You might have heard people say that you need to know a lot of grammar to excel in GMAT, and it is true. The English language section in this exam can become a challenge, especially for international students. Along with taking the GMAT online course, you need to continually brush up on your English skills, starting with the basics to master GMAT grammar
Reading this article might be insightful if English is not your first language, and you have difficulties with it.
Mastering the GMAT grammar
In GMAT, the sentence correction section actually determines your grammar skills. It is designed in a way that you have to make the sentence crisp, logical, and of course, grammatically correct. GMAT grammar is based on specific rules; you need to have an understanding of those rules to crack this section. However, a good thing here is, GMAT grammar rules are very repetitive. You would see similar questions are being asked over and over again to understand your capabilities.
Important sections that need your attention
- Dangling modifiers – Modifiers are words, clauses, or phrases that help you describe other parts of the sentences. A dangling modifier is one of the most common errors made in the GMAT examination. It makes the sentence illogical by describing incorrect words or phrases. You should check out the introductory phrases, followed by a comma, to understand the dangling modifiers.
- Proper verb tense – Another common question in the GMAT exam is the verb tense usage. Verb tenses give information about when a particular action took place. They usually remain consistent unless there is a reason for them to shift within the given sentence. However, you need to be familiar with the basic grammar rules to understand and work with the GMAT questions.
- Illogical comparison – Here, the sentences display illogical comparisons that don’t make sense. They might not match in context or the grammatical form. You can go through the GMAT samples to understand what we mean by illogical comparison. For example, look at this sentence- “Jack loves football more than his dad.” But what the sentence might intend to mean is, Jack loves football more than his dad does. So you will need to reconstruct the sentence in a way that would make sense. The changes should make the sentence not only logical but crisp and grammatical error-free.
- Use of pronoun – You would also be tested on the correct pronoun usage. A rule here is that the correct pronoun always meets their antecedent. The plural ones would match with the plural antecedent and so on. Once you have a basic understanding of how grammar works, it would get easy for you. For example, if the sentence is talking about a girl, it should contain pronouns like she, which describes a female.
- Subject-verb agreement – The rule here is that the subject must match its verb. For example, a plural subject should be accompanied by a plural verb.
- Idioms – Idiom is a prevalent English phrase that often involves prepositions. GMAT grammar is designed in such a way that it would test multiple errors at once. There are sentences where all the other grammatical errors are fixed except the idioms, so you have to be very careful about that. You can use flashcards to study idioms. Doing so would help you to speed up the elimination process. You can create cards for different idioms that include both the meaning and a sentence that contains that particular idiom.
If you have a clear concept of how basic grammar works, you can crack the test comfortably. You would need to have an explicit knowledge of the sentence correction questions mostly, which makes up for almost one-third of the total verbal section. You can work on it on a regular interval to make yourself thorough with the rules. Remember, you will be able to work with them only when you understand the basics. However, one can easily notice how repetitive these rules are, and when you solve a couple of GMAT samples, you would understand that the questions are of a similar type.
You need to review the underlying concepts of grammar. Ensure to tick off all the above rules to construct the perfect sentence. With the right course and lots of practice sessions, you will score well on the test. It would improve your accuracy, efficiency, and ability to achieve better in the test.
