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More Than Just Grammar: The Search for Meaning in the New SC (Part 5)

By posted February 2, 2012

People are talking about the new GMAT, and the way that Sentence Correction will test your comprehension of the sentence’s meaning as well as its grammar, style, and concision, by giving you more answer choices that are grammatically correct (but still wrong). In this series of articles, I want to explore the ways this could happen, with some example questions for you as well. Last time, we talked about a solution to a problem I posed; this time, let’s take a look at how word placement matters.

Placement/choice of conjunctions, prepositions, and adverbs

Sentence A: Sergei chose to buy a house because of the increase in both the number of houses on the market and the number of his friends who owned their own homes.

Sentence B: Sergei chose to buy a house because of both the increase in the number of houses on the market and the number of his friends who owned their own homes.

Both sentences feature Sergei buying a house because of the number of houses on the market and the number of his friends who owned their own homes, but in Sentence A, both of those numbers are going up, while in Sentence B, only the number of houses is increasing. (I tried to come up with a sentence that had a more amusing shift in sense; I will envy you a little if you are able to come up with one.

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An Introduction to Multi-Source Reasoning on the GMAT

By posted January 31, 2012

Multi-Source Reasoning questions are one of the four new Integrated Reasoning question types which will begin appearing on the GMAT in June of 2012. Multi-Source Reasoning provides three pieces of information on tabbed pages – charts, data, articles, emails, etc. The pieces provide a lot of information, not all of which is necessary to answer the question. The pieces may be Quantitative in nature or Verbal, or a combination of both. You may click back and forth between all three pieces to locate the needed data.

The questions consist of either a set of yes/no statements, or multiple-choice questions. Information from more than one tab will be required to answer the questions, but the same tab can be used for more than one question. According to GMAC, this question type is designed to mimic “the case study approach used by many management programs” and tests the “ability to integrate different types of information…from different sources.” Let’s take a look at a sample Multi-Source Reasoning question from Grockit’s question bank to see how we can approach this new question-type!

Article 1

News article in an environmental publication

July 19 – If current trends continue, fossil fuels will be exhausted by 2052. Industry and transportation and the inability of governments to put stricter emissions regulations in place means that there will be a greater demand for alternative energy sources. Additionally, recent concerns about the high-cost of implementing new systems such as public transportation in industrialized areas has led many voters to actually strike down propositions to subsidize alternative fuel research.

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More Than Just Grammar: The Search for Meaning in the New SC (Part 4)

By posted January 29, 2012

People are talking about the new GMAT, and the way that Sentence Correction will test your comprehension of the sentence’s meaning as well as its grammar, style, and concision, by giving you more answer choices that are grammatically correct (but still wrong). In this series of articles, I want to explore the ways this could happen, with some example questions for you as well. Last time, I gave you a question using conditional statements; this time, let’s take a look at the answer.

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In case you missed it or forgot, this was the question:

A group of well-regarded economists has recently published projected figures for the economy next year, which predict that if interest rates remain at their current level, lending should continue to increase as slowly as it has this year.

A. if interest rates remain at their current level, lending should continue to increase

B. when interest rates remain at their current level, lending can continue its increasing

C. if interest rates remain at their current level, lending continues to increase

D. if interest rates remain at their current level, lending will continue to increase

E. if interest rates remain at their current level, lending could continue to increase

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Transition Words: An Easy Way to Boost Your AWA Score on the GMAT!

By posted January 27, 2012

As you earn your MBA, you’ll be doing a lot of reading and writing, and the GMAT is a great way to practice these skills and get your critical analysis skills sharp for business school! Schools want students who can draw conclusions from dense material, and express themselves with clarity, organization, and purpose. One way to quickly make your points clear in both the Issue and the Argument essay, is to use Transition Words.

What are transition words? Transitions are words or phrases that connect ideas. They are used by writers to assist the reader in understanding shifts in thought between ideas. They also reveal the relationship between ideas presented in an essay, and they reveal the role a paragraph plays with the rest of the essay. You’ve probably noticed a lot of Transition words in the Reading Comp passages in the GMAT Verbal section without even realizing it! This table provides an overview of most of the common types of Transitions!

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More Than Just Grammar: The Search for Meaning in the New SC (Part 3)

By posted January 25, 2012

People are talking about the new GMAT, and the way that Sentence Correction will test your comprehension of the sentence’s meaning as well as its grammar, style, and concision, by giving you more answer choices that are grammatically correct (but still wrong). In this series of articles, I want to explore the ways this could happen, with some example questions for you as well. Last time, we talked about a solution to a problem I posed; this time, let’s take a look at conditional statements.

Conditional statements

If you are very hungry, you eat too much food.

If you are very hungry, you may eat too much food.

If you are very hungry, you will eat too much food.

If you are very hungry, you should eat too much food.

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An Introduction to Two-Part Analysis Questions on the new GMAT

By posted January 23, 2012

The new Two-Part Analysis questions (one of four new question-types in the Integrated Reasoning section set to launch in June 2012), will present a short paragraph with information. Answer choices will be presented in several columns and rows. Each column stands for a component, and each row is part of the solution. You’ll need to choose one answer from each column since the complete answer will have a two-part solution.

Below is a sample question that GMAC has provided at MBA.com to familiarize students with the format of this new question-type. You can see that for this question, you would click one circle to bubble in a choice for Organization A’s column, and then separately click for Organization B’s column. The choices are made independently, and both must be correct to receive credit for the question. To try out this question and see the correct answer go here.

Two-Part analysis questions measure your ability to solve complex problems. This is designed to mimic complex, multi-part, real-world problems faced by MBA students. MBA.com further describes the Two-Part format as lending “itself to a wide range of content and skills measured, including the ability to evaluate trade-offs, solve simultaneous equations, and discern relationships between two entities.” Because of this, your acquired skills in solving complex algebra and in discerning harder word problems will be essential skills to solve Two-Part Analysis questions.

The question is called “Two-Part Analysis” because of the multiple components. They may be independent or dependent on each other. These questions commonly ask about simultaneous equations, variables, rates, or differing opinions. They may focus solely on Quantitative concepts, or may include aspects of Verbal such as inference and reading comprehension.

To practice for this new question type before the June 2012 launch, you can create a Custom Game in the Grockit GMAT lobby and work on the questions involving Word Problems, Linear Equations, Rates and Work, and other advanced algebra concepts. As you practice your Reading Comprehension skills in the Grockit GMAT Verbal games, you will also be preparing for Two-Part Analysis!

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More Than Just Grammar: The Search for Meaning in the New SC (Part 2)

By posted January 20, 2012

People are talking about the new GMAT, and the way that Sentence Correction will test your comprehension of the sentence’s meaning as well as its grammar, style, and concision, by giving you more answer choices that are grammatically correct (but still wrong). In this series of articles, I want to explore the ways this could happen, with some example questions for you as well. Last time, we talked about punctuation; this time, let’s answer the question posed at the end of the last post.

Last time, I gave you this question:

On her way to the store, Priya decided to purchase a personal organizer, a new computer with a wireless network card, and a barking toy robot dog that would make her life easier, she decided.

A. and a barking toy robot dog that would make her life easier, she decided.

B. and a barking toy robot dog; that would make would make her life easier, she decided.

C. and a barking toy robot dog that would make her life easier; she decided.

D. and a barking toy robot dog making her life easier, she decided.

E. and, deciding that would make her life easier, a barking toy robot dog.

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GMAT AWA Argument Essay: Types of Fallacious Reasoning

By posted January 19, 2012

The given paragraphs on the AWA Argument essay will always exhibit some flaws in reasoning; while the types of flaws are potentially limitless, most of them will fall into one of these categories.

  1. Assuming that characteristics of a group apply to each member of that group
  2. Assuming that a certain condition is necessary for a certain outcome
  3. Drawing a weak analogy between two things
  4. Confusing a cause-effect relationship with a correlation (famously known as post hoc ergo propter hoc, i.e. correlation does not imply causation)
  5. Relying on inappropriate or potentially unrepresentative statistics
  6. Relying on biased or tainted data (methods for collecting data must be unbiased and the poll responses must be credible)

Most of the arguments contain three or four of these flaws, making your body paragraph organization pretty simple. Becoming familiar with these flaws and how to spot them is the first step to writing a quality Argument Task. Let’s look at these flaws in a little more depth:

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More Than Just Grammar: The Search for Meaning in the New SC (Part 1)

By posted January 17, 2012

People are talking about the new GMAT, and the way that Sentence Correction will test your comprehension of the sentence’s meaning as well as its grammar, style, and concision, by giving you more answer choices that are grammatically correct (but still wrong). In this series of articles, I want to explore the ways this can happen, with some example questions for you as well. First, let’s talk about punctuation.

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Punctuation

Sentence A: Let’s eat, Grandma!

Sentence B: Let’s eat Grandma!

Sentence C: Every dog knows its master.

Sentence D: Every dog knows it’s master.

The ancient Romans wrote with little or no punctuation, and usually without even putting any spaces between the words. It is hard to imagine the confusion that could arise from that, when in English a simple mark (such as a comma or an apostrophe) can make such difference in the sense of the sentence. In the first pair, Sentence A conveys familial devotion, while B implies cannibalism; in the second pair, Sentence C features man’s best friend looking up to humans, while in Sentence D, the dog looks down on humans.

Of course, the GMAT is unlikely to feature something so simple (or potentially comical), but punctuation is often needed to reduce ambiguity or to change the meaning of a phrase or clause. Relative clauses – clauses starting with a relative pronoun like which, who, or that – are prime candidates for a change in meaning, especially ones starting with which or that. Semicolons and commas, because they separate clauses, can also change the meaning of a sentence by changing the point where one clause begins and another ends.

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5 Tips for Analyzing Integrated Reasoning Questions on the GMAT

By posted January 16, 2012

The new Integrated Reasoning section of the GMAT, set to launch in June 2012, requires some solid data analysis skills. Data is presented in short paragraphs, tables, charts, and graphs and answer choices must be selected in several formats. These tips will help you make sense of the information presented in the Integrated Reasoning section, and allow you to successful interpret and synthesize it for better scores!

1.  Note how the variables relate to each other. Especially when you see a Table or a Graph, quickly summarize for yourself the relationship between the variables in each table, chart, or graph. Do they have a direct or indirect correlation? Does the data spike or significantly decrease at certain points?

2.  Treat Integrated Reasoning like an open-book test.  One of the most common mistakes on the Integrated Reasoning section is using the wrong information because of a slight grasp of the presented information. The data you need to solve IR questions must lie on the various screens; you just have to know where to look. First understand what the question is asking, then stop and consider which table, graph, chart, or part of the passage provides the relevant information you’ll need to solve for the correct answer. Harder IR questions will require you to use more than one screen or ask you to take information or figures from one screen and apply it to another.

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