2shieh Posted August 24, 2010 Posted August 24, 2010 Hi everyone, I'm taking the GRE next Wednesday (Sept 1st) and am going over any last vocab words/ new ones that pop up on practice questions. I haven't really had a chance to take a thorough look through the roots/stems section of any practice books... are they worth studying? Or should I focus on studying as many vocab words as possible instead? Thanks!
DrFaustus666 Posted August 25, 2010 Posted August 25, 2010 That depends, I think, on where you are now. First and foremost, you haven't got a lot of time. You cannot significantly increase your vocabulary between now and September first. With an estimated 40,000+ words in English, it's just not possible. That being said, if you're scoring in the low to mid-range, i.e., up to about 550 or so on verbal, then yes, roots and stems may well help you out. If you're getting 680-700 then you don't need the roots and stems, you already know them all, even if you think you don't. So, learning a couple of hundred more recondite and esoteric new words between now and Sept 1 might indeed not have a deleterious effect on your score, indeed they might even change your Weltannschauung (yes, you'll find that word in a good English dictionary though it is a German word) ... but they might not help either.
balderdash Posted August 25, 2010 Posted August 25, 2010 Neither. Learn the strategies to understand the questions and tricks for answering them first and foremost. That's 80% of doing well on the GRE. That said, if you feel 100% comfortable with all of that, I'd say learn the words that you half-know ("What does lambaste mean again? I always forget...") because you're unlikely to commit a completely new idea to memory. You can, however, solidify the shaky in such a short time frame.
DrFaustus666 Posted August 25, 2010 Posted August 25, 2010 (slightly off topic) Hi Balderdash, I see what you mean about reinforcing words that one half-knows and and so on. But at the highest levels of the test .... and you of all people (I remember your combined score) ought to know this: there are subtleties that a test-taker simply must know in order to get the top score. For example, just for giggles, I took Powerprep II online the other day ... ETS's introduction to the "new" Aug 2011 GRE ... and discovered to my chagrin that I did not know the difference between "laconic" and "taciturn" ... (It was all for naught as it turns out. Powerprep II only gives a RANGE of scores: I scored 690-790 on both tests. A hundred point range on each test ... that's the difference between Harvard-Princeton-Yale and most of the fifty state universities. ) To the Original Poster: Balderdash's point is well taken: in a very short amount of time, probably the best strategy of all is to concentrate on words you've heard, sort-of recognize, but can't easily define. Sorry if I led you astray. John
balderdash Posted August 25, 2010 Posted August 25, 2010 But at the highest levels of the test .... and you of all people (I remember your combined score) ought to know this: there are subtleties that a test-taker simply must know in order to get the top score. For example, just for giggles, I took Powerprep II online the other day ... ETS's introduction to the "new" Aug 2011 GRE ... and discovered to my chagrin that I did not know the difference between "laconic" and "taciturn" ... (It was all for naught as it turns out. Powerprep II only gives a RANGE of scores: I scored 690-790 on both tests. A hundred point range on each test ... that's the difference between Harvard-Princeton-Yale and most of the fifty state universities. ) That's a good point. I guess I specified my advice for time-effectiveness given that the OP only has one week to better the score. I think when I took the exam I had exactly one question where I said "wow, I'm glad I studied that word and learned its nuances" (for 'sybarite'), so there's a lot of effort expended to pick up only a bit of nuance that may or may not appear. But you're still right.
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