I need help in Critical Reasoning Section

[Abdulla]

Dear Instructors,

Can you provide me please with the best way to attack the Critical reasnoing problems?

Bassically I'm following the MGMAT guide, but still spending alot of time per question and I'm getting them wrong also..

Just to summarize my diffeculties:

1- Misunderstanding some of the passages especially the Sceince topics.
2- Spending more than 3 minutes per question.

I need an assistant please.
FYI.. one month away from the test day.

Thanks in advance

[StaceyKoprince]

We would be happy to help. We need a bit more info, though. Are you struggling with every single type of CR problem? Or with only some of them?

What, specifically is giving you trouble? Are you having trouble: finding the conclusion, understanding the premises, brainstorming the assumptions, interpreting the question, knowing what you're supposed to do based upon the question type, interpreting the answer choices, etc.?

You also mentioned "Misunderstanding some of the passages especially the Sceince topics. " Are you still talking about critical reasoning here, or are you referring to reading comprehension? (Or are you struggling with both?)

The best approach at this point is probably going to be discussing individual problems. Something about the way in which the book is worded right now isn't translating into "this is how I do this problem" for you, so seeing how others work through this problem can help you.

There are two ways to do this: via forum discussions online and via private tutoring. You can browse through the verbal forum folders here (and on other forums) and read discussions about various CR topics. Read how the teachers approach and work through specific problems. Compare that with how you worked through those specific problems. (You can use the search feature to search for problems you're already done and see whether they've been discussed here.) Ask questions - explain exactly what you do understand and indicate what you don't understand and ask how you should go from there - that sort of thing.

[Abdulla]

Thanks Stacey for your response.

Let's narrow it little bit.. I'm going to take the GMAT in Dec 29th, so I need to do my best in order to increase my verbal score.. Here is my problem..

First of all, I already covered the SC part and I guess this will improve my verbal score a bit.
Secondly, I'm putting a lot of effort to improve my CR part, but until now no improvement because of my poor vocab. I knew the strategies and how to identify each question and also how to find the conclusion and the premises, but it's hard for me to find the assumptions, which is defiantly the most important part of the argument.
Finally, the RC part I'm struggling on it because of the same problem.

Here is my approach..
I'm trying to keep practicing the quantitative everyday just to keep my brain working on and regarding the verbal part, I'm thinking to keep my focus only at the most appearing type of questions in the Test, so I can increase the score little bit rather than studying the entire book without maintaining any of them.

Could you please give me some tips?

[StaceyKoprince]

I agree that you should keep doing some quant frequently to keep your skills up, and also that you should focus most on the verbal types that are most likely to appear. It sounds like one main issue with CR and RC is comprehension (due to some vocab issues). Unfortunately, it's tough to improve that a great deal in only a few weeks.

With tougher vocab, you can often figure things out well enough via context - not well enough to, say, tell someone else what the definition of the word is, but well enough to get a general idea. So whenever you see a word you don't know, don't stress too much - just try to understand all of the other words around it and see if you can get the basic idea. If so, in your mind, substitute another word (or a series of words to describe the concept) for that word you don't know.

Have you been studying the logic behind the wrong answers? That is, can you tell me why a tempting wrong answer is tempting, not just why it is wrong? Can you tell me why it would be tempting to cross off the right answer? On any problem, for each of the wrong answers, ask yourself: why would someone pick this? (And, of course, why it is wrong even though it is tempting.)

Also, when reviewing, think all the way through the logic of the right and wrong answers. Here's where the right answer fits into the argument (depending on what it's supposed to do - strengthen, weaken, etc), here's why the right answer does what it's supposed to do, here's why each wrong answer does NOT do what we're supposed to do on this problem, and so on.

I would start looking through the archives of problems discussed in the verbal folders and reading the teachers' explanations, so that you get a better understanding of how to think through a problem. You can also post problems yourself (though FYI - it's taking about a week or so at this point to get a reply, and you'll wait longer for a reply to problems in the General Math and Verbal folders). Also, if you post, make sure you read and follow the rules - if you don't follow the rules, you'll just be told to follow them in order to get your question answered and you'll have to wait even longer.

[Abdulla]

Thanks

[StaceyKoprince]

good luck!