No matter what test you are preparing for or what guide you are using, if you do the things on this list, you are guaranteed to increase your verbal score. Some strategies are long term, while others should be implemented on test day. All of them work.
1. Read more.
People that read more read faster and understand more of what they read than the average person. Speed and accuracy are incredibly important on the verbal section of standardized tests, like the SAT and GMAT, and are the keys to scoring higher. Reading also improves your ability to recognize proper grammar, which is key for non-native English speakers.
2. Read widely.
The reading passages on the SAT, GMAT, GRE, and EA come from different books, magazines, stories, reviews…you get the point: passages can be pulled from anywhere. Just because you like reading Harry Potter books doesn’t mean you won’t get a passage from National Geographic magazine. The more diverse materials you read, the less likely you are to be clueless on the verbal section.
3. Make reading easy.
Too busy to go buy a book? You can read classic books FREE online or on your smartphone from Project Gutenbook. Don’t have time to read a whole book? Subscribe to email newsletters that come to your inbox. Check out the New York Times, Business Week, or the International Herald Tribune.
4. Use process of elimination to increase your verbal score.
This is the single best test-taking strategy for increasing your verbal score. Eliminate the answers you know are wrong and compare the remaining answers to figure out the right one. Even if you have to guess, your chances of selecting the correct answer improve significantly. You can learn more about process of elimination in one of my previous posts.
5. Look for the best of the worst in the answer choices.
Once you have eliminated two or three answer choices that you know are incorrect, it’s time to compare the remaining answers. Don’t put them back into the question. Instead, look at the differences between two (or three) choices. Which one is a better answer to the question? Maybe it’s not how you would have answered, but it’s the best of the bad choices.
Need help getting your verbal score together?
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