Target Test Prep Representative
Joined: 12 Sep 2018
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Re: How to approach 320+?
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31 Dec 2021, 10:36
Hi Nis20,
To improve your GRE score, you need to go through GRE quant and verbal carefully to find your exact weaknesses, fill gaps in your knowledge, and strengthen your skills. The overall process will be to learn all about how to answer types of questions with which you currently aren't very comfortable and do dozens of practice questions category by category, basically driving up your score point by point. When you do dozens of questions of the same type one after the other, you learn just what it takes to get questions of that type correct consistently. If you aren't getting close to 90 percent of questions of a certain type correct, go back and seek to better understand how that type of question works, and then do more questions of that type until you get to at least around 90 percent accuracy in your training. If you get 100 percent of some sets correct, even better.
For example, if you find that you are not strong in answering Number Properties questions, carefully review the conceptual underpinnings of how to answer Number Properties questions and practice by answering 50 or more questions just from Number Properties: LCM, GCF, units digit patterns, divisibility, remainders, etc. When you are working on learning to answer questions of a particular type, start off taking your time, and then seek to speed up as you get more comfortable answering questions of that type. As you do such practice, do a thorough analysis of each question that you didn't get right. If you got a remainder question wrong, ask yourself why. Did you make a careless mistake? Did you not properly apply the remainder formula? Was there a concept you did not understand in the question? By carefully analyzing your mistakes, you will be able to efficiently fix your weaknesses and in turn improve your GMAT quant skills. Number Properties is just one example; follow this process for all quant topics.
Each time you strengthen your understanding of a topic and your skill in answering questions of a particular type, you increase your odds of hitting your score goal. You know that there are types of questions that you are happy to see and types that you would rather not see, and types of questions that you take a long time to answer correctly. Learn to more effectively answer the types of questions that you would rather not see, and make them into your favorite types. Learn to correctly answer in one minute and 45 seconds or less questions that you currently take five minutes to answer. By finding, say, a dozen weaker quant areas and turning them into strong areas, you will make great progress toward hitting your quant score goal. If a dozen areas turn out not to be enough, strengthen some more areas.
So, work on accuracy and generally finding correct answers, work on specific weaker areas one by one to make them strong areas, and when you take a practice GRE or the real thing, take all the time per question available to do your absolute best to get right answers consistently. The GRE is essentially a game of seeing how many right answers you can get in tFhe time allotted. Approach the test with that conception in mind, and focus intently on the question in front of you with one goal in mind: getting a CORRECT answer.
To improve your verbal skills, you need to develop a solid base of vocab. No, you do not need to memorize 10,000 vocabulary words, but 1,000+ will certainly help, as you need a solid vocab base for SE and TC questions. Memorizing vocab words can be tedious, so try to make the process fun for yourself. As you learn new vocab words, create an original sentence using each word and put that sentence on a flash card. Furthermore, try using new vocab words in your everyday writing; you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how well the words stick. In addition to learning new vocab, you need to become skilled in looking for and using context clues in TC and SE questions. By using context clues, you often can correctly answer questions without even knowing the exact vocab word necessary.
Reading Comprehension is broken up into two smaller categories, single-paragraph passages and multi-paragraph passages. Single-paragraph passages generally ask questions such as “which of the following strengthens the argument” or “which of the following weakens the argument,” or ask you to “find the paradox.” To excel in these questions, you first need to individually learn and practice each type of single-paragraph question. Ideally, you’d follow up your learning with focused practice. When going over wrong answers from your practice, thoroughly analyzing what went wrong. Did you misread the passage? Did you make a careless mistake? Did you misidentify the conclusion or assumption? As you analyze these mistakes, you’ll better be able to strengthen your weaknesses.
Regarding multi-paragraph passages, you need to focus on understanding what you are reading. When students incorrectly answer multi-paragraph questions, it’s often partly because they do not truly understand what they have just read. Thus, you likely have to slow down in order to (eventually) speed up. At this point, your best bet is to focus on getting the correct answers to questions, taking as much time as you need to see key details and understand the logic of what you are reading. You have to learn to comprehend what you read, keep it all straight, and use what you are reading to arrive at correct answers. If you don't understand something, go back and read it one sentence at a time, even one word at a time, not moving on until you understand what you have just read. There is no way around this work. Your goal should be to take all the time you need to understand exactly what is being said and arrive at the correct answer. If you can learn to get answers taking your time, you can learn to speed up. Answering questions is like any task: The more times you do it carefully and successfully, the faster you become at doing it carefully and successfully.
Another component of understanding what you are reading is being “present” when reading. Don’t worry about how things are going at work, or what you will eat for dinner, or even how long you are taking to read through the passage. Just focus on what is in front of you, word by word, line by line. Furthermore, try to make reading fun. For example, even if you are reading about a topic that bores you, pretend that you are the person making the argument. By doing so, you will make the passage more relatable to YOU, and ultimately you should be able to read with greater focus.
One final component that may be tripping you up is that, as with single-paragraph passages, multi-paragraph questions contain one or more trap answers that seem to answer the question but don't really. So, once again, you have to learn to see how trap answers seem to follow from what the passages say, but don't really, while correct answers fit what the passages say exactly.