Those who improved their GRE score after learning vocabulary, how many new words did you memorize (approximately)? I understand that the more the better, but I would like to see some numbers, please
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GRE vocabulary
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I personally believe there are better ways to improve GRE scores without memorizing a list of words. When I retook the test, I memorized about 1200 words and it only improved my score by a couple of points.
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I feel memorizing words doesn't help that much. What may help more is to know the roots of different words (ultra-, super-, in-, etc). I got a 161 on the verbal part. The worst part of the section is choosing the two words that are analogous with each other in meaning, as a personal opinion.
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Be prepared to take a 4+ hour test. Read a handful of articles that you have absolutely no interest in at all until you are tired, then read another. I also found a helpful website that allows you to take GRE practice tests.
http://www.majortests.com/gre/sentence_completion.php
http://www.majortests.com/gre/sentence_completion.php
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I read a book called "Word Power Made Easy" by Norman Lewis, which was a bit cheesy and dated (written in the 1950s I think), but helped me tremendously with the verbal section. It teaches you how to memorize word roots with funny little stories that just stuck, and has lots of little exercises for you to do. It starts out really easy, and progressively gets more difficult. I hardly spent any time just memorizing words (maybe memorized 100 of the Kaplan cards), and got 161 on the verbal section. I do think the book is most effective when you have enough time to go through just a little bit each day, to give your mind time to integrate all of it.
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Oh, the other thing I did was that every time I took a practice test or practice set, I'd make a note of the words I didn't know and look them up, then made a set of flash cards for these. Also, as jamesmr suggested, I read a lot of articles on topics I was not interested in, from the New Yorker and other such sources, again making note of words I did not recognize.
I used the kaplan flash cards and any spare time 3 weeks before the test, i would study those words. I think it was about 250 words. It definitely helps. eventually you will see a pattern that you can use some of the memorized words as a definition for newer memorized words.
In my experience, memorizing is not the best use of your time. Spend your time doing practice tests, and sets of practice questions. Familiarizing yourself with the question types and the timing is the best way to prepare for test day. Test prep books can be helpful, but it's best to buy the book that ETS puts out- it is the most realistic as far as difficulty of questions. I prepared with Kaplan Premier, and I thought some of their strategies were helpful, but the practice tests were easier than the real thing.
I went a little nuts and memorized all 500 vocab flashcards from Kaplan before my first GRE, it was definitely helpful but for my second time taking it I studied more strategies and methods rather than the words themselves and my score went from a 148 to a 159. I HIGHLY recommend Kaplan New GRE Premier...super helpful in helping me raise my verbal score and their practice test CD-rom is awesome and just like the real test. Good luck!
I hated using the ETS practice book. I thought it to be incredibly vague and not helpful. you get limited practice tests and its dry as hell. Princeton Review and Kaplan have a lil online tutorial segment which allows for 5 full practice tests and tips. The best read was the GRE for dummies but it had the worst practice test, as you might expect. I tried all of these and the closest practice tests scores that transferred over to the real thing were actually the Princeton Review ones. Everyone has their own preference, and everyone will prepare and study differently. The important thing is figuring out what techniques and what practice material works bests for you. These threads can make you run around in circles trying to see which one may work for you but with enough time to prep, you may be able to try a few different ones and pick the best one.
I agree with this. This might sound dumb, but I started reading articles in The Atlantic and The New York Times about a week before my test (if you have more than a week, definitely start earlier). This definitely helped me learn how to read a dense article and pull out main ideas, which is what a lot of the verbal section will test you on.
I did this, too. I memorized the 500 Kaplan words through a phone app I downloaded. Once again, I only had about a week to do this and if you have more time, learn all the definitions (even the obscure ones, if possible) of each word. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but a ton of those words showed up on my test and I was thankful I did it.
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The best advice I can give you is to:
1. learn words that people actually use that you don't know.
2. learn word roots
I've made it a habit for years to write down any word I don't know when I hear it used in daily life (either in a conversation, on TV, or in a book, etc) and I make a point to learn it immediately. Those words in particular were the ones I saw on the test.
I also studied, like other people, hundreds of recommended GRE words and maybe only saw 1-2 of those on the test. Learning the word roots (which happens to some extent by studying this way) is way more effective than memorizing a list of 1,000 "GRE words" which probably won't even be on the test anyway.
I didn't take the test twice, so I don't have an exact answer for your original question, but I hope this advice helps.
1. learn words that people actually use that you don't know.
2. learn word roots
I've made it a habit for years to write down any word I don't know when I hear it used in daily life (either in a conversation, on TV, or in a book, etc) and I make a point to learn it immediately. Those words in particular were the ones I saw on the test.
I also studied, like other people, hundreds of recommended GRE words and maybe only saw 1-2 of those on the test. Learning the word roots (which happens to some extent by studying this way) is way more effective than memorizing a list of 1,000 "GRE words" which probably won't even be on the test anyway.
I didn't take the test twice, so I don't have an exact answer for your original question, but I hope this advice helps.
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I used "Kaplan GRE Vocab" and "GRE Vocab Genius". It's great, you can just open the app and quiz yourself whenever you get a free minute. The words you don't know the definition of will show up repeatedly so it's like programmed repetition of your weak points. Apparently a lot of other people are saying that memorizing those words didn't help them and my case is an anomaly, which is entirely possible.
I think 'memorizing' is the wrong term and for me it was an exercise in 'learning' the words. Once you really learn those words, you start to make connections between the roots they contain and roots in words you've never seen. It was an easier way for me to learn both some word roots and full words at the same time instead of learning the word roots separately, which I started to try and quickly abandoned when I realized learning them out of context wasn't getting me anywhere. Then again, this was my quick and dirty method to save time since I only had about a week to prep. To each their own, good luck with the GRE.
I agree with just about everything said above. Only thing I can add: group words based on their meaning and learn them that way. I simply used the Kaplan 500 word flash cards and the Kaplan verbal prep book. I literally took EVERY card and grouped them. In the back of the Kaplan book, the words are also presented in this format. They suggest learning the words this way because you will almost always be tested on a word based on your understadning of another word or a word that reflects the meaning of an entire passage. By studying the words this way,I was able to define words using other GRE words. This makes learning the words more comprehensive. I improved my score from a 149 to a 161 using this method.
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I took the old GRE, so I think learning vocab was slightly more helpful. By studying vocab and taking 15-20 practice tests (mostly computer-based), I improved my verbal score from the low 600's to being nearly perfect. I used the Kaplan flash cards, Barron's Essential Words book, and an app on my phone. That being said, I think what will help each of us improve is completely personal. Take a practice test and look at patterns in the questions you missed. Was it mostly reading comp? In this case reading long, boring articles might help. Was it because you didn't know certain words? I had a timing issue, which came from the fact that I was spending too long trying to figure out word definitions, as well as a general vocab issue. Many of the words I studied came up on the actual test, so maybe I just got lucky, but I'd like to think my studying paid off.
