Need guidance!

Question

Hi,

after two months of prep i gave gmat official prep and scored 460, (Q40,V17)
My verbal is screwing really bad especially RC and CR.
Please guide me good material to practice verbal.
Currently i am doing :the official GMAT guide.
and jamboree blue book for practice.

manu11 · Answer

https://gmatclub.com/forum/gmat-study-p ... l#p1680625

Refer the above thread. It covers the major resources for Quant & Verbal, Study plans to use, what to do on test day and multiple other things.

First thing for you to do is probably evaluate your weak areas, understand sterngth of your fundamental concepts and then evaluate which materials to pursue.
All the best!

rohan2345 · Answer

Hi sonambhyan22, To improve your scores in verbal, you can consider e-gmat verbal online or the e-gmat verbal live course. They are both amazing courses especially designed for non-natives. They offer almost 25% of their courses for free so you can try out their free trial to decide which one you want to go for. Plus the e-gmat Scholaranium which is included in both the courses is one of the best verbal practice tools in the market. You can easily track your progress in that you can identify your strengths and analyze and improve on your weak areas. Further taking multiple mocks might help. Apart from the GMATPREP, Manhattan GMAT tests and Veritas Prep Tests in my experience have good verbal and Quant section and will certainly help you point out and improve your weak areas. Further another advantage of taking many mocks is to build up your stamina. Apart from the GMATPREP tests, taking practice tests of any major GMATPREP company ought to do that. I would also encourage you to purchase the GMATPREP QP 1 for some great additional practice. Here is a link that will help you with your decision. https://gmatclub.com/forum/best-gmat-ve ... ml?fl=menu Lastly, you can check out a very interesting article by Mike McGarry from Magoosh detailing a 3 month study plan https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/3-month-g ... l-focused/. You will find it very helpful as it gives out a study plan as per your needs. Hope this helps. All the best.

EMPOWERgmatRichC · Answer

Hi sonambhyan22,

Before I can offer you the specific advice that you’re looking for, it would help if you could provide a bit more information on how you've been studying and your goals:

Studies:
1) How long have you studied?
2) Have you used any other study materials besides the books that you mentioned?
3) How have you scored on EACH of your CATs/mocks (including the Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores for EACH)?

Goals:
4) What is your goal score?
5) When are you planning to take the GMAT?
6) When are you planning to apply to Business School?
7) What Schools are you planning to apply to?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

HI sonambhyan22,

I’m glad you reached out, and I’m happy to help. Since your verbal score is currently at a 17, you clearly lack the GMAT verbal fundamentals you need for a high score, right? Thus, moving forward, make sure you are using prep materials that allow you to follow a linear and structured study plan, so you can individually learn each topic, starting with the foundations before moving to more advanced concepts. That said, here is some additional advice you can follow to improve both your CR and RC skills.

To improve in Critical Reasoning, you first need to master the individual Critical Reasoning topics: Strengthen the Argument, Weaken the Argument, Resolve the Paradox, etc. As you learn about each question type, do focused practice so you can track your skill in answering each type. If, for example, you get a weakening question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not recognize the specific question type? Were you doing too much analysis in your head? Did you skip over a keyword in an answer choice? You must thoroughly analyze your mistakes and seek to turn weaknesses into strengths by focusing on the question types you dread seeing and the questions you take a long time to answer correctly.

A major mistake that people make when training for CR, and for GMAT verbal in general, is that they do practice questions too fast. To get Critical Reasoning questions correct, you have to see exactly what is going on in the passages and answer choices, and you likely won't learn to do so by spending a few minutes on each question. At this stage of your training, you may need to spend up to fifteen minutes on each question, learning to see what there is to see. Here is a way to look at this process: If you get a new job in a field in which you are not experienced, you may not be as fast as the other people working with you, but you know you have a job to do and you make sure you learn all the angles, so that you do the job well, if not as quickly as those around you. Rushing through the job and doing it incorrectly would not make sense. Then, as you gain more experience, you learn to do the same job more quickly. Think of Critical Reasoning questions similarly. Your job is to do what? To get through questions quickly? Not really. Your job is to get correct answers.

So, first you have to learn to get correct answers, generally at least 10 to 15 in a row consistently, and more in a row would be better. That is your job, and if it takes you 15 minutes per question to get correct answers consistently, then so be it. Only after you have learned to get correct answers consistently can you work on speeding up. Working quickly but not doing your job is useless. Better to work slowly and learn to do your job well. You can be sure that with experience, you will learn to speed up, and then you still will be doing your job well, i.e., getting correct answers consistently.

Finally, a key aspect of getting correct answers to Critical Reasoning questions is noticing the key differences between trap choices and correct answers. Trap choices can sound temptingly correct but don't get the job done. The logic of what a trap choice says simply doesn't fit what the question is asking you to find. So, to get better at your job, learn to see the key differences between trap choices and correct answers.

To improve in Reading Comprehension, you need to focus on understanding what you are reading. When you incorrectly answer Reading Comprehension questions, it’s partly because you didn’t truly understand what you read, right? Thus, you likely have to slow down in order to (eventually) speed up. At this point, your best bet is to focus on getting the correct answers to questions, taking as much time as you need to see key details and understand the logic of what you are reading. You have to learn to comprehend what you read, keep it all straight, and use what you are reading to arrive at correct answers. If you don't understand something, go back and read it one sentence at a time, even one word at a time, not moving on until you understand what you have just read. There is no way around this work. Your goal should be to take all the time you need to understand exactly what is being said and arrive at the correct answer. If you can learn to get answers taking your time, you can learn to speed up. Answering questions is like any task: The more times you do it carefully and successfully, the faster you become at doing it carefully and successfully.

Another component of understanding what you are reading is being “present” when reading. Don’t worry about how things are going at work, or what you will eat for dinner, or even how long you are taking to read through the passage. Just focus on what is in front of you, word by word, line by line. Furthermore, try to make reading fun. For example, even if you are reading about a topic that bores you, pretend that you are the person making the argument. By doing so, you will make the passage more relatable to YOU, and ultimately you should be able to read with greater focus.

One final component of Reading Comprehension that may be tripping you up is that RC questions contain one or more trap answers that seem to answer the question but don't really. So, a key part of training to correctly answer RC questions is learning to notice the differences between trap answers and correct answers. You have to learn to see how trap answers seem to follow from what the passages say, but don't really, while correct answers fit what the passages say exactly.

Lastly, you may find it helpful to read this article about  how to score a 700+ on the GMAT .

If you have any further questions, feel free to reach out. Good luck!

sonambhyan22 · Answer

ScottTargetTestPrep  thank you so much for detailed explanation . It sounds really good and effective method to improve the accuracy. I will work on the same technique.
Do you think to condition myself in this scenario 3 weeks would be sufficient.
I can study 3-4 hrs RC and 3-4 hrs CR everyday.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi sonambhyan22,

You’ll likely need more than 3 weeks; however, work hard for the next 3 weeks and see how your progress looks. Feel free to keep me updated.

Good luck!

CrackVerbal · Answer

Hi sonambhyan22

You could start working on your basic concepts and then gradually progress to the advanced level questions.

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