Verbal Help

[mat_u]

Hi
I gave my GMAT this apirl and i scored only 620. i thought i will cross atleast 700. i scored 50 in quant and 24 in verbal. i want to improve my verbal tremendously. Please suggest me how to do so?
1. improve my reading speed?
2. improving my grammer?
3. cracking my critical reasoning?
4. sentence correction?
i want to know what are the books to be followed to improve my verbal skills.
I found that my biggest constraint is time when it comes to verbal. I also want to know what are the various sites available for practicing verbal questions.
thank you
mat_u

[lawrencl]

Wow, good job on the Math. I had a score of 22 verbal the first time I took GMAT (44 math). So I knew that I had to raise my verbal score to really have a chance at increasing my overall GMAT. I studied all the questions out of PowerPrep SC, CR, and RC. I kept a spreadsheet of my scores (i.e. 18 out of 22) and timestamped it. I read my mistakes and studied the explanations and really started to see how GMAT tests verbal skills because its always the same stuff (parallel structure, tenses, gerunds, etc). I proceeded to study math PS and DS and recorded those answers as well on my spreadsheet. After finishing all exersizes, I restarted them again to see if I would have improvement, which I did. I started to consistently score 32 on practice tests from PR, Kaplan, and PowerPrep. Unfortunately I only managed a 27 verbal on the real GMAT, but I'm sure my nervous personality had something to do with that. Either way, the results showed improvement as Verbal is not my strong point anyways, but the strategy worked. If you keep your 50 math and score a 32 verbal you will get 650 - 680 depending on where you get your questions wrong. Hope that helps and good luck.