How to Approach GMAT Verbal as a Non-Native English Speaker
By vlad galeev
This might surprise you: being a non-native English speaker might be helping your GMAT Verbal score, not hurting it.
I know this because I’m a non-native English speaker. I’m originally from a small town in Siberia, and I’ve lived in Russia, France, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong. As you can see, none of those are primarily English-speaking countries. I’m about as non-native an English speaker as it gets.
Despite that, I scored in the 99th percentile on GMAT Verbal.
I’m a tutor at GMAT Ninja now, and working with non-native speakers is something I find particularly invigorating, because I was once in their shoes, preparing for this exact test with the exact same fears.
I’d like to share what I learned, both from my own preparation and from years of teaching students in the same position.
Who Actually Has an English Problem on GMAT Verbal
First, the honest answer to the question most non-native speakers are asking: is your English level holding you back?
It’s possible that it is, but the bar is lower than you think. There is a threshold below which language ability does become a limiting factor on the GMAT Verbal section. A rough indicator is if your IELTS Reading score is below 7.0. Another indicator is encountering a large number of unknown words while reading GMAT Verbal passages. If either of these apply to you, it may be worth addressing your English level before focusing heavily on GMAT-specific strategies.
Most non-native speakers preparing for the GMAT are already above that threshold, and if you’re above it, language ability matters far less on the GMAT than you may think.
The Unfounded GMAT verbal Vocabulary Fear
When I started preparing for the GMAT, I was very worried about vocabulary in the Verbal section. In my experience, many non-native speakers share the same concern, and for understandable reasons. When I prepared for the SAT in high school, I had to memorize something like 5,000 words, many of which I haven’t seen again since. I expected the GMAT to follow a similar pattern.
To my surprise, it didn’t!
Don’t get me wrong. I encountered a lot of unknown words in GMAT Verbal passages during my prep but I could infer its meaning through clues in the passage. Sometimes, the passage would define the word for me. I realized then that the verbal section is not testing whether you’ve memorized vocabulary – it’s testing whether you can reason using words.
To test that, you don’t need to know obscure words, so the GMAT mostly avoids that difficult vocabulary.
If you’re a non-native speaker who’s accustomed to Romance languages like Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese, there’s an added advantage that’s worth mentioning: English borrows heavily from Latin and Greek, especially in the kind of formal writing you’ll encounter in Reading Comprehension passages. Even completely unrelated languages like Russian or Turkish that borrow heavily from French could be helpful. You may already recognize more roots than you realize, and often, far more than the average native English speaker does.
Non-Native Speakers Face The Same Challenges on GMAT Verbal As Native Speakers
That said, there’s a specific situation where language does create difficulty, and I want to be precise about this because it’s easy to misdiagnose.
If the vocabulary in a passage feels manageable, but the sentences themselves are hard to follow, the issue probably isn’t language, it’s reading skill. More specifically, it’s whether you’re reading carefully enough to track what the author is actually doing.
This shows up often in GMAT Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension. The sentences themselves usually aren’t difficult, but you might be reading too quickly and without enough attention to structure.
That is a matter of improving processes, not language.
It’s a crucial distinction, because it changes where you invest your time during prep. Additionally, this is something that both native speakers and non-native speakers struggle with. It’s not exclusive to one group or another.
What is GMAT Verbal Reasoning Actually Testing?
The GMAT Verbal section, particularly Critical Reasoning questions, isn’t a test of fluency. It’s a test of how well you understand arguments and structure.
Each Critical Reasoning question is asking you to identify the core of the argument: what’s actually being claimed, and what would support or undermine that claim. In Reading Comprehension, the goal is to identify what the author is trying to accomplish, not just through the content, but through its purpose and structure too.
These are reasoning skills, and they don’t require perfect English, just disciplined thinking. And the brilliant part is that disciplined thinking is something you can train in any language.
And here’s where being a non-native English speaker can actually become an advantage.
Native speakers are accustomed to reading on autopilot and rely on intuition built up over a lifetime of reading English. That intuition can work against them on the GMAT, which is specifically designed to reward careful, structural reading over surface-level understanding.
Non-native speakers can deliberately learn the skill of identifying argument structure, and many outperform native speakers for exactly this reason.
How I Conquered GMAT Verbal Reasoning as a Non-Native Speaker
My own issue with GMAT Verbal had nothing to do with vocabulary, and everything to do with my process. I was all over the place. I didn’t have a proper approach for Critical Reasoning or Reading Comprehension. I was simply reading and re-reading these passages, without having a true understanding of how to properly analyze. My process was inefficient, and it’s a common mistake students make.
During my self-study, I came across GMAT Ninja videos, just like many of you. I watched a lot of them.
They helped me finally understand how to tackle what the verbal section is truly testing. I kept practicing until the process became almost reflexive. Over time, Verbal questions started to feel easier and easier.
When I finally took my exam, I scored a 770, roughly equivalent to a 755 on the current GMAT, and got that 99th percentile in Verbal I was chasing.
At the time, I had no idea the tutors whose videos I watched so avidly would one day become my colleagues!
The Bottom Line
If you’re a non-native speaker preparing for GMAT Verbal, don’t ask yourself, “How do I improve my English?”
Instead, ask:
“Do I have a solid process for Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension?”
That reframe makes all the difference.
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