{"id":6166,"date":"2013-09-30T08:53:08","date_gmt":"2013-09-30T12:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.manhattangmat.com\/blog\/?p=6166"},"modified":"2019-09-05T16:09:11","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T16:09:11","slug":"how-to-solve-any-sentence-correction-problem-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/blog\/how-to-solve-any-sentence-correction-problem-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Solve Any Sentence Correction Problem, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"gmatIn the first half of this article, we talked about the 5-step process to answer SC problems<\/a>:<\/p>\n

1. Take a First Glance<\/em><\/p>\n

2. Read<\/em> the Sentence<\/p>\n

3. Find a Starting Point<\/em><\/p>\n

4. Eliminate<\/em> Answers<\/p>\n

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t already learned that process, read the first half before continuing with this part.<\/p>\n

Drills to Build Skills<\/h3>\n

How do you learn to do all of this stuff? You\u2019re going to build some skills that will help at each stage of the way. You might already feel comfortable with one or multiple of these skills, so feel free to choose the drills that match your specific needs.<\/p>\n

Drill Number 1: First Glance<\/h3>\n

Open up your Official Guide and find some lower-numbered SC questions that you\u2019ve already tried in the past. Give yourself a few seconds (no more than 5!) to glance at a problem, then look away and say out loud what you noticed in those few seconds.<\/p>\n

As you develop your First Glance skills, you can start to read a couple<\/em> of words: the one right before the underline and the first word of the underline. Do those give you any clues about what might be tested in the problem? For instance, consider this sentence:<\/p>\n

Xxx xxxxxx xxxx xx and she xxx xxxxx xxxx xxxx xxx<\/span> xxx xxxxx.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t know for sure, but I have a strong suspicion that this problem might test parallelism, because the word and<\/em> falls immediately before the underline. When I read the sentence, I\u2019ll be looking for an X and Y<\/em> parallelism structure.<\/p>\n

At first, you\u2019ll often say something like, \u201cI saw that the underline starts with the word psychologists<\/em> but I have no idea what that might mean.\u201d (Note: this example is taken from OG13 SC #1!) That\u2019s okay; you\u2019re about to learn. Go try the problem (practicing the rest of the SC process as described in the first half of this article) and ask yourself again afterwards, \u201cSo what might I have picked up from that starting clue?\u201d<\/p>\n

The word psychologists<\/em> is followed by a comma\u2026 so perhaps something will be going on with modifiers? Or maybe this is a list? The underline is really long as well, which tends to go with modifiers. Now, when you start to read the sentence, you will already be prepared to figure out what\u2019s going on with this word. (In this case, it turns out that psychologists<\/em> is followed only by modifiers; the original sentence is missing a verb!)<\/p>\n

Drill Number 2: Read the Sentence<\/h3>\n

Take a look at some OG problems you\u2019ve tried before. Read only the original sentence. Then, look away from the book and articulate aloud, in your own words, what you think the sentence is trying to convey. You don\u2019t need to limit yourself to one sentence. You can also glance back at the problem to confirm details.<\/p>\n

I want to stress the \u201cout loud\u201d part; you will be able to hear whether the explanation is sufficient. If so, try another problem.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re struggling or unsure, then one of two things is happening. Either you just don\u2019t understand, or the sentence actually doesn\u2019t have a clear meaning and that\u2019s why it\u2019s wrong! Decide which you think it is and then look at the explanation. Does the explanation\u2019s description of the sentence match what you thought\u2014the sentence actually does have a meaning problem? If not, then how does the explanation explain the sentence? That will help you learn how to \u201cread it right\u201d the next time. (If you don’t like the OG explanation, try looking in our GMAT Navigator program.)<\/p>\n

Drill Number 3: Find a Starting Point<\/h3>\n

Once again, open up your OG and look at some problems you have done before. This time, do NOT read the original sentence. Instead, cover it up.<\/p>\n

Compare the answers and try to articulate all of the things that the problem is testing. Note that you can tell what<\/em> is being tested even if you can\u2019t tell how<\/em> to answer. For example, you might see a verb switching back and forth between singular and plural. If the subject isn\u2019t underlined, then you have no idea which verb form is required, because you haven\u2019t even seen the subject. You do, though, know that subject-verb agreement is at issue.<\/p>\n

Drill Number 4: Eliminate Answers<\/h3>\n

Once again, this drill involves problems you\u2019ve already done. (Sensing a pattern? We learn the most when we\u2019re reviewing things we\u2019ve already done<\/a>!) This time, though, you\u2019re going to get to use the whole problem.<\/p>\n

Right after you finish a problem, add the following analysis to your review:<\/p>\n

(1) Why is the right answer right? Why are each of the four wrong answers wrong?<\/p>\n

(2) How would you justify eliminating<\/em> the right answer? What is the trap that would lead someone to cross this one off?<\/p>\n

(3) How would you justify picking<\/em> any of the wrong answers? What is the trap that would lead someone to pick a wrong answer?<\/p>\n

You\u2019re probably already doing the first one, but most people don\u2019t do the second or third at all. The first is important, but you\u2019re leaving a lot of learning on the table if you skip the others. When you learn how you (or someone) would fall into the trap of thinking that some wrong answer looks or sounds or feels better than the right one, you\u2019ll be a lot less likely to fall into that same trap yourself in future.<\/p>\n

Next Steps<\/h3>\n

Practice until these steps start to feel like second nature to you. At the same time, of course, learn the grammar rules that we all need to know. Put both pieces together and you\u2019ll master sentence correction!<\/p>\n

Want more? Try these exercises to help you master your First Glance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the first half of this article, we talked about the 5-step process to answer SC problems: 1. Take a First Glance 2. Read the Sentence 3. Find a Starting Point 4. Eliminate Answers 5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 If you haven\u2019t already learned that process, read the first half before continuing with this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,10],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-6166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sentence-correction","category-verbal-on-gmat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6166","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6166"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13346,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6166\/revisions\/13346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6166"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gmat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=6166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}