GMAT Sentence correction General Strategies

GMAT Sentence correction(SC) comprises 15 of the total 41 verbal questions, which means that the majority of verbal questions are from GMAT SC. With SC questions, you will be presented with a question followed by five answer choices. The question will be underlined in part. You have to select the best answer choice that rephrases the underlined part of the question. Remember - the first answer choice will repeat the original text so don't bother to read it again.

Here is a step by step action plan to solve GMAT SC Questions

1. Read the whole sentence slowly and carefully. We all have different reading speeds, but as a good rule of thumb, you’ll want to read the sentence significantly slower than you would read a novel. For you fast readers who don’t subvocalize as you read, you might want to try subvocalizing SC sentences; sometimes it’s best to hear the mistake rather than see it.

2. If you notice what looks like an error in the underlined portion, try to identify the type of error before you move on to the answer choices. Why? The test writers are clever, and many of the incorrect choices appear correct.

Remember, there are basically three ways an  answer can be wrong:

i.    It violates a grammar rule.
ii.    Its wording is unclear.
iii.    Its wording is nonstandard (these will often sound incorrect)

3. If the underlined portion appears correct, make note of it, but read every answer choice carefully before you rule it correct.

4. Examine answer choices individually. If you found an error in the original, eliminate choice A. If any of the answer choices repeat that error (and they often do), then eliminate those answers.

Try to look for additional errors in the answer choices and spot other choices that repeat those errors. It’s imperative that you group answer choices together based on common errors; this strategy save you precious time.

If you were unable to find an error in the original sentence, search for errors in the answer choices to quickly eliminate them. In other words, when you can’t find the error in the original, never try to search for the correct sentence --always work by elimination. If you can spot errors in each choice, then you should choose A as the answer.

5.  If you’re down to two choices that both seem fine, identify the differences between the sentences, and only examine these differences. The error will always lie in that portion.
A systematic method is just as necessary to solve SC’s as is knowledge of the grammar rules. Wrong answer choices are designed to be seductive, so firmly adhere to a system to get the job done.