Hi Jen,
I've read your GMAT verbal supplemental guide and noticed that you give some great tips for comprehension in the guide.
Today I took the powerprep II exam and scored a 430 - 530 on the verbal section. I noticed that it is quite a bit more difficult than the GMAT verbal section. For the most part, the main difference that I found was that GMAT doesn't normally as vocab questions whereas the GRE loves them.
Given your experience with the exam, and your ability to guide students in taking these tests, what is a realistic strategy for me to improve my score by say 100 - 150 points?
I am very skeptical about picking up a dictionary and memorizing words. I noticed that MGRE has 1000 words, but come on, how can we memorize these words? Also, there is no assurance that they may appear on the exam.
Other than the vocab, it seems to me that the comprehension and critical reasoning is on par with the gmat questions.
I look forward to hearing from your feedback and some strategies that you have seen work for other people.
Also, if there is no way to improve but to memorize, what would be the amount of time you suggest would be realistic for this?
thanks
GRE Forum Archive
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- kginena
- Students
- Posts: 7
- Joined: Mon May 14, 2012 2:31 am
- jen
- Manhattan Prep Staff
- Posts: 51
- Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2011 9:50 am
Re: Improving GRE Verbal Score - Jen Dziura Question
Hi there,
I'm glad you liked the book! Let's talk about vocab!
So, first, don't be ridiculous -- of course you can memorize 1,000 words! Your competition is doing exactly that! How did I end up being a GRE author and teacher? In the late 1990s, I memorized 2000+ words to beat the SAT and get into a good college.
Of course, if you memorize 1,000 words, there's no guarantee that those will be the ones you see -- otherwise, what would be the point of the GRE? They would just release a word list, we'd all learn the entire list, and everyone who wasn't lazy would get a perfect score. There's no point to that. The GRE is testing whether you know the majority of a body of several thousand important words by picking 100 or so to test you on. To make sure you know those 100, you have to learn a few thousand (or fewer, depending on how strong your vocabulary is now).
Most people can greatly increase their vocabulary and GRE score with 3-6 months of effort. Some non-native speakers may need more time.
If English is not your first language, you've already learned thousands of words. You can certainly learn thousands more.
Furthermore, when you start learning vocab words, you will soon discover that, after the first few hundred, you start seeing words and kind of automatically knowing more or less what they mean, because those words have roots in common with lots of other words you already know. Obstreperous, obstinate? Pretty similar. Why? Because, even if you didn't consciously know that the root ob- means "against" (or "facing"), you probably do know "obnoxious", and once you learn a few more ob- words, your brain starts making those connections.
In other words, much like how "Making the first million dollars is the hardest," I might say, "Learning the first 500 words is the hardest." And then it gets easier.
On this page, you can find some articles I wrote about learning vocab (this material is adapted from our Strategy Guides):
http://www.manhattanprep.com/gre/gre-flashcards.cfm
That said, other important skills for the GRE include:
- Recognizing variations on learned words
- Being able to use those words metaphorically
- Being able to read twisty GRE sentences
As for variations -- of course, "inadvertent" and "inadvertently" are the same word (in adjective and adverb form). You can put un- in front of all kinds of words to negate them. Et cetera.
As for using words metaphorically, simple words like "mushroom" and "balloon" can be used as verbs (a rash mushrooms across your skin - BAD; your investment account balloons - GOOD!)
As for twisty GRE sentence, Chapter 5 of our Sentence Equivalence and Text Completion Strategy Guide offers some help with idioms and figures of speech.
Of course, it's also important to read, and to read university-level material, particularly of a liberal arts bent, or from science sources. You need to see expressions, metaphorical language, and new words in context.
Finally, please don't memorize words from a dictionary! Use the list in our strategy guide, or our two sets of 500 flashcards each, or another reputable source. You'll find that many companies' GRE materials have a remarkable amount of overlap. For whatever reason, in our culture, we've decided that certain words are "vocabulary words."
Sincerely,
Jen
p.s. You're not going to spend 3-6 months learning vocab words just for the GRE! It would be hard to be motivated if you were doing this only for a standardized test. Pleasantly, studies show that people with larger vocabularies make more money and are thought by other people to be smarter. Yay!
I'm glad you liked the book! Let's talk about vocab!
So, first, don't be ridiculous -- of course you can memorize 1,000 words! Your competition is doing exactly that! How did I end up being a GRE author and teacher? In the late 1990s, I memorized 2000+ words to beat the SAT and get into a good college.
Of course, if you memorize 1,000 words, there's no guarantee that those will be the ones you see -- otherwise, what would be the point of the GRE? They would just release a word list, we'd all learn the entire list, and everyone who wasn't lazy would get a perfect score. There's no point to that. The GRE is testing whether you know the majority of a body of several thousand important words by picking 100 or so to test you on. To make sure you know those 100, you have to learn a few thousand (or fewer, depending on how strong your vocabulary is now).
Most people can greatly increase their vocabulary and GRE score with 3-6 months of effort. Some non-native speakers may need more time.
If English is not your first language, you've already learned thousands of words. You can certainly learn thousands more.
Furthermore, when you start learning vocab words, you will soon discover that, after the first few hundred, you start seeing words and kind of automatically knowing more or less what they mean, because those words have roots in common with lots of other words you already know. Obstreperous, obstinate? Pretty similar. Why? Because, even if you didn't consciously know that the root ob- means "against" (or "facing"), you probably do know "obnoxious", and once you learn a few more ob- words, your brain starts making those connections.
In other words, much like how "Making the first million dollars is the hardest," I might say, "Learning the first 500 words is the hardest." And then it gets easier.
On this page, you can find some articles I wrote about learning vocab (this material is adapted from our Strategy Guides):
http://www.manhattanprep.com/gre/gre-flashcards.cfm
That said, other important skills for the GRE include:
- Recognizing variations on learned words
- Being able to use those words metaphorically
- Being able to read twisty GRE sentences
As for variations -- of course, "inadvertent" and "inadvertently" are the same word (in adjective and adverb form). You can put un- in front of all kinds of words to negate them. Et cetera.
As for using words metaphorically, simple words like "mushroom" and "balloon" can be used as verbs (a rash mushrooms across your skin - BAD; your investment account balloons - GOOD!)
As for twisty GRE sentence, Chapter 5 of our Sentence Equivalence and Text Completion Strategy Guide offers some help with idioms and figures of speech.
Of course, it's also important to read, and to read university-level material, particularly of a liberal arts bent, or from science sources. You need to see expressions, metaphorical language, and new words in context.
Finally, please don't memorize words from a dictionary! Use the list in our strategy guide, or our two sets of 500 flashcards each, or another reputable source. You'll find that many companies' GRE materials have a remarkable amount of overlap. For whatever reason, in our culture, we've decided that certain words are "vocabulary words."
Sincerely,
Jen
p.s. You're not going to spend 3-6 months learning vocab words just for the GRE! It would be hard to be motivated if you were doing this only for a standardized test. Pleasantly, studies show that people with larger vocabularies make more money and are thought by other people to be smarter. Yay!
- kginena
- Students
- Posts: 7
- Joined: Mon May 14, 2012 2:31 am
GRE Verbal Score - Jen Dziura Question
Hi Jen,
I wanted to update you that I did go through the 1000 words of vocab and wrote the exam. I scored 520 on the verbal section, which is in the range of what I was scoring on the practice exams. i felt quite comfortable during the verbal section, so I was expecting a higher mark than this.
For now, I need to raise my score by around 100-120 points and need your advice on what else I should do to achieve my goal?
thanks.
N.b. I don't like comprehension questions that much...
I wanted to update you that I did go through the 1000 words of vocab and wrote the exam. I scored 520 on the verbal section, which is in the range of what I was scoring on the practice exams. i felt quite comfortable during the verbal section, so I was expecting a higher mark than this.
For now, I need to raise my score by around 100-120 points and need your advice on what else I should do to achieve my goal?
thanks.
N.b. I don't like comprehension questions that much...
- jen
- Manhattan Prep Staff
- Posts: 51
- Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2011 9:50 am
Re: Improving GRE Verbal Score - Jen Dziura Question
Hi there,
First of all, it's good that you did as well on your real test as you did on your practice exams (some people tend to freak out a little on the real day!) It's great that you felt relaxed.
As for improving further, I would do a LOT of reading practice, and really analyze every single wrong answer. Very frequently, a wrong answer has one word or phrase that makes it wrong (sometimes it's too extreme, sometimes it's sort of like what the passage said but not close enough). Or, many wrong answers are indeed true -- but not what the question is asking!
See Stacey Koprince's post about analyzing your errors:
http://www.manhattanprep.com/gre/blog/i ... ur-errors/
I assume you have studied all the problems in the GRE Official Guide (as ANYONE should have done before taking the real test!)
http://www.amazon.com/Official-Guide-re ... 0071700528
Note that a new edition of the Guide just came out:
http://www.amazon.com/Official-Revised- ... b_title_bk
This new book is the same except for one additional practice test in the back (and one more computer-based PowerPrep exam, although anyone can download that for free).
If you need more RC practice, you could consider buying the even older version of this book, for the OLD GRE, and JUST looking at the Reading Comp. (The rest of this book is SEVERELY OUT OF DATE -- as you know, the GRE does not contain antonyms, analogies, etc.) While the new GRE contains many short passages and new question formats ("select all that apply," "select the sentence in the passage"), it still contains long passages with regular multiple choice questions, and as such, this book is still an OK source of RC help (and it's being sold used on Amazon for as little as 1 penny plus shipping): http://www.amazon.com/Official-Revised- ... b_title_bk
Finally, on vocab -- the new GRE is full of problems where the vocab isn't that hard, but the sentence is really twisty!
Study Chapter 5 of the Sentence Equivalence and Text Completion book for a guide to idiomatic English.
And then, if you miss any vocab problems where you knew the words but still got it wrong (!), really analyze and figure out why. (Put top priority on doing this for the vocab questions in the Official Guide and in PowerPrep).
Jen
First of all, it's good that you did as well on your real test as you did on your practice exams (some people tend to freak out a little on the real day!) It's great that you felt relaxed.
As for improving further, I would do a LOT of reading practice, and really analyze every single wrong answer. Very frequently, a wrong answer has one word or phrase that makes it wrong (sometimes it's too extreme, sometimes it's sort of like what the passage said but not close enough). Or, many wrong answers are indeed true -- but not what the question is asking!
See Stacey Koprince's post about analyzing your errors:
http://www.manhattanprep.com/gre/blog/i ... ur-errors/
I assume you have studied all the problems in the GRE Official Guide (as ANYONE should have done before taking the real test!)
http://www.amazon.com/Official-Guide-re ... 0071700528
Note that a new edition of the Guide just came out:
http://www.amazon.com/Official-Revised- ... b_title_bk
This new book is the same except for one additional practice test in the back (and one more computer-based PowerPrep exam, although anyone can download that for free).
If you need more RC practice, you could consider buying the even older version of this book, for the OLD GRE, and JUST looking at the Reading Comp. (The rest of this book is SEVERELY OUT OF DATE -- as you know, the GRE does not contain antonyms, analogies, etc.) While the new GRE contains many short passages and new question formats ("select all that apply," "select the sentence in the passage"), it still contains long passages with regular multiple choice questions, and as such, this book is still an OK source of RC help (and it's being sold used on Amazon for as little as 1 penny plus shipping): http://www.amazon.com/Official-Revised- ... b_title_bk
Finally, on vocab -- the new GRE is full of problems where the vocab isn't that hard, but the sentence is really twisty!
Study Chapter 5 of the Sentence Equivalence and Text Completion book for a guide to idiomatic English.
And then, if you miss any vocab problems where you knew the words but still got it wrong (!), really analyze and figure out why. (Put top priority on doing this for the vocab questions in the Official Guide and in PowerPrep).
Jen
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