With sentence correction gone from GMAT Focus, verbal is reading comprehension and critical reasoning — and critical reasoning is where preparation pays fastest, because the question types are few and each has a predictable shape.
Find the conclusion first. Every argument has one claim it is trying to establish, and everything else is support. Underline it. Many wrong answers are attractive precisely because they address the support rather than the conclusion.
Name the question type before reading the options.
- Weaken — find the gap between the evidence and the conclusion, then choose what makes that
- gap wider. Not what makes the evidence false: attacking the premise is the classic trap answer.
- Strengthen — the same gap, closed. Often by ruling out an alternative explanation.
- Assumption — what must be true for the argument to work at all. Test it with negation: if
- denying the option destroys the argument, it is the assumption. This test settles nearly every
- assumption question and almost nobody uses it.
- Flaw — describe the error in the reasoning itself: confusing correlation with cause,
- generalising from an unrepresentative sample, assuming what it set out to prove.
Watch the scope. An option about a different group, a different time period or a different measure cannot affect this argument, however true it sounds. Scope shift is the most common way a wrong answer is made to feel right.
Do not bring outside knowledge. The argument is a closed world. What you know about the industry is irrelevant and is frequently the bait.