Hi,
I have been timing SC at 1.20 for a right SC and 1.30 for a wrong SC. However, of late in MCAT 4 and 5 I have seen many lengthy Sentences (of 700-800 difficulty level). It takes me about ~2 mins. to finish these and sometimes even 2.2 mins.
What's the strategy (technique) you recommend for lengthy SCs? Currently, I go over the Problem then choices B, C, D and E one by one. Unfortunately, many times the choice is A and I keep looking for something wrong in A and something right in B/C/D/E.
thanks,
A
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- abhinav.chaturvedi+gmat
- Students
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- RonPurewal
- Students
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- Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2007 8:23 am
Re: Lengthy Sentences
hi -
this is completely the wrong strategy to take to sentence correction. you should NEVER read through the problem, and then the answer choices, from left to right.
if you do this, not only are you unlikely to retain what's important for SC problems (i.e., subtleties of grammar and usage), but you're also going to waste a lot of time focusing on the wrong things. (i.e., even if something takes the same form in all 5 of the choices, you'll still focus on it anyway - since there's no way to know, reading left to right, if something is written the same way in all the choices).
here's what you should do:
the basic approach
step 1: READ the sentence, and
- look for the general meaning of the sentence
step 2: look for SPLITS among the answer choices
- make sure that you don't mistake "fake splits" (i.e., word rearrangements that aren't substitutes for each other) for real splits.
step 3: criticize things that are wrong with individual answer choices (even if they are not part of splits)
--
"SPLITS" are points of divergence among the answer choices.
these are where you should focus most of your energy, since they are the best place at which to begin eliminating answer choices.
remember, all it takes to eliminate an answer choice is ONE thing wrong. therefore, it's pointless to read entire answer choices from left to right at the beginning - just go one split at a time.
if you run out of splits, THEN, and only then, you should start criticizing the individual answer choices.
good luck!
this is completely the wrong strategy to take to sentence correction. you should NEVER read through the problem, and then the answer choices, from left to right.
if you do this, not only are you unlikely to retain what's important for SC problems (i.e., subtleties of grammar and usage), but you're also going to waste a lot of time focusing on the wrong things. (i.e., even if something takes the same form in all 5 of the choices, you'll still focus on it anyway - since there's no way to know, reading left to right, if something is written the same way in all the choices).
here's what you should do:
the basic approach
step 1: READ the sentence, and
- look for the general meaning of the sentence
step 2: look for SPLITS among the answer choices
- make sure that you don't mistake "fake splits" (i.e., word rearrangements that aren't substitutes for each other) for real splits.
step 3: criticize things that are wrong with individual answer choices (even if they are not part of splits)
--
"SPLITS" are points of divergence among the answer choices.
these are where you should focus most of your energy, since they are the best place at which to begin eliminating answer choices.
remember, all it takes to eliminate an answer choice is ONE thing wrong. therefore, it's pointless to read entire answer choices from left to right at the beginning - just go one split at a time.
if you run out of splits, THEN, and only then, you should start criticizing the individual answer choices.
good luck!
2 posts Page 1 of 1