably put aside 50% of your time on identifying and working on your weak areas and devote the rest of the time to practising questions from all 3 modules. To identify your weak areas, you can take up module wise tests and figure out topics in which you're making mistakes consistently. Maintaining an error log will come in handy here.
So, the tip is start with SC, then do CR and finally move to RC.
Regards,
Piyush Beriwala
GMAT Strategy Expert
Helping students plan their studies efficiently from my experience of scoring 740 in first attempt
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Thank you for understanding, and happy exploring!
aaditya005
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Schools: Tepper '23 (WL) Darden '23 (D) Johnson'23 (WL) Foster '23 (D) McDonough'23 (A$) Kenan-Flagler'23 (D) Marshall'23 (D)
GMAT 1: 700 Q49 V35 (Online)
GRE 1: Q169 V159
Posts: 84
10 Oct 2020, 02:15
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This is very helpful GMATWhizTeam
12 Oct 2020, 22:55
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aaditya005
Hey aaditya005,
Really happy that you found it helpful
