![\"gmat-sentence-correction\"](\"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/18\/2019\/10\/gmat-sentence-correction.png\")
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I\u2019ve often heard that studying GMAT Verbal feels less straightforward than studying Quant. Even though Quant is tough, it does have a lot of <\/span>clear rules and techniques to memorize<\/span><\/a>. Verbal, on the other hand, feels much fuzzier. But is that really the case?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Start by reading this article<\/span><\/a>, which investigates whether GMAT Verbal questions are \u201cfair.\u201d<\/span> Once you\u2019re thinking methodically about the rules of GMAT Verbal, come back to this article to learn how to deep dive a Sentence Correction problem.<\/span><\/p>\n Ideally, you\u2019d review every problem you do. But you don\u2019t have to go through the whole process in this article every single time. The most important Sentence Correction problems to review are ones that fall into these categories:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That means it\u2019s <\/span>not<\/b><\/em> as important to review these problems:<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s great to (briefly!) review these things if you have time, but they aren\u2019t as valuable as the ones listed above.<\/span><\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve decided to review a Sentence Correction question, commit to reviewing it at least twice. When you review for the first time, do it shortly after originally doing the problem \u2014 for instance, on the following day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As with any type of problem, the first step is to <\/span>redo the problem<\/b>. Take it easy this time! Don\u2019t use a timer. Your goal right now is to dig into the problem and reflect. You can even look up the grammar rules in the <\/span>All the Verbal guide<\/span><\/a> while you\u2019re trying to figure it out.<\/span><\/p>\n If you got the problem wrong the first time<\/b>, you have a specific task to do at this point. Look at what the right answer was, but don\u2019t look at the explanation at all just yet. Instead, <\/span>try to figure out on your own why the right answer was right<\/b>. It\u2019s fine if you have to guess why it was right. If you think about it on your own before reading the explanation, you\u2019re far more likely to remember the explanation long-term.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If you really get stuck, glance at the explanation, but try not to passively read the whole thing. For instance, you might glance at the explanation for just one of the answer choices at a time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The next step is where the most valuable learning happens. It\u2019s time to reflect on the problem in a methodical, organized way, and take notes that will help you later on.<\/span><\/p>\n Before we go further into the process, let\u2019s do a Sentence Correction problem from GMATPrep as an example:<\/strong><\/p>\n Displays of the aurora borealis, or \u201cnorthern lights,\u201d can heat the atmosphere over the arctic enough <\/span>to affect the trajectories of ballistic missiles, induce<\/span> electric currents that can cause blackouts in some areas and corrosion in north-south pipelines.<\/span><\/p>\n Try this problem on your own before you keep reading. For the correct answer and a detailed solution of this problem, check out Stacey Koprince<\/a>\u2019s article <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>. I\u2019m not going to explain the right answer in depth, since she already did a fantastic job of that \u2014 instead, I\u2019ll show you how to take useful notes after you understand the answer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Start by looking at the whole problem again, after redoing it. What major lessons are worth remembering? If you missed it, was there something about the problem you should have noticed? Here are some examples.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Student A<\/b> spent a long time solving this problem, because they spent 90 seconds going back and forth between the answer choices starting with \u201cto\u201d and the ones starting with \u201cthat.\u201d In the end, they weren\u2019t able to make a confident decision. Here are their brief big-picture notes:<\/span><\/p>\n Student B<\/b> missed this problem because they initially read the sentence as a list of three items: <\/span>affect the trajectories<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>induce electric currents<\/span><\/i>, and <\/span>corrosion in north-south pipelines<\/span><\/i>. (This mistake is described in more detail in the article linked above.) Here are their big-picture notes:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When you take these notes, emphasize anything new you learned from the problem, whether it was a new grammar rule, a misconception you had, or a mistake in your process. It\u2019s fine to skip writing something down if it\u2019s obvious to you! Focus on the things you may need to use later on.<\/span><\/p>\n Next, zoom in on the differences among the answer choices. When you actually solve a Sentence Correction problem, you\u2019ll do so <\/span>one split at a time<\/b>. For each split in the problem, make sure you can explain the following:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For example, this problem is definitely testing <\/span>Parallelism<\/b>. Here are Student A\u2019s notes. They spent too much time on this problem because they didn\u2019t even notice the parallelism issue at first. However, once they noticed it, the right answer seemed pretty clear to them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Student B focused on the Parallelism issue right away, but they struggled to pick the right answer because they misunderstood the sentence structure. That\u2019s what their notes focus on:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Both of these students did a great job of focusing on simple, actionable, general lessons they could actually use on future problems. The next time Student A sees \u201cand\u201d in a Sentence Correction problem, they\u2019ll start by looking for Parallelism, not by getting hung up on an issue they\u2019re less sure about. And the next time Student B sees a problem like this one, they won\u2019t immediately eliminate any answer that has two <\/span>and<\/span><\/i>s. Instead, they\u2019ll check whether the sentence could make sense with a \u201clist within a list\u201d structure. (For more on the grammar of this sentence, check out <\/span>the article mentioned earlier<\/span><\/a>.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Depending on your own strengths and weaknesses, you may or may not stop there. It\u2019s great if you can just get one or two clear, actionable lessons out of each Sentence Correction problem you review. However, if Sentence Correction is a weakness for you, you may want to add more steps to your review process. For example, if you have a hard time finding the subject and verb of a complex sentence, you could try <\/span>breaking the sentence down to its core<\/span><\/a> every time you review a problem. If you\u2019re struggling to remember the modifier rules, you could jot down each different type of modifier that appears in the sentence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It can also be helpful to jot down what caused you to miss a problem. This will help you notice patterns you may otherwise miss. Did you miss a problem because you skimmed over a small but critical word late in the sentence? Or because you picked the answer that \u201csounded okay\u201d rather than the one that followed all of the grammar rules? Write it down! You could be making the same mistake more often than you realize.<\/span><\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve taken some notes on the problem, set it aside for a week or two. If you\u2019re using a <\/span>GMAT study calendar<\/span><\/a>, build in a review session once per week, and just redo old problems you\u2019ve already tried. During this review session, go back to the Sentence Correction problems you\u2019ve reviewed that week, and try them with a timer one more time. If you get them right this time and you\u2019ve learned everything there is to learn from the problem, you can set them aside for now! If you miss a problem when you redo it in a week or two, though, you may have a weak area that needs some extra time and attention.<\/span><\/p>\n Don\u2019t forget\u00a0that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free. We\u2019re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Chelsey Cooley<\/a> I\u2019ve often heard that studying GMAT Verbal feels less straightforward than studying Quant. Even though Quant is tough, it does have a lot of clear rules and techniques to memorize. Verbal, on the other hand, feels much fuzzier. But is that really the case?\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[929,52871,930],"tags":[52787,233,975,52750],"yst_prominent_words":[56134,56130,56133,56138,53677,56136,56137,53704,53839,56424,54256,53674,53669,53673,53675,56135,53786,56131,56129,56132],"class_list":["post-18173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat-prep","category-gmat-strategies","category-gmat-study-guide","tag-common-sentence-correction-errors","tag-gmat","tag-gmat-grammar-sentence-correction","tag-sentence-correction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18173"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18352,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18173\/revisions\/18352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18173"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=18173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Which Sentence Correction questions should I review?\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n
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Reviewing Sentence Correction Problems<\/b><\/h2>\n
Learning from a Sentence Correction problem<\/b><\/h3>\n
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The Big Picture<\/b><\/h3>\n
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Focusing on the splits<\/b><\/h3>\n
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Student A<\/h4>\n
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Student B<\/h4>\n
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Next-level Sentence Correction review<\/b><\/h3>\n
Want some more GMAT review tips? Check out these posts.<\/h4>\n
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\n![\"Chelsey](\"https:\/\/cdn2.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2015\/11\/chelsey-cooley-150x150.jpg\" "\\"Chelsey")
<\/a>\u00a0is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Seattle, Washington.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/i><\/b>Chelsey always followed her heart when it came to her education. Luckily, her heart led her straight to the perfect background for GMAT and GRE teaching: she has undergraduate degrees in mathematics and history, a master\u2019s degree in linguistics, a 790 on the GMAT, and a perfect 170Q\/170V on the GRE. Check out Chelsey\u2019s upcoming GMAT prep offerings here<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/em><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"