Roots/stems/prefixes/suffixes

[2shieh]

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]

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]

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]

(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]

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.

[2shieh]

Awesome-- thanks for the advice!!