Ryan |GMAT Verbal Tutor

Achievements:

  1. GMAT Verbal: Students are admitted to prestigious business schools around the world, including Magic 7 business schools and top 3 business schools in France.
  2. SAT: Students are admitted to top 50 undergraduate programs in the United States and world’s top 100 undergraduate programs.
  3. TOEFL: Students achieved the admission standard for their dream schools (speaking/writing above 25) in three weeks.

How to help you?

Q:What should I do if I always spend too much time on Reading Comprehension (RC)? I understand the article without time limit. But I got wrong answers easily under time pressure.

A: You might be reading the GMAT RC in the same way as you do the TOEFL reading test. However, they are quite different. If you understand the article without time limit, it means that your reading ability is fine. If you got wrong answers easily under time pressure, it means that your reading approach is wrong. The GMAT RC test is to test your understanding of a big picture/structure/purpose. It does not aim to test detail/example/vocabulary like TOEFL. Therefore, we suggest you use “structured reading method,” which means you have to stop and think about the structure at the end of each paragraph. Many students worry that they are not reading it fast enough and always rush through finishing the article. They tend to fall into the traps. In fact, the slower a student reads, the more important it is for him or her to read correctly to understand the big picture. Properly trained students can answer a question in less than 60 seconds.

Q: In Critical Reasoning (CR) section, it is challenging to pick between two answer choices after narrowing down the options. And I often end up with the wrong one. How to improve the accuracy rate?

A: This is due to the lack of “pre-phrasing”. 90% of the questions in CR section can be solved by “pre-phrasing”, which means that you can guess the answer without reading the answer choices. This technique can be trained to improve both accuracy and speed. This is one of the things that separate the high scorers from the rest of the test takers. It is important to know that 80% of the answer choices are wrong and are designed to confuse the test takers. The longer you focus on answer choices, the more likely you are to be tricked. In fact, the clues to solving the questions are in the stimulus. Therefore, you should spend at least 2/3 of the time reading the question and spend less than 1/3 of the time looking at the answer choices.

Q: I have read the handouts for Sentence Correction (SC) a million times and memorized all the grammar rules. But why is the accuracy rate not high enough?

A: The nature of SC is to examine your understanding of the context. Despite the complicated grammar rules, the author’s expressions are reasonable as long as they do not violate major principles of English grammar. But the author’s “meaning” must be paraphrased very precisely and without compromising. Therefore, memorizing the grammar rules can solve more than 70% of the questions. For the rest of the V33+ questions, you need to focus on the context. The correct answers are usually “correct but without perfect grammar”; the trap answer choices tend to have “standard grammar with some changes in the meaning”. A good training method is to condense the information on each question to “key points that are within ten words”. At this point, you can easily select the correct answer from the choice options.

Q: I’ve completed exams in Official Guide (OG) and Prep Practice (PP). Why can’t I score higher?

A: Most students do not “review” the mistakes well enough. Please bear two things in mind. First of all, you should review “every question”, not just the ones you did wrong. Secondly, in addition to reviewing each option, it is also important to think about why you did it wrong in the first place. If you can get it right now, do you know why you did it wrong earlier? How did the experts solve the problem? How to learn from them? How to avoid the same mistake in the future? What are you going to do to strengthen your weakness? In other words, most of the students finished the content review, but ignored the performance review. That’s why they cannot improve significantly.

About me

Ryan has more than 7 years of experience in teaching English. He has rich experience in GMAT as well. He can help you improve from V20 to V40+. No matter what preparation stage you are at, Ryan can guide you to achieve success.

His hobbies include solo-traveling (18 countries and counting), scuba diving, going to midnight movies, and caring too much about basketball games. He would also have more Italian pizza and gelato if only the restaurants would make themselves readily available in Taipei.

Academic background:

College of Law, National Taiwan University

Special experiences:

Ryan had lived in Europe, and he is currently working in an English-speaking environment. He can give lessons in English and Chinese.

Words for students:

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” ── Einstein

Students should not use the same method to prepare over and over again. Even though students practice a lot, they are not making improvements. The best way to break through the bottleneck is to seek professional guidance. The result is mind-blowing!