GMAT - Verbal
GMAT Tip: The Top 5 Strategies for GMAT Sentence Correction
Today’s GMAT tip comes from Professor Joern Meissner, PhD, founder and chairman of Manhattan Review GMAT Prep. In this article, he provides Manhattan Review’s five best strategies for GMAT Sentence Correction questions. Read on to see what he has to say!
Here are Manhattan Review’s five top strategies for attacking Sentence Correction questions:
- Don’t expect the right answer to read like a sentence crafted by Henry James or Gustave Flaubert. The best sentence is often the best of a bad bunch—it’s the one with the least number of egregious errors. Therefore, don’t be put off if the sentence you choose sounds awkward. If the worst thing about it is that it sounds like something your boss might dash off in an office memo, don’t worry.
- More than half of the Sentence Correction exercises will involve at least one Subject-Verb agreement issue. Therefore, always make sure you’ve got all of your ducks in a row and that all of the subjects are properly aligned with their verbs. Remember, a subject has to agree with a verb, as a matter of number and as a matter of logic.
- Make sure your pronouns are lined up properly with their antecedents. If the antecedent is plural, the pronoun replacing it must be plural. This is a particularly important issue in long, convoluted sentences in which it is easy to forget a pronoun’s antecedent.
- Get your comparatives sorted out. “As” goes with “as”; “more,” “less” and “fewer” go with “than.” Never combine the two. Sentences such as “The girls fared as well or better than the boys.” It has to be one or the other: “The girls fared as well as the boys.” Or “The girls fared better than the boys.”
- Make life easy for yourself and narrow your choices down as quickly as possible. Spot the critical issue and eliminate the answer choices that obviously come down on the wrong side of it.
Take a look at the following sentence from Manhattan Review’s course material as an example: Continue reading…
Exclusive GMAT Insights and Advice for MBA Hopefuls From Top GMAT Community Leaders
Each year thousands of individuals begin journeys that they hope will ultimately lead to an acceptance offer from top-tier business schools around the world, and for the majority of these applicants one of the first steps on the b-school path is studying for and taking the GMAT exam. With the 2012-2013 application season wrapping up, a whole new cohort of aspiring MBA students are beginning to get serious about their own school choices and application materials. Most schools won’t be releasing their updated application requirements until later in the summer, so one concrete element of their application that they can start working on now is properly preparing themselves for taking the exam. We sat down with the founders of the major online GMAT communities (Beat The GMAT and GMAT Club) as well as the Director of Academic Programs at leading GMAT test prep firm, Veritas Prep. These individuals have a combined wealth of experience to draw upon when providing helpful tips and insights to share with anyone contemplating an application to business school in 2013-14. In the article that follows, readers will have the opportunity to learn about common misconceptions many test takers have about the exam, successful approaches to creating a study schedule, specific tips that can help those who struggle with either the verbal or the quant sections, and valuable insights on how to approach retaking the test. We additionally have checked in with the official information provided by GMAC, the organization that creates and administers the GMAT exam.
GMAT Tips: Fundamentals of GMAT Sentence Correction
Today’s GMAT Tip comes to us from Kaplan. In this article, Kaplan GMAT instructor Bret Ruber explains how to approach sentence correction questions on the GMAT:
Because the GMAT is a standardized test, understanding the structure of certain questions types can give you an advantage on test day. Specifically, by understanding how the test maker is setting up a type of problem, you can move through the problem more quickly, giving yourself time for more advanced problems.
On GMAT sentence correction questions, you will be given a sentence, part of which is underlined. In order to answer correctly, you must choose the answer that makes the underlined portion grammatically correct.
The first pattern to keep in mind in these questions involves answer choice (A). The first answer in sentence correction problems will always be the same as the original sentence. Thus, the first way test takers can save time is by not reading this answer choice, as it mirrors the underlined portion in the problem. Continue reading…
GMAT Tips: The Reasoning is in the Details
Today’s GMAT tip comes from test prep firm ManhattanGMAT. In this article, they provide helpful tips for approaching Reading Comprehension questions on the GMAT. Read on to see what they have to say!
Which type of RC passage is your favorite – social science, business, hard science? Just kidding! I know that most people don’t have a favorite type (though most of us have a least favorite type).
Let’s try one out. Because of space constraints, I’m not going to give you the full passage, but I promise I’ll give you everything you need to know in order to answer the question. This problem is from the free set of questions that comes with GMATPrep. Give yourself up to 1.5 minutes to read the passage excerpt and approximately another 1.5 minutes to answer the question.
* ” The modern multinational corporation is described as having originated when the owner-managers of nineteenth-century British firms carrying on international trade were replaced by teams of salaried managers organized into hierarchies. Increases in the volume of transactions in such firms are commonly believed to have necessitated this structural change. Nineteenth-century inventions like the steamship and the telegraph, by facilitating coordination of managerial activities, are described as key factors. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century chartered trading companies, despite the international scope of their activities, are usually considered irrelevant to this discussion: the volume of their transactions is assumed to have been too low and the communications and transport of their day too primitive to make comparisons with modern multinationals interesting. Continue reading…
GMAT Tips – GMAT Sentence Correction Question Type: Modifiers
Today’s GMAT Tip comes to us from Kaplan. In this article, Kaplan GMAT instructor Bret Ruber provides helpful advice on answering Sentence Correction questions with modification errors:
Of all of the common errors that appear in the sentence correction portion of the GMAT, modifiers are usually the last type for which test-takers look. However, modification errors are among the most common types of errors on the GMAT and finding these errors right away can often lead you directly to the correct answer.
When checking for modifier errors, you should keep in mind that the GMAT will feature three kinds of modifiers. The first is adjectives. Adjectives are used to modify nouns. For example, in the phrase, “the blue chair,” ‘blue’ is an adjective modifying the noun ‘chair.’
The second is adverbs. Adverbs are used to modify all parts of speech except nouns. Therefore, adverbs will be used to modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs. Adverbs are usually created by adding ‘ly’ to the end of an adjective. For example, the adjective, “quick” becomes the adverb, “quickly.” Continue reading…
GMAT Tips – Sample Problem: Sentence Correction Pronouns
Today’s GMAT Tip comes to us from Kaplan. In this article, Kaplan GMAT instructor Bret Ruber provides helpful advice on answering Sentence Correction questions that feature pronoun errors:
Today we will be looking at a sentence correction problem that features a pronoun error. Pronoun errors are fairly common on the GMAT, so you want to be ready for them. Remember, when you see a pronoun, it must match its antecedent (the word it is replacing) in number and it must be unambiguous – that is, you must know without any doubt what the pronoun’s antecedent is.
Problem:
During World War II, “code talkers” were Native American soldiers that were specifically recruited to develop codes based in the Navajo language; these codes made any intercepted communications virtually indecipherable.
(A) that were specifically recruited to develop codes based in the Navajo language
(B) who were specifically recruited to develop codes based in the Navajo language
(C) that used the Navajo language to develop the codes they were specifically recruited for
(D) that, when specifically recruited, developed codes based on the Navajo language
(E) who were specifically recruited to develop codes based on the Navajo language
GMAT Tips: Where are the Splits? Handling the “New” Sentence Correction
Today’s GMAT tip comes from test prep firm ManhattanGMAT. In this article, they provide helpful tips for answering Sentence Correction questions on the new version of the GMAT. Read on to see what they have to say!
A lot of students have reported lately that the Sentence Correction questions on the official test were a lot harder than what they were expecting, or that they’ve been having trouble finding splits (differences) in the answers. Or they find the splits but don’t know how to process them / what to do with them. They narrow down to two answers but then don’t know how to pick between the two – they can see the differences but aren’t sure of the significance of those differences.
The title of this article is a little bit misleading – nothing about the SC section is technically “new.” The proportion of certain types of questions, though, has been changing, and so the section can feel very different (and challenging!) for someone who’s not prepared for that. Continue reading…
GMAT Tips: Sentence Correction Modification
Today’s GMAT Tip comes to us from Kaplan. In this article, Kaplan GMAT instructor Bret Ruber provides helpful advice on answering Sentence Correction questions that involve modification errors:
Today’s advanced GMAT sentence correction problem revolves around a modification error. Remember to watch out for modifying phrases at the beginning of a sentence – they must refer to whatever comes directly after them.
Problem:
Running off-Broadway for 17,162 performances over 42 years, Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones adapted The Fantasticks from Edmund Rostand’s 1894 play Les Romanesques.
(A) Running off-Broadway for 17,162 performances over 42 years, Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones adapted The Fantasticks from Edmund Rostand’s 1894 play Les Romanesques.
(B) The Fantasticks, which ran off-Broadway for 17,162 performances over 42 years, was adapted by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones from Edmund Rostand’s 1894 play Les Romanesques.
(C) The Fantasticks, which ran off-Broadway for 17,162 performances over 42 years and was adapted by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones from Edmund Rostand’s 1894 play Les Romanesques.
(D) Running through 17,162 performances over 42 years off-Broadway, Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones had adapted The Fantasticks from Edmund Rostand’s 1894 play Les Romanesques.
(E) Adapted from Edmund Rostand’s 1894 play Les Romanesques, Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones ran The Fantasticks off-Broadway for 17,162 performances over 42 years. Continue reading…
GMAT Tips: Meaning is Mean!
Today’s GMAT tip comes from test prep firm ManhattanGMAT. In this article, they provide helpful tips for answering Sentence Correction problems on the GMAT. Read on to see what they have to say!
We’ve talked a lot about meaning in sentence correction recently and I’ve got another problem along that same theme for you. The problem I chose comes from the new GMATPrep 2.0 (warning: you may not want to read the explanation until after you’ve used the new software yourself, just in case you see the same problem!). This one actually did also show up in the old version of GMATPrep, but I saw it years ago and forgot about it. When I saw it during my 2.0 test last week, I had the same reaction that I did when I first saw the problem about 5 years ago: “I can’t believe they actually did that!”
Here’s the problem. Set your timer for 1 minute 15 seconds and go for it!
* “As the former chair of the planning board for 18 consecutive years and a board member for 28 years, Joan Philkill attended more than 400 meetings and reviewed more than 700 rezoning applications.
“(A) As the former
“(B) The former
“(C) Former
“(D) She was
“(E) As the” Continue reading…
GMAT Tips: Intended Meaning
Today’s GMAT tip comes to us from Veritas Prep. In today’s blog post, they explain how to properly view the concept of “intended meaning” when taking the GMAT. Read on to see what they have to say!
If you have not yet encountered the term “intended meaning” in your GMAT study, you are free to skip this post! But if you have, this point is worth reading. While many GMAT books and websites – including the Official Guide for GMAT Review in some of its solutions – provide as rationale for eliminating answer choices that they “distort the intended meaning” of the sentence, beware that the concept of “intended meaning” is dangerous if you use it to solve problems. Consider, as evidence, the following answer choices from an official GMAT problem:
(A) Using a Doppler ultrasound device, fetal heartbeats can be detected by the twelfth week of pregnancy.
(E) Using a Doppler ultrasound device, a physician can detect fetal heartbeats by the twelfth week of pregnancy. (CORRECT) Continue reading…
GMAT Tips – Sample Problem: Critical Reasoning Weaken Question
Today’s GMAT Tip comes to us from Kaplan. In this article, Kaplan GMAT instructor Bret Ruber provides helpful advice about answering Critical Reasoning questions that require test-takers to weaken an argument:
Today’s GMAT practice problem is a Critical Reasoning weaken question. Weaken questions are more common than any other question type in the critical reasoning section, so it is essential to be prepared for them. On these problems, identify the conclusion, evidence and assumption and then look for the answer choice that refutes the central assumption.
Problem:
Increasingly, American businesses requiring customer service phone lines have been utilizing overseas companies that can provide these services at extremely reduced rates. Toll-free calls are routed to countries like India, where low-paid workers have been trained to deal with most of the typical problems consumers have with their credit cards, online services, and computer equipment. Since the companies using these overseas call centers are saving so much money, they will undoubtedly show higher profits than companies that do not.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument? Continue reading…
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