GRE English Lit (Sept/Oct 2014)

[queennight]

Does anybody have any tips in terms of writing the GRE English Lit? I've noticed a lot of us on this forum wildly panicking about the test itself, but it doesn't seem like there are a lot of resources floating around (aside from vade mecum and hapax).

 

Even just a general idea of how anybody studied (or is planning to study) for the exam would be a huge help - timeline, cue cards/no cue cards, stuff like that.

 

In terms of myself, I'm writing in late October (the only time it's offered in my area), and I'm hoping to dedicate a solid 2 months (because I'm pretty certain at this point that I won't study before September and my awful summer job is over) to the process, underneath all of my other schoolwork. I bought the Princeton GRE book (which is, honestly, a bit of a blast to read) and I've also downloaded online study guides, but haven't done much otherwise.

 

Any advice/sharing during the process would be hugely appreciated!

[unræd]

Does anybody have any tips in terms of writing the GRE English Lit? I've noticed a lot of us on this forum wildly panicking about the test itself, but it doesn't seem like there are a lot of resources floating around (aside from vade mecum and hapax).

 

Even just a general idea of how anybody studied (or is planning to study) for the exam would be a huge help - timeline, cue cards/no cue cards, stuff like that.

 

In terms of myself, I'm writing in late October (the only time it's offered in my area), and I'm hoping to dedicate a solid 2 months (because I'm pretty certain at this point that I won't study before September and my awful summer job is over) to the process, underneath all of my other schoolwork. I bought the Princeton GRE book (which is, honestly, a bit of a blast to read) and I've also downloaded online study guides, but haven't done much otherwise.

 

Any advice/sharing during the process would be hugely appreciated!

 

Flaschards. Reading Norton headnotes, and the shorter poetry. Flashcards. Listening to Yale's Lit Theory course podcast on the bus. Flaschcards.

 

Oh, and I might have made some flashcards.

[Dr. Old Bill]

Personally, I'm planning on circling "C" for everything and will keep my fingers crossed that I don't manage to fall into a negative percentile.

 

Seriously though, my preparation to this point has been reading as many works on that "recommended" list I toyed with, and starting to read (finally!) Cracking the GRE. I hope to do a practice test before my next semester starts in a couple of weeks, and will be checking out hapax and vade mecum regularly up until September 27th, but a lot of me is just hoping that my preexisting knowledge will go a long way on the test. As LyonessRampant has mentioned across many helpful GC threads, memorization of general details about a wide range of works is the best way to prepare. Personally, I've supplemented reading works of literature with watching high-quality / unabridged miniseries versions of certain works as well (i.e., BBC editions). So far I've knocked out Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Jane Eyre and Great Expectations in that way, and I've got Wuthering Heights, Tom Jones, and David Copperfield lined up for viewing soon as well. Many of these are available on Netflix or Amazon Prime, by the way (though my wife is a big Austen and Bronte fan, so I've admittedly bought a few as well).

 

Beyond that, I'm not the praying sort, but I certainly don't lack in the "aggressively hoping" department, so will be doing a lot of that over the next 6.5 weeks.

[jhefflol]

Genius, Wyatt's Torch! I never would have thought to watch movie versions of books. I shall try that!

I've been making lots of flash cards and reviewing sparknotes for a good amount of works. I'm refreshing myself on some poetry and a few major prose works. I don't think I'll be rereading any novels or plays, though. I might reopen that Norton Anthology of criticism but I've had nightmares about that book, so maybe not. Has anyone else used that book? The big white one? Ugh.

I bought the Princeton Review prep book and it has some key terms and mythological figures which is incredibly helpful for this discipline in its own right.

Honestly I feel like I'm just grasping in the dark for whatever points I can get to boost my score. The amount of stuff this test covers is absolutely overwhelming.

[Poiple]

I think the best thing to do is not overthink "how much" you should be studying. The test is huge, you could study for it for two years if you wanted too, but it's just not feasible. You know how much time you have to dedicate to it, you just need to make your time count and squeeze the most out of those hours studying as possible!

 

I've started studying quite early, but between now and my test date (Oct 25th) I am going on vacation and having major surgery on my stomach (I'll be on a liquid only diet for the 6 weeks up to my test - ugh, fatigue here I come!) so I'm trying to squeeze as many hours in pre-surgery as possible.

[Dr. Old Bill]

I think the best thing to do is not overthink "how much" you should be studying. The test is huge, you could study for it for two years if you wanted too, but it's just not feasible. You know how much time you have to dedicate to it, you just need to make your time count and squeeze the most out of those hours studying as possible!

 

Yes, this most accurately reflects my line of thinking about it. There's a lot one can do to prepare for the test, but...there's also a lot that's just out of your hands. The range is so incredibly broad that most tenured Enlish professors would probably be lucky to get in the 90+ percentile. That's not to say that studying is futile -- it's certainly not! -- but it's best to get out of the mindset that it's a test that you can get 100% on. I mean, technically it is, but when you have a maximum of 40 seconds to answer each question (however you manage to distribute that time...), and you literally cannot know in advance a single one of the questions that will be on the test, it's far more prudent to get the gist of the major works...which is why the hapax legomena and vade mecum sites are so helpful.

 

I've started studying quite early, but between now and my test date (Oct 25th) I am going on vacation and having major surgery on my stomach (I'll be on a liquid only diet for the 6 weeks up to my test - ugh, fatigue here I come!) so I'm trying to squeeze as many hours in pre-surgery as possible.

 

Ack! Sorry to hear this! Enjoy your vacation, and good luck with the surgery (and the equally horrid surgery prep)!

[littlepigeon]

ETS itself says that it's essentially impossible to make a perfect score on the Lit Subject test (unlike some of its other Subject tests). I've taken a few practice exams, which are extremely helpful, and my one piece of advice would be to make sure you're familiar (in THE most general sense) with lit crit. As in, there is ALWAYS (ok, maybe not always, but on every test I've taken there has been) a question that has blurb definitions of about five schools of lit theory, and you have to match the school to the definition. So basically, go on Wikipedia and memorize the first paragraph or two of the pages for Structuralism, Deconstruction, Post-Structuralism, New Criticism, New Historicism, etc.

 

Other than that, the best advice I can think of is to focus on what you already know. I (shamefully) never took a single class in either Romanticism or Victorian lit while in undergrad or grad school, so I'm not going to waste a hundred thousand hours trying to figure out how to differentiate the poetry of Shelley, Wordsworth, and Byron (although unfortunately, in my experience, ETS loves their Romantics...). Instead, make sure you're as confident as possible about the periods you already know something substantial about.

 

Finally, even if you aren't going to take a practice test, just read through as many of them as possible. Learning how ETS phrases its questions (and knowing what types of questions they usually ask) will give you a HUGE advantage come test day.

[TeaOverCoffee]

Please keep us updated on how the Subject goes on the 27! I just registered for the General (Sept 29) and Subject GRE (Oct 25), which has instilled a gut-wrenching panic within me. Two jobs, 15 hrs of class per week (senior thesis included), applying for graduate schools, and now the GREs are sending me into "fight or flight mode," and I'm leaning more towards curling in the fetal position until January.

[Dr. Old Bill]

Don't panic, ToC...you've got this!

 

I'll definitely check in as soon as I can after the subject test, though since I'm actually taking it out of town (at Cornell, incidentally, which is kind of cool) due to a wedding that night, I might not get a chance to sign in right away. Knowing myself, no matter how well I wind up doing, I'll probably think I did horribly.

[RoundandRoundAgain]

I originally took the test back in 2011 and used flashcards (I did okay, not great).

 

I took it again in April and mostly focused on flashcards, Norton introductions, practice tests, and the Princeton Review (I made flashcards for everything including all the poetry that PR referenced and read the poetry over and over again since I was okay with novels and theory but not poetry).  Cram has a metric ton of already made GRE literature flashcards for studying on your smartphone or tablet if you don't want to haul around a thousand flashcards.

 

I took a ton of practice tests, too, including the not great tests in this book and read these two really new texts: The Smart Student's Guide to Literature and GRE Literature Secrets Guide. All three were really only useful because I was desperate for test questions and more flashcards. Probably what was more helpful was the Norton site with its literature quizzes and introductions that reinforced my weaker periods. There aren't many practice tests out there, but in addition to the current ETS practice test, I dug around the internet and found three more (really old) practice tests so I think between the really terrible GRE Malek book, the Princeton Review, and the four ETS practice tests, there is actually quite a few test questions out there to gauge your knowledge. And it is possible to do well with focused study- I only studied this time for about six weeks and I raised my score 80 points. 

Edited August 30, 2014 by BattlingAnxiety

[hypervodka]

I'm taking the September date, too. God speed. I've just started studying this month as well.

 

What I've done is collect a list of about 650 texts that could be on the text. I used Cracking the GRE, an old Geocities site that counted text frequency, and the suggested reading list from USCB. Right now, I'm tackling the list chronologically--reading author notes in the Norton, reading synopses of the novels and longer poems, reading information off of Vade Mecum GRE and (to a much lesser extent) Hapaxlegomena, reading the shorter poems, reading, reading, reading. So I started in the 1700s BCE with the Gilgamesh epic and am now in 1928. Then I'll go through my notes again, focusing on the key texts (Cracking's A, B, and C lists; high frequency texts on the Geocities).

 

At the same time, I've used my favorite online flashcard website Memrise to create the index cards. With those, I'm basically rotely memorizing text authors and character names. Learning character names is an easy way to identify passages, and it also really helps me remember plots. I have a few of the past tests from ETS. I want to do at least two, one in a week, one in about three weeks, so that I can be really comfortable with the test. I've never taken anything like it.

 

Also reminding myself that the GRE is the part of the application professors care the least about.

[jhefflol]

I'm taking the September date, too. God speed. I've just started studying this month as well.

 

What I've done is collect a list of about 650 texts that could be on the text. I used Cracking the GRE, an old Geocities site that counted text frequency, and the suggested reading list from USCB. Right now, I'm tackling the list chronologically--reading author notes in the Norton, reading synopses of the novels and longer poems, reading information off of Vade Mecum GRE and (to a much lesser extent) Hapaxlegomena, reading the shorter poems, reading, reading, reading. So I started in the 1700s BCE with the Gilgamesh epic and am now in 1928. Then I'll go through my notes again, focusing on the key texts (Cracking's A, B, and C lists; high frequency texts on the Geocities).

 

At the same time, I've used my favorite online flashcard website Memrise to create the index cards. With those, I'm basically rotely memorizing text authors and character names. Learning character names is an easy way to identify passages, and it also really helps me remember plots. I have a few of the past tests from ETS. I want to do at least two, one in a week, one in about three weeks, so that I can be really comfortable with the test. I've never taken anything like it.

 

Also reminding myself that the GRE is the part of the application professors care the least about.

 

 

Your approach seems so much more intense than mine! I don't know who to believe when the test books say its mostly identifications and people who have taken the test already say its not. How did you get the pasts tests from ETS, if you don't mind me asking?

[hypervodka]

Your approach seems so much more intense than mine! I don't know who to believe when the test books say its mostly identifications and people who have taken the test already say its not. How did you get the pasts tests from ETS, if you don't mind me asking?

It's only intense because I've been out of school for a couple of years and need to review a lot. I know that if I see a question and don't recognize a text, I'll panic and do much worse than I should.

 

I don't remember where or even when I got these tests. I can link them to you, if no of a place to host PDFs. I have FORM GR9564, FORM GR0764 (the one on the ETS website), and FORM GR9964. I haven't looked at any of them, for obvious reasons, but I've just skimmed a smaller booklet of test questions that ETS was giving out in 1997 (I REALLY don't know where I got this one) and it's half identification, with some questions about interpretation and literary terms thrown in. It might be a case of people who take the test notice what they were least prepared for? Princeton Review says that identification is the strong majority of the test. I'm not worrying about any thing else, because "literary analysis" is a hard thing to study for.

[hreaðemus]

If you just do a Google search for forms GR9564, GR0764, and/or GR9964, they all pop up in PDF form on the first page of the search results - I just downloaded them all!

 

I haven't gotten the Princeton Review prep book yet, but I'm using Norton headnotes, like unræd, to make about 500,000 flash cards. I'm also using Quizlet to carry my sets with me on my phone, which is a LOT easier than dealing with paper cards. Beyond that, I'm mainly planning on reading through major works in the Norton Anthologies, and acquiring summaries of the things I don't have time to read. I'll probably skim through all my Shakespeare again, try to fit in some Chaucer... but mainly I'm worried about modern and American lit. That's my weak spot - I get bored.

[jhefflol]

If you just do a Google search for forms GR9564, GR0764, and/or GR9964, they all pop up in PDF form on the first page of the search results - I just downloaded them all!

 

 

You are both a genius and a life saver. Thank you! I just found them!

[hypervodka]

So, BeginsinWonder recommended Smart Student's Guide  in another thread. It's only $7, so I'd recommend it in a, well, it can't hurt, kind of way. It's extremely detailed, but it's organized extremely poorly. Just list upon list of texts, authors, and literary periods in alphabetical order. This is probably more helpful to the people in the October date, who'd have more time with it. It doesn't work well as a primary study text, because if you read it straight through, you'll go from Amis to Austen to Baldwin, which is just hard to take in. I've just been using it as a dictionary of sorts: I'm following the order of my chronological lists (Amis to Nabokov to O'Connor; Austen to Lord Byron to Wordsworth) when reading synopses and notes from Vade Mecum, and then I look up the texts in Smart Student's for any additional information, which will , of course, be tailored to what I'd need to know for the test.

It'll also be helpful when I take my first practice exam tomorrow and review the answers.

[Poiple]

I've just taken half of a practise test (I don't want to use up all my practise materials too quickly) and I found a lot of questions asking what "x word" means in passage x. I was wondering if anyone has any advice on preparing for these questions? I'm English, and have what I think is a good vocabulary but the odd ones are still throwing me off, particularly if there's a word with multiple meanings.

[Krystal]

Hello everyone! I've been spending nearly every evening for the past two weeks making flashcards for this exam, but I happened to stumble upon a really useful set of flashcards online. They look like they were made directly from the Cracking GRE Lit book. While the book is obviously a bit more comprehensive, I find these flashcards to be useful in saving me A LOT of time. Granted, I'm still making flashcards from other resources and I've been reading straight out of the book, but not having to go through this entire book for flashcard-making has been very nice. So I thought I'd share it here just in case you all would like to print them out for yourselves! Happy studying!

 

www.flashcardmachine.com/gre-literature-inenglish.html   

[hypervodka]

 

I've been spending nearly every evening for the past two weeks making flashcards for this exam, but I happened to stumble upon a really useful set of flashcards online. They look like they were made directly from the Cracking GRE Lit book. While the book is obviously a bit more comprehensive, I find these flashcards to be useful in saving me A LOT of time. 

 

 

That's awesome, thanks for sharing!

 

I've just taken half of a practise test (I don't want to use up all my practise materials too quickly) and I found a lot of questions asking what "x word" means in passage x. I was wondering if anyone has any advice on preparing for these questions? I'm English, and have what I think is a good vocabulary but the odd ones are still throwing me off, particularly if there's a word with multiple meanings.

 

 

Can you give an example of one of these questions? On this text, when they ask you what a word means, they are most probably asking you for an archaic usage of the word, which should be gleaned from context (though they probably expect familiarity with the text itself).

 

 

So, BeginsinWonder recommended Smart Student's Guide in another thread. It's only $7, so I'd recommend it in a, well, it can't hurt, kind of way. It's extremely detailed, but it's organized extremely poorly.

 

One more criticism of the $7 text (which was pretty handy for making flashcards, since the lists are already there) that I wanted to hold off on until I took an actual ETS test: I got a 650, and I can pretty much confirm that all of the "examples" on the Smart Students' Guide are much too difficult to be worth practicing on.

Edited September 9, 2014 by hypervodka

[hypervodka]

I've just taken half of a practise test (I don't want to use up all my practise materials too quickly) and I found a lot of questions asking what "x word" means in passage x. I was wondering if anyone has any advice on preparing for these questions? I'm English, and have what I think is a good vocabulary but the odd ones are still throwing me off, particularly if there's a word with multiple meanings.

 

I'm going through one test now. This is from GR9964, so skip this if you were saving that one.

 

One question asks:

 

In the context of the passage, the best paraphrase of "abroad" (line 6" is

 

It doesn't even matter the context of the passage. As I said before, we're looking for some archaic, unfamiliar usage of the word "abroad." That's the only reason they would ask this question. The answer choices are:

 

 

(A) in foreign countries

(B ) erroneously held

(C ) easily refuted

(D) absent in the English

(E) prevalent at the time

 

(A) should be eliminated immediately, without reading the context, because that is the contemporary usage. (D) is extremely similar, so I'd strike that out as well.

 

Now, the referenced sentence is,"Reform was in the air--political, social, religious; there was even a feeling abroad that our great public schools were not quite all that they should be, and that some change or other--no one precisely knew what--but some change in the system of their management was highly desirable." This is a very egocentric sentence. Reform was in the air--not foreign air, our air. It doesn't make sense for non-English speakers to be invested enough in the English education system for any solution whatsoever to be "highly desirable." Again, (A) and (D) just don't fit.

 

(B ) and (C ) are virtual synonyms. I've noticed that a lot of questions of the kind match the answer choices in "pairs," and the odd one out is the correct answer. Both (A) and (D) kind of sort of mean "foreign" and both (B ) and (C ) kind of sort of mean "off-base." Just think of this from a technical standpoint: the test-writers would not make the correct choice too similar to any other erroneous answer choice. There won't be a passage about Mr. Rochester, and then both Emily and Charlotte listed among the answer choices. They're not trying to trick wrong answers out of you.

 

(E) ("prevalent at the time") makes the most sense in the sentence, which, again, is very egocentric, but also emboldended with a sense of general urgency. Everyone had opinion about changes in the school system, even though "no one knew precisely what" that change would entail. This answer choice makes sense in the sentence, and in the passage. It is also the answer choice furthest from the contemporary definition, which seems to often be the case.

Edited September 9, 2014 by hypervodka

[Dr. Old Bill]

Love it, Hypervodka. Now cram that into 40 seconds 230 times and you've got yourself a sterling GRE subject score!

[queennight]

If you just do a Google search for forms GR9564, GR0764, and/or GR9964, they all pop up in PDF form on the first page of the search results - I just downloaded them all!

 

I think I love you. Thank you.

[queennight]

Hello everyone! I've been spending nearly every evening for the past two weeks making flashcards for this exam, but I happened to stumble upon a really useful set of flashcards online. They look like they were made directly from the Cracking GRE Lit book. While the book is obviously a bit more comprehensive, I find these flashcards to be useful in saving me A LOT of time. Granted, I'm still making flashcards from other resources and I've been reading straight out of the book, but not having to go through this entire book for flashcard-making has been very nice. So I thought I'd share it here just in case you all would like to print them out for yourselves! Happy studying!

 

www.flashcardmachine.com/gre-literature-inenglish.html   

I actually want to smash my head into the table for starting writing these all out by hand. Thank you so much! This is a great resource!

[unræd]

Howdy all--I hope everyone's studying goes well!

 

I took two practice tests today which left me feeling pretty good about where I'm at, but this left me wondering: does anyone have any idea how well the available practice tests tend to track with the actual exams in terms of scores/difficulty/standardization?

[omensetter]

Howdy all--I hope everyone's studying goes well!

 

I took two practice tests today which left me feeling pretty good about where I'm at, but this left me wondering: does anyone have any idea how well the available practice tests tend to track with the actual exams in terms of scores/difficulty/standardization?

 

I took (if I remember correctly; I sat the exam almost a year ago) three practice tests, and I scored a good 50 points less on all of them than I did in the actual test. A lot of people, though, seem to have the absolute opposite experience; the stress of test day, which can never be properly replicated at home or in a library, really can have a big impact. I finished all the practice tests I took with some time to spare; in the actual test, I had about 20 questions unanswered when I ran out of time.

 

I found that the test I took was somewhat different from the practice tests in both format and content. The formatting stuff is (again) difficult to remember, but I think there was just generally a bit more stuff to read, and some styles of question I'd not seen before. It's very possible that because of nerves it just felt different, but I'm pretty sure that while the questions still asked you to do the exact same things as in the practice tests, there were some differences in formatting that slowed me down. I came out of the test feeling not that I'd done badly, but that I'd done less well than in the practice tests. I got lucky, however, in terms of content: the test I sat had lots of theory stuff on it, which is kind of my thing, so I ended up getting a decent score.

 

I guess I'd just say that while the test has obviously evolved since the practice tests were written, everybody who sits it is using pretty much the same practice material, so any changes are probably not hugely advantageous or disadvantageous to anyone. I'd mostly emphasise the importance of timing: I think this is probably the main thing you can control when it comes to any standardised test, especially such a purposefully gruelling one as this, so even if the practice tests are slightly different, their use value lies in allowing you to practice answering stuff quickly. I found the dearth of any written experiences except awful ones pretty worrying when I was preparing, so thought it might be helpful to share an experience that, while certainly not fist-pumpingly awesome, was kind of okay in the end.