There are plenty of threads that are all about verbal study plans, but I planned to address the “getting plateaued” problem that plenty of students face while prepping to ace the GMAT.

Assumptions

You are continuously achieving a V30 or above and you have almost completed 80% of the verbal syllabus, if you have planned any, that you will cover during the course of your GMAT prep.

Issue:

There could be various reasons why your score stays around V28-V35 range. I will cover a few below, so post if you think of anything else.

1.  You have covered all the verbal books like Powerscore, Kaplan, MGMAT SC/CR/CR, Veritas books and all the question banks, but when doing a practice test you often see a lot of questions, that seem to be testing on something else.

2.  You haven’t really understood some of the concepts that are written in various books. It happens, especially when you are sure you understood a certain concept like pronoun ambiguity, but then it becomes a bit hard to apply it in some questions as the concept is basically an abstract by itself.

3.   You haven’t timed yourself when you practiced on the question banks.

4.    A few of the absolute strategies that were discussed by authors of the books that you are referring to, aren’t working out for you. This tends to be a common factor for reading comprehension.

5.   You seem to be answering the questions right when you are reviewing the CATs, but you are somehow answering wrong when you are taking the test.

Analysis

1. Books are just as good as what you make out of them. I started my verbal prep with MGMAT SC and after I finished it I took the MGMAT CAT. I managed to score a 680 with V34 Q49. I was bummed as people who did awesome stated that their verbal prep stated that MGMAT books are just enough. Believe me they are, but it just so happened that being a non-native, I was out of shape when it came to verbal skills and even though I knew the concepts of grammar for the GMAT, I failed to apply them to my test. i.e. I knew, that in case of a bilateral doubt in a sentence you do not use “if” but “whether”, but I didn’t know whether it was supposed to be “whether or not” or “whether”. See, I also used whether in a sentence.

2. Powerscore CR and MGMAT SC has just about everything there is to sentence correction and critical reasoning. Take for example, participial phrases and “ing” phrases are well explained, but I seemed to fail comprehending what the statement “ing phrases modify the entire preceding clause” actually meant. I seemed to have read the whole book more than once. Although, there are fewer examples on certain concepts, I was not able to master them.

3. Verbal time is vital to manage in order to get a good verbal score. I began by looking at the clock every 5 questions and then I would spend 10-15 seconds on a mental calculation as how many minutes for each question that I had left. This caused a lot of issues. If I’m not doing great, then I would be tense if I was to realize that I have less than the average minutes for each question left. Even if I was doing well with my time management, the useless calculation takes a bit of time to do.

4. When it comes to RC, you skim. Well, if I happen to be skimming and looking back the whole time, wouldn’t I be wasting my time anyways? Also, If I begin to spend a lot of time reading all the details, most which don’t appear in the question set of that particular RC, then wouldn’t I be wasting a lot of time as well? This is basically an inherent question in Reading Comprehension. It would be safe to say that similar confusion appears in the much debated area of the “pre-thinking” concept in critical reasoning.

5. After you write an essay and then try to solve 12 very excruciating “not exactly integrated” reasoning questions, your brain is similar to that of a zombie, no offense to any zombies out there, during the last 10-15 questions in verbal. It doesn’t matter how much Redbull that you drank for the first time during the break, your brain just puts its foot down and refuses to function during the end of the verbal portion.

Approach for every problems

1. Ensure that you purchase and use an extensive official guide in order to supplement your GMAT preparation. Believe me when I say that the official guides are considered to be the most underrated books that are in the GMAT world. Of course, everyone purchases them, but you aren’t able to deny the importance of the official guide that is compared to any other “prep books” is a bit on the low side. The real lie within the GMAT world is the ever popular statement “Official Guide is a question bank”. I cannot stress enough on the importance of the official guide, especially when it comes to verbal prep, for it happens to be the one book that has all the information that you would ever need. You just need to look for them. Don’t just answer the questions on the official guide, review what will be tested on that question. i.e. you happen to be studying modifiers and you try the modifiers questions in the official guide, be sure that you understand what other options may be incorrect. Refer to GMAT club resources on each question and then look at expert discussions and replies. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of work, but this is the biggest step in boosting your verbal score. Take a look at an example from the GMAT Prep 2 to help support my statements.

 

Giacomo Meyerbeer and Joachim Raff are examples of the types of composers that receive popular acclaim while living, often goes into decline after death, and never regains popularity again.

(a) whose reputation declines after death and never regains its status again

(b) then has declined in reputation after death and never regained popularity.

(c) but whose reputation declines after death and never regains its former status.

(d) often goes into decline after death, and never regains popularity again.

(e) who declines in reputation after death and who never regained popularity again.

 

Now, let’s analyze this in detail.

Concept tested: modifiers, redundancy, parallelism, preposition

Difficulty: 700

Illustration: carefully examine the following sentence

My sister, who is a teenager, and whose street play was appreciated by all, won the state talent award today.

This sentence is correct, as “who is a teenager” and “whose street play was appreciated by all” both the subject and modifier is “my sister”.

 

Now, let’s take a look at the options.

A- Is incorrect because it happens to use redundant construction. “regains its status again”.

B and E- Incorrect for the same reason we eliminated A. The composer doesn’t decline after death.

D- Incorrect because the composer doesn’t decline after death, but the reputation does.

C- Correct! (option C breaks the FANBOYS rule, which prep companies praise to eliminate answers. Look below to clarify.)

 

Tip:

Prep companies have adopted the FANBOYS rule, which basically states an independent clause. An independent clause is a run-on sentence.

To make it correct, you use the construction of FANBOYS independent clause, where FANBOYS stands for: For, And, Not, But, Or, Yet, So.

Although, the above is not always true, there are two clauses that can be separated by a comma, and FANBOYS doesn’t mean that they need to be independent clauses.

i.e. My sister loves to drive so fast that her co-passengers often fear making the headlines in the newspaper the next day, and he hates to wear seat belts.

That sentence without punctuation would be complete chaos, as well as the punctuation rules aren’t tested in GMAT. This question tests the clarity/meaning/prepositions. Unless you analyze every single question in this form, you will never get your money’s worth from the official guides.

1. Lets face it the “ing” words are pretty messy. So, are the pronouns in grammar and the paradoxes in critical reasoning. That is why the GMATClub verbal advantage was created.
2. Timing yourself while you attempt the questions is vital in the later part of your preparation. You are always able to use the GMATClub forum timer, whenever you answer questions in the forum. Be sure to use a stopwatch whenever you revisit the official guide or any question bank that you may be working on. The GMAT toolkit does come with a built in OG Tracker with timer for iPhones.
3. Your strategies shouldn’t be set in stone. Find out what works for you. Remember that the main point for those questions will most likely be on your test more than one time and with a 90% chance. Ensure that you have a strategy and concept.
4. Ensure that you take breaks in the practice tests after the quant part. Remember, sentence correction is your main weapon when your brain begins to give up. Sentence correction doesn’t need a lot of focus and will often be a refresher after heavy reading comprehension. Work hard on sentence correction strategies and then practice, including getting a 90% or above in the official questions, so that you are able to take less time in solving sentence corrections and you can focus on the offset for the zombie brain.

Lastly,

1. Sentence correction is a big improvement in a short amount of time, you just have to review the official questions in a lot of detail.

2. Critical reasons are a bit harder to improve, but there are certain strategies that can come in handy. I personally, have my own views on pre-thinking. When it comes to weaknesses and strength, pre-thinking can be a good idea as the strength/weakness questions test logic that is already hardwired in your brain. i.e. when your mom used to say “you must have been the one who broke the vase in the hall while playing kickball in the house”, you would automatically reply “It wasn’t me, but my little brother.” You were weakening your mom’s conclusion, but trying to find out assumptions in a convoluted argument can be quite hard and you should carefully ensure that you don’t waste time. For those bold faced/inference questions, just let your common sense relax and rely on facts and premises in the argument.

3. You can always review official Critical Reasoning questions in the same way that you did for sentence correction questions. For each Strengthen/Weaken question, try to find an alternate answer that would be just as good. This may not be possible for every question, but it will put you on the right path for those certain questions.

4. Reading Comprehension is the key when it comes to improving. If you can’t understand the passage well, you are going to end up making mistakes repeatedly, which can be a big kick in the pants to your verbal score. Ensure that you follow a strategy that works for you, and then begin your mission to solve official questions. Simplify the question set into smaller sets like inference/main point/detail and then work on them. It is completely up to you on whether you want to take notes, but ensure they are brief. Primary purpose/Main Point questions are vital in reading comprehension, so ensure that you get them internalized.