Are there any books you'd recommend to improve a verbal score?

[Ingo93]

I took the test cold and got 154 in verbal. In general the verbal portion of the test gave me some trouble, so I'd like to know if there are any books, authors, etc I should be reading to help improve my score/prepare for the reading section of the GRE.

[sjoh197]

Not a book... but I printed out the top 100 gre vocab words... just google it, you'll find multiple pretty consistent lists. It definitely helped me. Between this and a few practice tests, I scored a 165 on the verbal. 

[quietman]

I initially had some issues with the GRE verbal section (see here), but I ended up scoring 170 using the following, some of which were more helpful than others:

Manhattan GRE verbal guides

I would avoid the sentence equivalence/text completion guide, as it is far too concerned with extremely rare words (e.g. lucubration) that are unlikely to appear on the test; from my experience the verbal section is not so much a measure of one's vocabulary as it is an assessment of how well they can use subtle contextual clues to make the right selection(s) from a list of average to slightly difficult words. The reading comprehension guide wasn't as flawed, as it didn't misrepresent what is on the test to nearly the same extent, but I don't feel that it offers much.

Magoosh

I cannot recommend this enough. It is an online service which features verbal lessons and hundreds of verbal questions, ranging from easy to very hard. The material is highly representative of the ETS questions I've seen, and unlike Manhattan's material the focus is on using context to discern the correct choice rather than knowing tricky vocabulary (though it's still emphasized that increasing one's vocabulary is important--they also have online vocab flashcards). If you are struggling with certain questions you can also email Magoosh employees, who will provide detailed explanations of the questions and help work you through them.

ETS guide

I thought the lessons were fairly underdeveloped and not very helpful, but the practice questions were a very important component in my study, and helped me see what type of questions I'd get on test day and what type of answers the testmakers were looking for. If you buy the guide you also get access to two computerized tests, which is helpful preparation for those writing on a computer.

LSAT material (PowerScore and Manhattan logical reasoning and reading comprehension)

I took the LSAT two years prior to the GRE and scored a 174. Both PowerScore and Manhattan had strong logical reasoning sections which will help you with various question types that are seen in the GRE verbal section. The reading comprehension guides were okay (superior to the Manhattan GRE reading comp guide) and helpful in the early stages of my study, but beyond the basics improvement was far more a matter of doing official practice tests (there are loads available) than reviewing the guides. I found the LSAT reading comprehension significantly more challenging than the GRE reading comprehension, and believe that it would be especially useful to those seeking top-tier verbal scores.

 

 

 

Edited February 12, 2016 by quietman