Facing issues regarding understanding of context in complex sentences and passages

GRE General
1

Hi

I have been preparing gre for around an year

The 32 groups i have been very familiar with , i have also solved mostly all of your quizzes so now I don’t feel any difficulty in vocabulary .

Apart from that i have also solved all big book text completion questions used to get around 10 out of 14 in mostly all 27 tests.

I used to attempt it like a test and then watched all of your videos of big book solutions to compare your approach with my approach

I have also solved all shorter reading comprehensions in gre big book again like above, attempted like test and compared your approach with mine.

I also completed gre official guide and verbal guide of ets.

I gave my gre on 2nd may but got only 145 in verbal. Basically i found that i was having difficulty in understanding context of sentences in text completions and questions in reading passages.

Actually sentence equivalence doesn’t have that much longer sentences so i am able to get that correct but text completion I face difficulty in understanding context of sentences.

Similarly in reading comprehension as well I write things while reading so I am able to understand the passage well and don’t have to read it again and again but options i find trickier . And specially in reading comprehension options consisting longer sentences i find difficulty in understanding context.

Actually i also did powerprep test 1 and test 2 , was facing similar issues especially in text completions but thought that might the questions in official gre book might be more reliable and actual test might resemble more like question of official guide and verbal guide.

Also while attempting reading comprehensions in powerprep plus test when second section was medium I faced similar situation, able to understand passages but got trapped in options consisting of longer options, multiple correct have shorter sentences so most of the time I am able to get that correct.

In reading comprehensions the questions in official guides of ets are simple, in powerprep plus test when second section was easy I was able to most of reading comprehensions correct but in medium ones i got tricked in options.

I left gre big book long passages and critical reasoning as long passages don’t come now and critical reasoning only one question comes in the test so should I solve those as well for improving my contexual understanding of longer and complex sentences ?

Also two blankers and three blsnkers in text completion i faced major problem regarding contexual understanding.Single blanks generally have shorter sentences so understanding context is easier.

As vince once suggested not to rely on third party material for verbal .

I manually made the test from ets questions from ets official guide and verbal guide and self timed that .

Thats all from my side

Will be waiting for your response.

Can you please advice me how can I improve on this for achieving better verbal score.

Please kindly help on this .

2

You need evidence you understand the questions you’ve done.

Getting a question right is not evidence you understand it.

Looking at the right answer and thinking “oh yeah, I understand it” is not evidence you understand it.

And doing lots of questions is definitely not evidence you’re good at verbal.

What DOES work is painstaking analysis of questions and discussion of them so you can get feedback on your understanding. You can do that here for free or perhaps use a Gregmat tutor.

There is no sweeping solution, tip, or trick that can solve your problem. Lots of deliberate strategy practice, analysis, and discussion will help you improve one question at a time.

3

But big book questions i did all text completions and short passages then also watched video solutions of big book made by greg

So if my question is right and by seeing in video that greg also able to do correct in similar way is
It not enough enough evidence that i have understood it correctly

4

no. We can tell if you understand it if we can understand your solution in your words.

If thinking you understand Greg’s solution was good enough, you would be scoring higher.