Verbal time management

Question

I am unable to manage time in verbal and always leaving more than 10 questions,getting less score. How can I improve in 15 days time.

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CrackverbalGMAT · Answer

Hello Emon,

Although time management always appears like a problem in itself, you have to understand that, deep down it happens because of lack of clarity in concepts. It is also suggestive of the fact that you are probably not using the right strategies to eliminate answer options, which is as important as knowing concepts.

We recommend that you work on strengthening your concepts by solving questions from the OG. After you complete the OG, solve the questions from the Verbal Review book under a timed manner, by selecting any 30 questions (preferably a mix of all sections and all difficulty levels) and solving them in 60 minutes. This will help you in achieving the following:

1) You will be able to test out the concepts that you learned while solving the questions from the OG
2) You will be able to build stamina, which is the ability to maintain your composure and apply concepts when put under a time constraint.
3)You will be able to understand how much time you need to allocate to different types of questions.

Considering this, I feel that you should give yourself a good 1 month from now and not try to push yourself to achieve all these within 15 days, which I feel is not all that realistic.

We hope that this is helpful. In case you have any other queries on this, please feel free to post your queries here on our forum.

Thank you,
Aravind,
CrackVerbal Academics Team

CAMANISHPARMAR · Answer

You need to elaborate on your query. Is it due to concentration lapse? and/or are you facing a problem in a particular subsection, i.e. SC, CR or RC or overall verbal section?

How long have you been preparing and what sources have you prepared from? Depending on your answers to these questions may be experts can help you with some advice.

Also, it is generally difficult to improve your timing in just 2 weeks considerably.

All the best!

emonmisra · Answer

Thanks for the advice. It is not that I did not practice. But it takes time to get there if I want to make more attempt. But I will give a try to practice OG in timed manner.

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emonmisra · Answer

Thanks for the advice. It is not that I did not practice. But it takes time to get there if I want to make more attempts correct. But I will give a try to practice OG in timed manner.

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arun@crackverbal · Answer

Can I give you a few alternative way to look at it?
 
Technique #1:

Let us say that you solve about 9 questions in 15 minutes then in about 60minutes you will solve about 36 questions (on the actual GMAT you have a 5-minute buffer).

So I would start by trying to see how many questions I am able to solve in 15 minutes.

Initially, you might start with just 5 questions but with time you will improve.

Technique #2:

Try to go back and look at the "rogue" questions - these are questions (irrespective of whether you got them right or wrong) sucked up a lot of time.

Think of a dense CR stimulus.

Think of a tough RC inference question.

Think of a completely underlined SC question.

Could you have guessed *some* of them so you could have the time to complete the test?

Technique #3:

Can you start keeping an upper boundary point for questions? Let us say 3 minutes for CR or 2 minutes for SC.

A lot of times I have seen students spending more time just to be 100% sure of the answer. Be 80-90% sure and guess and move on.

Technique #4:

The biggest time sink in most cases in RC. How long do you take to read the passage?

If you are spending 8-10 minutes per RC passage (3-4 minutes to read and 5-6 minutes to answer) then there is no way to manage time on the GMAT.

The CrackVerbal GMAT online course gives us the technique for RC that will reduce your overall time. Please check it out if you have not done so already.

Hope this helps,

iammanas · Answer

I have a similar query. Generally, am left with 6-8 questions in VA when there is a minute left.

I know practicing more will help on the time bit and I will do that but my question is more around - what is the ideal time for an SC question, or a CR question or an RC question (on the test or even when am doing questions at home)?

In quant, Qs:Time is 1:2 and thus, it is easy to figure out if am on the track but in the Verbal section, as question types are different and 36:65 doesn't give a whole number, am unable to know (during the exam) if I have time or not.

iammanas · Answer

arun@crackverbal

arun@crackverbal · Answer

There is a problem with having an "ideal time" for anything. The actual time needed changes based on a lot of factors: 1) Your mental composure: A lot of times when we just come off a tough CR question or RC passage we might need some time to "settle down" before tackling the question. This will eat into your time - though the culprit might be the preceding question. 2) Your comfort with the topic: You may be very comfortable with a topic - say, time, speed, distance - and even a tough question you may be able to attempt with confidence. Such questions may take less time. But a question of an equivalent difficulty in another topic - say, permutation and combination - may take more time because you try to compensate your weakness by spending more time. 3) The difficulty level of the question: Irrespective of your comfort level there are questions that will take more time. For example, let us say you read a fairly dense passage and are now staring at this question on the screen "Which of the following predictive statements would the author most likely agree with EXCEPT:?". Now there is nothing you can do in such questions but to spend time and motor your way through it. 4) The nature of the difficulty: Sometimes the reason you might take more time is because the question has set a trap for you. Actually - that is NOT the problem. In that case, you would just pick the wrong answer and move on. The problem is when you end up discovering that you picked the wrong answer option. The only way to salvage this situation is to backtrack and see where you went wrong. On the other hand, sometimes we are just "stuck" in the last option and spend a lot of time trying to pick the right one. I will be posting a video on the "pacing chart" needed for Verbal. That would give you a sense of how to proceed. Till then please don't pick this "ideal" time strategy

Hope this.helps, Arun

Verbal time management

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