Preparing for Verbal (other than memorizing words)

[hejduk]

I'm doing the usual suggestions for studying for the verbal (memorizing vocab), but what are other strategies for excelling in the verbal and writing section?

[hejduk]

Another strategy I have been informed of is taking several words that mean the same thing (negligent, rash, remiss), and to do some "word clustering".

[American in Beijing]

Instead of using electronic flashcards or a word list, write your vocabulary words out on paper flashcards. It's not exactly environmentally friendly or good for your hand, but the process of physically writing out 3,000 words onto flashcards helped me better remember what each word means. Make sure you constantly review the words you have already learned as well! You'd be amazed at how quickly you can forget a word you spent hours memorizing.

Analogies were the death of me. Ever since the SAT analogies and I have shared a feeling of mutual animosity. The book that I used to study (Barron's) suggested that you try to fit the relationship into a sentence. For example, if you're given the analogy "dog: puppy", you can say in your mind "A puppy is a small dog." Then you replace the words "puppy" and "dog" with the words from the answer key. If none of them work, then maybe you just need to think of a new sentence. But this trick worked well for me and I did much better on the analogies part of the GRE than I did on the SAT.

[Branwen daughter of Llyr]

I agree that writing out flashcards works - really embeds the words in your brain.

Also, read A LOT - The Economist, Scientific American, Time Magazine, The New Yorker, any magazine that targets an intellectual community and uses complex sentences, words, and ideas is a good bet.

I studied with the following books - Princeton's Cracking the GRE for basic strategies and vocab, Kaplan's Advanced Verbal, and Barron's 800 Essential GRE words. The month before the test, I studied for about 3 hours a day.

I ended up scoring 720 on the verbal, and got a 5.0 on the AWA (I strayed from formulaic essay writing, being an English applicant LOL).

Good luck!

[mssyAK]

Write sentences! Although handmade flashcards are so key, write sentences for the words that refuse to stick - and write them in a way that clearly elucidates what the word means. I was obsessed with Lost when I was writing mine, so I have ones like, "The pith of the issue between Jack and Locke is destiny vs. freedom of choice." It seems silly but... it worked.