The endless wordlist

[ShantanuSingha]

Hi All,

I have been learning words from Barron's 800 words book, but I am scared that the word-list might not be enough.

Can you suggest me if any other study material is required?

[chrismagoosh]

While the word list can seem endless, the Barron's 800 is just the tip of the lexical iceberg. Of course imbibing thousands of words is not necessarily going to translate to an impressive verbal score. Definitely continue to grow off the Barron's lists with other words list (MGRE, etc.) but remember the GRE is testing your knowledge of words function in context. You may very well know the dictionary definition of a word but fail to have a sense of its proper usage in an academic/GRE context.

As much as possible you should try to understand how words function in context. In the following ebook, I expound upon this in detail, while providing plenty of example sentences for common GRE words. Hope this helps .

http://magoosh.com/gre/2012/gre-vocabulary-ebook/

[Puspita]

Hi!

Can anyone tell me any easy way learn these huge number of words...................

[3point14]

Hi!

Can anyone tell me any easy way learn these huge number of words...................

Personally, I found it easiest to just go through flash cards. But, as stated above, just memorizing the dictionary definition of a huge number of words isn't going to guarantee you a good verbal score. I learned 200+ words, and exactly none of them showed up on my test. What I found most useful were the "words with similar meanings" listed on my flashcard. I didn't necessarily know the exact definitions of the those words, but I had a general idea and knew what type of context they would be used in

[Cliopatronus]

Completely agree with the last comment. Memorizing words is next to useless because GRE does not ask you the meaning of the word. You don't need to know what the exact definition is. You just need to know the context in which they are being used.

I did exactly what the last comment suggested - i.e. create groups of words with similar meanings.

For example, you might create something like this:

Category: Poor / poverty

Words: Poor, penniless, destitute, indigent, impecunious, needy, impoverished, etc. I'm sure you can look up more in a thesaurus.

This way you don't need to learn the exact meaning. You just need to remember that these words have something to do with poverty or being poor. This will not only save time, but help you remember more words. I would say that you should create as many of these word groups as you can, and you'll be in good shape.

[alf10087]

I already learned the Barron's 800, and did the posttest for which I didn't do that good (22 out of 30 questions). It still has analogies based in the old GRE format and they are horrible, so I hope I'll do better on the actual test.

I also compared the Barron's wordlist with the one on PR's Verbal Workbook and I only need to learn 177 more in order to know all the words both books recommend. Try and get that book, as it'll not only help you with those other words, but it also has tons of exercises presented in the same way the test does. However, I've read many people's comments about those questions being too easy compared to the actual test.

I'm also playing freerice.com for 1 or 2 hours every other day. I've been improving but I'm stuck in the 40-45 levels. It still helps you a lot to practice and remember some of the words you have learned in the books, and maybe even learn a new one that may show up on the actual test.

That's how I'm getting prepared. My mother tongue is Spanish, btw.