Cracking the GRE Verbal Section

Cracking the GRE Verbal

For now, there’s nothing special to be told about the verbal section. So, lets get to the point rightaway.

Word List

Word List is nothing to be afraid of. It is not even an alien term. It is just a collection of words that appeared in the test. There have been many companies that started collecting these words but only a few became really popular with the students. It can be assumed that Barron’s is considered the most widely used book. Why? You guessed it right. It has most number of words. Approximately 3500. No don’t be afraid. Most of the words are already known to you, that is, if you’ve finished reading the three books that I mentioned in the foundation chapter.

Complete Barron’s Wordlist

As already pointed out, this book is considered “the most widely” used book among students preparing for GRE. It is one of the simplest books that follows a pattern in introducing you to a plethora of new words. Simple: Word, Type, Example Sentence. This makes it extremely easy to learn new words. Most students go blindly byhearting the words. This technique is not doubt the best. But there’s a catch. At the end of the 50th wordlist (by the way there are a total of 50 wordlists that you need to master), you’ll start forgetting the words in the 1st wordlist. So, I’ve come up with a technique that works perfectly for most of the people. Remember I said “most”. So, don’t blame me if it doesn’t work for you.

Technique of Crushing the Wordlists – The Inverted Tree Method

Not a technique as such, but I was able to complete all the wordlists in 17 days using this method. Before going into the technique, let us have a look at three types of words you’ll come across.

1. Trivial Words – These are the words that are rght, obvious enough. You can give out the meaning to these words even if someone wakes you up from your sleep and asks you. You need not have to spend too much time on these types of words.

2. New Words – These are words that are completely new to you. Its almost like you’ve seen them for the first time. So you’ll have to spend a little time with these words.

3. Tough Words – These are words you need to set aside and revise almost daily. They are tough to be learnt by just a single reading. So, get prepared to stay with these words for a long time.

Alright, we’re all set to look at the technique. Having made the differentiation, it’ll now be easier to classify words as you go through the wordlists. The general algorithm, as I sweetly call it is as follows:

1. Pick a wordlist
2. Give it a reading
3. Strike out the words you are able to recognise in the first go
4. Write down the rest of the words in a separate book
5. Repeat step 1 till all the 50 wordlists are over

Thats not it. After finishing off a wordlist, and after writing down the words that you don’t know in a separate book, make sure you revise that wordlist of yours. Try to revise the next day morning. For example,

• Pick a wordlist 1 on Monday morning.
• Write down the words not known to you in a book within 1 hour
• Pick another wordlist 4 and write down the words not known to you again
• Pick another wordlist 9 and write down the words not known to you again
• Three wordlists per day would be sufficient
• Now at the end of Monday, you would revise the list you’ve prepared and then revise it again on Tueday Morning.
• Now forget about this list and keep picking the wordlists and repeat the same procedure.
• Now, after three days, that is on Thursday, revise the list you prepared on Monday. You’re done with it. Repeat the revision after 5 days and then a final revision after 10 days.
• Do this for all the lists you’ve prepared.

Now the real part starts, make sure you do all the above in maybe 14 days. Now leave barron’s and catch hold of your list. Call it by your name for fun. Follow the steps:

• Scan the first list and strike off the words that you recognise immediately
• Write down the words not known to you again as a separate list
• Do this with all your lists clubbing 3 – 4 wordlists together everytime.

If i’m not mistaken, you must have gotten around 15 wordlists from your 50 wordlists. Now, repeat the same procedure again with this, until you are left with say 3 wordlists. These might contain a total of 250 words for an average learner. Keep revising this list.

The hard truth – What did you actually do and why this method works?

When you first scanned the list and striked off a few words, you actually filtered off thos “Trivial Words”. And carried over the “New Words” into your wordlist. At this point what you think as “New Words” are not the actual new words. You came across these words at some point in your life. You carried out this process, till you were left with no more than 3 wordlists. The hard truth is that, the words contained in these 3 wordlists are the ones that fall into the “Tough Words” category. These are the real “New Words”. So, make sure you revise this Tough Words list as many times as possible. This method works because you are ultimately filtering out the words that you “really” don’t know!

In this method, you are taking a number of wordlist(50) and then eventually narrowing them down to a lower number(15 by clubbing three wordlists together) and then you are narrowing that down to a still lower number(3 in this case) If you represent all this in a pictorial fashion, what you’ll observe is that this looks like an inverted tree. And thus, I call my method, The Inverted Tree Method.

Princeton List

Barron’s book call it the Wordlists and Princeton calls it a Hit-Parade. This is a beautiful book and contains some really important words. If you’ve finished Barron’s then, you’ll find that most of the words in Princeton are just the same. But beware, there are a few words that aren’t. Catch hold of them and in the mean time, complete a full fledged revision too.

Kaplan’s List

I never read from this book. This is an optional wordlist but you’d loose nothing giving it a single reading. Who knows, you might end up getting a few new words from this list.

Antonyms

There is a common question asked my many.

If GRE contains antonyms, why did I spend days together learning Synonyms?

You have a point there! But realise that inorder to answer an antonym question, you need to know what exactly the words in the question mean. So, the good news is that you aren’t wasting your time learning synonyms. Infact, you are preparing a solid base for cracking the rest of the sections.

Barron’s List

As such there is no exclusive list for Antonyms, but at the end of each wordlist, there are a couple of antonym exercises which you can use for practice. Make sure you do as many as possible, before going to the exam.

Princeton’s List

Again, there is no exclusive list for antonyms, but Princeton provides a lot of mini exercises for practising all kinds of question types. The way this book explains how they arrived at the answer is worth noting. This is because you will be using most of Princeton’s Strategies in the exam.

Kaplan’s List (Optional)

Though this is an optional book when you are reading the other two, it is worth spending a day or two to go through the strategies given in this book. Who knows? You might end up getting a question right using Kaplan’s Strategies.

Analogies & Sentence Completion

These are the type of questions, that I feel, should be dealt together not because of any similarity between them, but because of the way you approach them. The sentence completion exercises given in Barron’s should be dealt in the end. Ofcourse, this varies from individual to individual. You can start off with an exercise in Barron’s and if you find you are unable to answer them, shift to either Princeton or Kaplan. Keep doing the exercises and at point you’ll find that you’ve developed some sort of an intuition on how to tackle this type of questions. At that moment, it is the right time to try your hand at Barron’s Exercises. Analogies can be dealt with in a similar manner.

Reading Comprehension

This part is considered to be the most notorious of all the sections in GRE. Why? Because, most take it easy. They think they can deal with this section just four or five days before the GRE. The section can be tackled easily provided you can improve your reading speed. Not just that, reading fast does not ensure that you can answer every question correctly. “Reading with accuracy” is needed. There is a general rule in english that states “Your reading accuracy falls with an increase in reading speed” So you need to actually determine the ideal reading speed with which you can understand the paragraph.

Barron’s Exercises

Barron’s exercises are like a must to get a grip over the RC section. One drawback is that once you complete the RC sections given in Barron’s, you’ll observe that you are able to score more than 600 in the Verbal Section given by the Barron’s Testing CD. Don’t be over confident at this stage. The reason is because, most of the paragraphs that appear on the Barron’s CBT are the ones you’ve already solved. So, just a word of caution, solve either the Barron’s RC Exercises or Barron’s CBT but not both.

Princeton’s Principles

Not many RC’s are given by Princeton but the way this book explains on how to answer these RCs is simply superb. You are given a set of general principles that you can apply to any RC. They do not guarantee a solution but they do promise that you’ll arrive at the most probabilistic answer, if done in the right way. One good thing is that Princeton’s RC Exercises differ from the ones given in the Princeton’s CBT CD. So you need not have the fear you had when solving Barron’s.

Kaplan’s Tactics

I am basically a Princeton admirer, maybe because I spent most of my time with it. But if you somehow don’t like the principles given by Princeton, then you can go for Kaplan’s Tactics (as they sweetly call it). These are no inferior compared to Princeton’s. Kaplan projects their tactics in a very lucid way too. They use many examples in showing how powerful their tactics are.

Technique of playing with the RC Section

There are two techniques that can be used to crack the RC section. Again, these might not work for everyone. The first method is somewhat similar to the method we used to employ in our school days. When you are displayed the question, first have a look at it and then grasp the overall meaning of the question. And then have a look at the choices. Now start reading the paragraph. Your mind will be triggered when you come across the most “meaningful” answer. But this method is somewhat crude.

The second method is somewhat refined. This is not my method but is somewhat similar to Princeton’s Method. When you are given the RC, first read out all the first lines of each paragraph and then take time in noting down the keywords (if possible). After finishing off the reading, have a look at the question and then tts choices and strike off the “most obviously wrong” choices. This is because, by noting down the keywords, you will be able to grasp the overall idea of the passage. After striking off the irrelevant choices, you will be left with atmost three choices. Now, you will have to decide where the answer to this question might lie depending on your keywords. Once the paragraph is recognised, read through the paragraph and try to find the answer. Most likely, you should find the answer, as explained by Princeton. If you are unable to find the answer, try going through a different paragraph. If however, you are still unable to find the answer, don’t just stay with that question, because your timer is still running. Make an “intelligent guess” and move onto the next question.

To get a feel of some tough RCs, have a look at the Mega RCs document we have put up in the En?gma Forum. We will provide you with a direct link here, in a couple of days. Till then, you can spend time in solving off the questions provided by the giants.

——————– Source : En?gma.