Urgent: Assess my startegy and Sentence Correction approach

[dinesh19aug]

Hi Stacey/Staff,
I want an opinion on the following:

1. Sentence correction - I am not sure how to tackle SC questions. I read the chapter and solve the specific problem. Ex I read Subject and Verb agreement Ch -3 and was able to solve the most of the questions in OG -12. Ch -4 parallelism was a disaster as most of the OG-12 practice uqestions, I cannot find any lists in most of them, am I missing something?? Is it that most of the OG-12 parctice questiion numbre from SC guide is testing idioms?? Please help me with a better approach on parralelism and on general SC approach.

2. I have scheduled my GMAT (Aug 26,2010) - I have been preparing for last 1 and half month and have finished all Mgmat guides except SC (ongoing).
--- I have not taken any tests yet, I plan to finish SC guide by 13th July and then plan to take test every week.

--- I practise 25 quant and 25 DS in 40 minutes alternate days and my accuracy is around 87-90% in both sections (I have finsihed DS from OG12 and finished 145 Qn in quant).

-- I practise 20 qn in CR in 30 minutes and RC 15 qn in 30 minutes every alternate day(CR + RC) and my accuracy is around 85 %.

-- I plan to start writing full length tests starting 15th of july - 23 August.

Is my plan good so far?? Should I give a test immediately now before I get a good grasp on SC(my weakest point). I am scared that if give a test and my score is too low because of SC, it will demoralize. However I am having hard time in SC and not sure what to do??


Please help!!!!


Thanks,
Dinesh

[tim]

Okay, first it sounds like you have a good plan. You definitely want to push off your practice tests until you have a good handle on the material, and spacing them out to once a week or once every week and a half is a good idea..

As for SC, be VERY careful not to fall into the trap of thinking that every question is an idiom. That is an approach that will lead you to ignore the real issues in the problems and cause you to rely too much on your ear. 90% of the time when my students tell me something is an idiom it is actually a clear grammar issue that they were just too lazy to identify. So here's what you need to do: make sure you are good at spotting and identifying grammar issues when they arise on the test. Make a list of each SC topic and then write down how you will recognize that topic. Then practice on OG problems you've already completed - just go through and try to spot issues as quickly as possible..

i'll use parallelism as an example since you brought it up. You recognize parallelism by parallel markers, which are mostly conjunctions or comparison words. Once you know you are dealing with parallelism, figure out what things are parallel; you can do this by looking to the left and right of the parallel marker to see what the marker is trying to match up (be careful because sometimes you have a list of three or more things). Then just see whether the answer choice matches correctly the things that are supposed to be parallel..

[dinesh19aug]

Thanks Tim. I will keep that in mind. I revisited Ch-4 from SC guide and was able to solve almost all the questions in Gmat verbal guide. I noticed that in verbal guide the questions on parallelism were pretty clear when compared to Og 12.

Og 12 questions had more than one error. While I was looking hard for parallel structure and missing out other error pointers.

[StaceyKoprince]

I'll add to what Tim said.

Lists are only one way to use parallelism; there are lots of other ways discussed in the chapter. You may not have found a list because that may not have been the type of parallelism being tested on that particular problem.

I have not taken any tests yet, I plan to finish SC guide by 13th July and then plan to take test every week.

I disagree with Tim on this one. This is not a good plan. CAT exams are really good for (a) figuring out where you're scoring right now, (b) practicing stamina, and (c) analyzing your strengths and weaknesses. The actual act of just taking the exam is NOT so useful for improving. It's what you do with the test results / between tests that helps you to improve.

What you want to do, instead, is take tests periodically - every 2 to 4 weeks, depending upon your study schedule - and use those results to devise a study plan until your next practice test. (FYI: it's also very important to take tests under full official conditions, including the essays.)

So, yes, take a test now. DO NOT WORRY / CARE about your score! You don't care what the score is (you're going to get better before you take the real thing!). You care what the test allows you to diagnose about your strengths and weaknesses so that you know what to do for the next couple of weeks before you take another test! Otherwise, you're spending your time very inefficiently and you won't improve as much as you could.

It typically takes at least 2 weeks to make progress in all of the areas of weakness that you identify from a single practice test. Use the tests actively - analyze them afterwards to know what you need to improve. This article can help:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/09/23 ... tice-tests

--- I practise 25 quant and 25 DS in 40 minutes alternate days and my accuracy is around 87-90% in both sections (I have finsihed DS from OG12 and finished 145 Qn in quant).

-- I practise 20 qn in CR in 30 minutes and RC 15 qn in 30 minutes every alternate day(CR + RC) and my accuracy is around 85 %.

What you describe above is "doing" problems. There are two steps to studying: "doing" and "analyzing." Most of your learning comes from analyzing, not doing. (Analyzing is everything you review on a problem after you have finished doing the problem for the first time.)

You don't mention what you are doing to analyze your problems, or even how much time you spend analyzing your problems, so I'm guessing that you are not doing much analysis. If that is the case, then you are not learning anywhere near as much as you could learn. This article describes how to analyze practice problems:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/a/2009/10/09 ... ce-problem

And this one describes how to learn from your errors:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/04/ ... our-errors

Some other ideas:

(1) This is the general process for SC:
Read the original sentence all the way through.
If you happen to spot anything problematic, examine. If it's an error, cross off A. Then scan the other choices vertically, at the same point as that error you found (do NOT read the whole answer choice), and cross off any others that repeat the same error.
Repeat the above until you've dealt with everything you happened to see on your first read-through of the original sentence (note: sometimes you won't see anything on the first read-through!).
Then, do a vertical scan of the first word of each choice. If you can identify the potential error based on the differences you see, deal with it. If not, do a vertical scan of the last word of each choice - same thing. After that, do a vertical scan starting at the beginning of each choice.
If you notice a difference when scanning but you don't know what error that difference might signify, keep going - look for a different split.
If you've dealt with everything you know how to deal with and you still have more than one choice left, pick something and move on. Don't agonize over it - just pick and go.

(2) To recognize grammar rules / errors more accurately and quickly, a useful study exercise is to take a file or notebook and make two columns. On the left-hand side, write down the name of a particular grammar error (eg, subj-verb agreement). On the right-hand side, write down what the splits tend to look like for that type of error (eg, nouns that sometimes include "s" and sometimes don't; verbs that sometimes include "s" and sometimes don't).

You can test yourself (and add to your list, above) by going back to old SC problems you've already done. Don't read the original sentence (cover it up!); look only at the answers. Compare the answers to find differences and ask yourself what kind of error MIGHT be signaled by such differences. (Note: a difference does not always mean there is an error; sometimes, a difference is what we call a "red herring." That is, they're trying to distract us with a difference to make us think there's an error when both ways are correct!)

[tim]

Thanks Stacey for catching my error. Dinesh, i did not notice that you hadn't taken ANY practice tests yet, and Stacey is right that you should go ahead and take your first one right away. Beyond that, i think Stacey and i agree that starting in mid-July you should take tests at regular intervals but space them out far enough that you won't use them up too soon (that's why i gave an absolute floor, but if you can space them out even further as Stacey suggests that's great). You also want to be able to use the tests for effective analysis of where you should be focusing your additional efforts, and taking them too close together will detract from the usefulness of this approach..

[dinesh19aug]

Thanks. I will start appearing for test,starting this weekend.

[dinesh19aug]

Stacey/Tim,
I gave a my first test and scored a measly 600. The scores are as follows:

V - 27
Quant - 46

Stacey - I went through your article about evaluating the test. However I am still unsure what to make out of my assessment. I went through all the questions (right + wrong) and went through the explanations. I noticed that most of the questions that i got wrong in Quant were because of the following:

1. Did not read the questions properly.
2. Misunderstood what the question was asking.

Verbal:
1. Timing issue.
2. After about half the test, I was tired and could not think. Even on one line sentence correction I was not able to focus.
3. On critical reasoning and RC, I am following diagramming as mentioned in the guides, but I am loosing too much time. I read a couple of line and make notes and continue. Same for RC
4. I am not afraid of SC anymore, however I still facing trouble in SC to quickly recognize what is wrong with the question.

I gather from the assessment reports, that I should go back and review the topics went wrong.

However I am not still not convinced that I am reviewing it correctly. Any suggestions would be very helpful?

Thanks,
Dinesh

[StaceyKoprince]

1. Did not read the questions properly.
2. Misunderstood what the question was asking.

Does that mean that, once you did read the question properly and understand in properly, you didn't have problems solving it - in terms of process, accuracy, timing, everything?

WHY did you not read the question properly? WHY did you misunderstand what it was asking? If you know why, then we can figure out what to do about it. Were you reading too quickly and skipped over some important words? Did you not take thorough notes on your scrap paper? Did you have trouble transferring info from the screen to the scrap paper (eg, transferred incorrectly)? Other things?

Is this happening in certain kinds of topic areas over and over? Or does it seem to be random? If there's a pattern, what's the pattern? Does this tend to happen on questions where you spent less time? (Maybe it happens when you're rushing?)

After about half the test, I was tired and could not think.

So you need to work on stamina. From now on, when you sit down for a study session, work for 2 hours straight with ONE 10-minute break in the middle. Before you begin, set up exactly what you're going to do during the entire study session so that you never have to stop and figure out, "Hmm, what should I do next?" Don't answer your phone. Don't eat or drink or get up to go to the bathroom (except during the break). Make yourself concentrate as hard as you can for the entire time (except during the break!).

On critical reasoning and RC, I am following diagramming as mentioned in the guides, but I am loosing too much time.

The last post I just answered asked about this same thing. Take a look here:
diagramming-and-note-taking-on-the-verbal-section-t10491.html

I still facing trouble in SC to quickly recognize what is wrong with the question.

This article about the general process of working through an SC Q may help:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/06/ ... on-problem

Also, if I were to show you a particular difference in answer choices but NOT show you the full problem (or even the full answer choices), would you be able to tell me which rule is probably being tested? You can probably do this for some things right now (eg, "has" and "have" would be a pretty straightforward split), but you can also probably get better at this. The splits, or differences in the choices, are the major clues that (should immediately) tell us what rules we need to think about / apply for that choice. That will help with both your speed and your accuracy.

A useful study exercise is to take a file or notebook and make two columns. On the left-hand side, write down the name of a particular grammar error (eg, subj-verb agreement). On the right-hand side, write down what the splits tend to look like for that type of error (eg, nouns that sometimes include "s" and sometimes don't; verbs that sometimes include "s" and sometimes don't). You can also have more complex clues, such as a whole group of words that's moving around in a sentence (that's often modifiers or possibly parallelism).

[dinesh19aug]

1. Did not read the questions properly.
2. Misunderstood what the question was asking.

Does that mean that, once you did read the question properly and understand in properly, you didn't have problems solving it - in terms of process, accuracy, timing, everything?

WHY did you not read the question properly? WHY did you misunderstand what it was asking? If you know why, then we can figure out what to do about it. Were you reading too quickly and skipped over some important words? Did you not take thorough notes on your scrap paper? Did you have trouble transferring info from the screen to the scrap paper (eg, transferred incorrectly)? Other things?

Is this happening in certain kinds of topic areas over and over? Or does it seem to be random? If there's a pattern, what's the pattern? Does this tend to happen on questions where you spent less time? (Maybe it happens when you're rushing?)

After about half the test, I was tired and could not think.

So you need to work on stamina. From now on, when you sit down for a study session, work for 2 hours straight with ONE 10-minute break in the middle. Before you begin, set up exactly what you're going to do during the entire study session so that you never have to stop and figure out, "Hmm, what should I do next?" Don't answer your phone. Don't eat or drink or get up to go to the bathroom (except during the break). Make yourself concentrate as hard as you can for the entire time (except during the break!).

On critical reasoning and RC, I am following diagramming as mentioned in the guides, but I am loosing too much time.

The last post I just answered asked about this same thing. Take a look here:
diagramming-and-note-taking-on-the-verbal-section-t10491.html

I still facing trouble in SC to quickly recognize what is wrong with the question.

This article about the general process of working through an SC Q may help:
http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/06/ ... on-problem

Also, if I were to show you a particular difference in answer choices but NOT show you the full problem (or even the full answer choices), would you be able to tell me which rule is probably being tested? You can probably do this for some things right now (eg, "has" and "have" would be a pretty straightforward split), but you can also probably get better at this. The splits, or differences in the choices, are the major clues that (should immediately) tell us what rules we need to think about / apply for that choice. That will help with both your speed and your accuracy.

A useful study exercise is to take a file or notebook and make two columns. On the left-hand side, write down the name of a particular grammar error (eg, subj-verb agreement). On the right-hand side, write down what the splits tend to look like for that type of error (eg, nouns that sometimes include "s" and sometimes don't; verbs that sometimes include "s" and sometimes don't). You can also have more complex clues, such as a whole group of words that's moving around in a sentence (that's often modifiers or possibly parallelism).

Thanks Stacey,
Maths - Yes I was able to solve the questions correctly, when I read them again. There is no pattern it is random and I missed them because I read too quickly. I noticed that I was comfortable on timing in math, but still rushed through some questions.

Venn diagram(700-800) and probability were the ones which I faced difficulty and have reviewed them again and practiced some more problems.

Verbal SC - Would you suggest that while practicing problem
on SC, I should concentrate on timing as well or should I first focus on perfecting my SC.
As to your question,after I hide all the options I am able to find out what is wrong or seem out place but DO NOT(50% of the time) what should I replace to make it correct unless I see the option.

[StaceyKoprince]

I missed them because I read too quickly.

How do you transfer information from the screen to paper? Do you have consistent symbols for EVERYthing you need to transfer? And do you transfer EVERYthing they tell you?

For example, if the problem says "positive integer X blah blah blah," do you note that X is a positive integer on your scrap paper?

If not, you need to start doing this. EVERY piece of info given on a math problem is relevant to the problem somehow, so everything needs to go on your scrap paper. Go back to some recent problems you've already done and practice this: how are you going to get all of this info down on your scrap paper in an efficient and effective way?

Would you suggest that while practicing problem
on SC, I should concentrate on timing as well or should I first focus on perfecting my SC.

While doing a practice problem, you should time yourself always. Make yourself pick something in the timeframe expected on the test.

While studying a practice problem (or a particular content area, or whatever), you can take all the time you need.

Doing and studying are two different actions. You are not studying while you are doing; you are merely doing. "Doing" is how you practice putting together your knowledge and technique in a specific timeframe, so you do have to time yourself then because timing is part of what you are learning to do.

after I hide all the options I am able to find out what is wrong or seem out place but DO NOT(50% of the time) what should I replace to make it correct unless I see the option.

I don't understand what you wrote here. What options are you hiding? If you are talking about SC, I suggested that you hide the original sentence, not the 5 answer choices. Also, what do you "DO NOT" do "50% of the time?"

For this exercise that I described, you should not necessarily be able to pick the one correct answer or figure out how to fix the problem completely, because you are missing valuable information in the original sentence. This exercise is simply for you to be able to identify WHAT is being tested - this problem is testing modifiers and subject-verb agreement. I have no idea what the right verb is because the subject is in the non-underlined part of the sentence, which I haven't read. But I do know that I need to go find the subject in order to know which verb is right - that's the first step.

[Mymisc]

Stacey,

Your explanation on SC ("the general process for SC) is really helpful. While I have been practicing that way, I have two questions and hope you can further help to shore up my skills.

Very often, the differences I identified are the vague areas of "grammar" or sth I couldn't be sure whether can be used for POE. So the repeating process to find additional diff took me a lot of time. This means that given enough time (2-4mins) to thoroughly compare the ACs, I can get SC right in 95% or even higher. In short, I now feel my problem is I saw too many diff and it took time to deal with all of them.

So my first question is: what is the core I went wrong? While I know there is more room to improve my grasp on grammar knowledge, I am thinking maybe some other major things blocked me cause I can reach 95% with enough time. Then I guess maybe I am not that familiar with the rules or not good at applying those on real problems. Another possibility might be I didn't catch the major issue of the sentence and was distracted/occupied by all kinds of difference to evaluate and POE (this might be the 'red herring' you mentioned). Do you think there might be other causes? And how to most efficiently practice on the exact targeted issue to improve?

Additionally, while I say I can reach 95% with enough time, a) I only did a very tiny portion of SC without time limit, b) I got that idea from my reviewing the wrong problems w/o checking the correct AC. I wonder should I go back to the stage of no timing? And how long or how many questions I should practice in that stage?

Second, since I have to maintain in my mind the whole set of differences identified, is there any suggestion on how to organize a mental map when sorting those info in my mind?

Thanks!
+++++++++++++ you wrote:
(1) This is the general process for SC:
Read the original sentence all the way through.
If you happen to spot anything problematic, examine. If it's an error, cross off A. Then scan the other choices vertically, at the same point as that error you found (do NOT read the whole answer choice), and cross off any others that repeat the same error.
Repeat the above until you've dealt with everything you happened to see on your first read-through of the original sentence

[StaceyKoprince]

While I know there is more room to improve my grasp on grammar knowledge, I am thinking maybe some other major things blocked me cause I can reach 95% with enough time.

Yes, there is a major thing causing problems... though maybe something that will surprise you.

Your goal is NOT to get 95% right (unless you're going for a 99% percentile score on the verbal). Your goal is to get 60 to 70% right in the expected timeframe.

The two halves go together - your score is NOT just about what percentage you get right. If you spend double time to get the first 10 questions right at a 95% right, and then get 10 more questions wrong simply because you already used your time, your overall percentage correct is now at or slightly below 50%, and your score is not where you want it to be.

If, on the other hand, you LET GO when you can't get something in the expected timeframe, then you will have time to attempt every question, and you will be more likely to be able to reach your 60 to 70% goal.

You are no longer taking a test - not the way you normally think of taking a test. You are now playing tennis. You do not expect to win every single point in a tennis match. You know you're opponent's going to win some points - and that doesn't bother you. You just want to win more of the points so that you can win the match.

You can also think of it this way: as a good businessperson, my task is to figure out what I can get done today and what I can't get done. Some stuff will have to wait until tomorrow and some stuff is so low priority that I'll never do it, right? Well, some questions (the hardest ones) are so low priority that I don't want to waste extra time on them. I'm probably going to get them wrong anyway, and any extra time takes time away from ones I could get right.

You need to have this mindset! Also, no, do not go back to "no timing" mode - the timing is just as important as the accuracy and content!

Try and pay attention, too, to where you're spending that 2 or 3 or 4 minutes. How quickly do you get rid of your first answer choice? At what point are you usually down to 2 answers? How much time do you spend deciding between the last 2? (Once I get down to 2, I look at each one only once more. Then I pick - even if I'm not sure - and move on.)

Second, since I have to maintain in my mind the whole set of differences identified, is there any suggestion on how to organize a mental map when sorting those info in my mind?

Too complicated. You see a difference. Ask yourself: "Do I know how to deal with this difference?" If so, deal with it. If not, ignore it. It doesn't exist. If you feel only halfway confident, deal with whatever you do know. Maybe there are three different variations of something and you know one's wrong but you're not sure about the other two. Eliminate the one you know is wrong and then forget about that issue. Go find a different split and ask yourself again "Do I know how to deal with this?"

If you get to the end of your splits but you still have more than one answer, pick anyway and move on. (Okay, you can have ONE more look at the remaining answers. Then pick!)

Afterwards, when you're reviewing, sure - try to learn whatever you need to learn so that you do know how to deal with that issue in future. But in the moment, no. You either know how to deal with it or you don't, and if you don't, then you ignore it.

[Mymisc]

Thank you very much Stacey! You really helped me click on several aspects. I am digesting your input and going to focus on those areas in my study.

Thank you again!

[StaceyKoprince]

you're welcome - good luck!