Verbal Without Sentence Correction: Your Reading Has to Get SHARPER

By EMPOWERgmat on June 25, 2024

Here's a scene I watch play out every single week. A Test Taker finishes a Critical Reasoning question, narrows it down to two answers and picks the one that 'feels' right. Then they check the explanation and say, "Oh, I misread it." Then they go do the EXACT same thing on the next question.

For years, plenty of GMATers hid that habit behind Sentence Correction. SC had rules. Subjects and verbs agree. Modifiers sit next to the thing they describe. You could memorize your way to a decent Verbal score without ever reading carefully. That crutch is GONE. On the GMAT Focus Edition, Verbal is nothing but reading and reasoning. If your reading is sloppy, there is nowhere left to hide.

The good news is that careful reading is a trainable skill. Roger Federer didn't 'have' a forehand. He built one, one rep at a time. So let's build yours.

What Verbal looks like now

The Verbal Reasoning section gives you 23 questions in 45 minutes. Every question is one of two types. Critical Reasoning (CR) gives you a short argument and asks one question about it. Reading Comprehension (RC) gives you a longer passage and asks a few questions about it. No grammar at all. GMAC lays out the full structure on its exam format page.

A few other facts matter here. You pick the order of the three sections, so Verbal can come first if you want your brain fresh for it. There's one optional 10 minute break. And you can review and change up to 3 answers per section. Those 3 changes are a safety net, NOT a strategy. If your plan is to 'fix it later', you've already spent the time you needed to get it right the first time.

Now stop and do the math yourself. 45 minutes divided by 23 questions is a little under 2 minutes per question, on AVERAGE. That does not mean every question gets 2 minutes. A short CR might take 90 seconds. The first question on an RC passage costs more because you're reading the passage. Average, not rule.

Why reading now decides your score

Wrong answers in CR and RC are built from the same handful of tricks. A word that's slightly too strong. An answer that's true in the real world but never said in the passage. An answer that's about the topic but not about the conclusion. Every one of those traps works beautifully on a reader who skims. None of them works on a reader who knows EXACTLY what the text says.

So here's the forced choice. What do you want MORE: to feel fast while you read, or to stop picking the second-best answer? You can eventually have both, but only after you train the slow, careful version until it becomes quick.

Try this one. Take notes on paper. Don't do it in your head.

Try it

A city replaced the traffic lights at 40 intersections with roundabouts. In the year after the change, the number of crashes reported at those 40 intersections fell by one third. The city council concludes that roundabouts make intersections safer, and it plans to install them at every major intersection in the city.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the council's conclusion?

Roundabouts cost more to build than traffic lights do.
Some drivers say roundabouts are confusing the first time they use them.
During that same year, the city stopped recording crashes that caused no injuries.
Several other cities have also installed roundabouts at busy intersections.
Before the change, most crashes at the 40 intersections happened during rush hour.

Show the answer

Step 1: Notes while you read. Something like: "40 lights to roundabouts. REPORTED crashes down 1/3. Concl: roundabouts = safer." Notice the word REPORTED. That one word is where this whole question lives.

Step 2: Name the conclusion before you look at the choices. The council says roundabouts make intersections SAFER. Not cheaper. Not popular. Safer.

Step 3: Ask what else could explain the evidence. The evidence is a drop in REPORTED crashes. Could the number drop without roundabouts doing anything? Sure, if fewer crashes got counted.

Step 4: Test the answers.

(A) Cost is a reason to question the PLAN, but it says nothing about safety. Eliminate.
(B) Confusing at first doesn't tell us crashes went up or down. Eliminate.
(C) If the city stopped recording no injury crashes, the count would drop even if roads were exactly as dangerous as before. That breaks the link between the evidence and the conclusion. Keep.
(D) Other cities doing it is not evidence either way. Eliminate.
(E) When the crashes happened doesn't change whether the drop was real. Eliminate.

The answer is (C).

The trap: (A). It feels like a strong objection, and in real life it might be one. But it attacks the plan, not the conclusion. The skimmer reads "roundabouts are good" and grabs any answer that says something bad about roundabouts. The careful reader knows the conclusion is about SAFETY and reads 'reported' as a red flag.

A person at a desk reads a long passage on a screen while jotting a few short marks on a notepad beside the keyboard. — Careful reading happens with a pencil moving, not with your eyes alone.

6 reading mistakes I see every week

Reading the whole prompt, then rereading the whole prompt. If you have to go back to find the conclusion, you read it wrong the first time. That reread costs you seconds on every question, and those seconds add up fast across 23 of them.
INSTEAD: Take short notes AS you read. Break the text into pieces: evidence, conclusion, any 'but' or 'however' that turns the argument. When you finish reading, you should already know what the question is about.
Looking at the answers before you know the conclusion. The answers are written to steer you. If you show up without a clear idea, they will happily give you a wrong one.
INSTEAD: Say the conclusion in your own words, in under 10 words, before you look at a single choice.
Skimming the little words. 'Some', 'most', 'only', 'reported', 'may'. These words are the whole question more often than you'd think.
INSTEAD: Write the little words down in your notes. If a word limits a claim, it goes on paper.
Answering from what you know. You've read about this topic in the news, so an answer 'sounds true'. The GMAT doesn't care what's true in the world. It cares what's supported by the text in front of you.
INSTEAD: For every answer you pick, point to the exact line that backs it up. No line, no answer.
Falling for the exciting answer. On questions that ask what the passage supports, the dramatic choice is usually too strong. As we've said before, on inference questions the right answer is boring.
INSTEAD: When you're down to two, pick the one that claims LESS. Small claims are easy to prove.
Dropping SC and doing nothing with the time it freed up. When we wrote about Sentence Correction leaving the test, the point was timing. Now it's gone for good, and some Test Takers took that as a vacation from Verbal.
INSTEAD: Put every hour you used to spend on grammar into CR and RC, and spend at least half of that time REVIEWING questions you've already done. Being the commander of 300 questions beats being an acquaintance of 3,000.

Now try an RC style question. Same rules: notes on paper, conclusion first.

Try it

Historians long believed that medieval farmers in one coastal region rarely traded beyond their own villages. Recent digs, however, have turned up pottery made in coastal workshops at more than a dozen inland farm sites. Some scholars argue that this pottery reached the farms through traveling merchants rather than through trips the farmers made themselves. Either way, the finds suggest that goods moved between the coast and inland farms more than historians once assumed.

The passage most strongly supports which of the following?

Medieval farmers in the region traveled to the coast to trade.
Coastal workshops made their pottery mainly for inland buyers.
Earlier historians may have underestimated how far goods traveled in the region.
Traveling merchants were the main source of goods for inland farms.
Pottery is the most reliable evidence of medieval trade.

Show the answer

Step 1: Notes. "Old view: farmers rarely traded outside village. NEW: coastal pottery at 12+ inland farms. HOW? maybe merchants, maybe farmers. EITHER WAY: more goods moved than thought."

Step 2: Find the main point. The last sentence. Goods moved more than historians assumed. The passage does NOT decide how the pottery got there.

Step 3: Test the answers against the text.

(A) The passage says the pottery may have come through merchants. So we can't say farmers traveled. Eliminate.
(B) Nothing says who the workshops made pottery for. Eliminate.
(C) The passage says goods moved more than historians once assumed. That is exactly an underestimate, and 'may have' keeps the claim small. Keep.
(D) Only 'some scholars' argue for merchants, and 'main source' goes way past that. Eliminate.
(E) 'Most reliable' is never discussed. Eliminate.

The answer is (C).

The trap: (A) or (D). Each one takes a side the passage refuses to take. The words 'either way' are the author telling you NOT to pick a side. A skimmer never sees them.

Two paths lead from a seaside village to a farm inland, one walked by a farmer and one by a merchant with a cart, both arriving at the same farmhouse. — Two possible routes, one result. The passage only commits to the result.

How to train it

Reading sharper isn't a talent you're born with. It's a set of habits: notes while you read, conclusion in your own words, little words on paper, every answer tied to a line. Do those on every practice question until you can't NOT do them. Use real practice material too. GMAC's official practice materials are written by the same people who write the test, so the traps look like the real thing.

And when you miss one, you are NOT allowed to say "I just misread it" and move on. Which word did you misread? Why did you skip it? What will you write down next time? Name the cause, or you'll repeat it.

Your challenge for today

Pull 10 CR questions you've ALREADY done. Cover the answer choices. For each one, write the conclusion in under 10 words and circle every little word that limits a claim. Then uncover the choices and redo the question. I'll bet you find at least one you got right last time for the wrong reason. Write that one down. That's the habit you're fixing first.