How to ace GRE Vocabulary
The Verbal Section of the GRE contains three types of questions — Text Completion, Sentence Equivalence, and Reading Comprehension. Reading Comprehension questions require you to read a text and answer questions based on your understanding of it. Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence questions, on the other hand, are vocabulary-based questions. To excel in these two sections, it’s crucial to have a rich vocabulary.
For many students, building a robust vocabulary is a challenging task as they do not adopt any right way to learn new words. Instead of randomly picking up new words and trying to memorize their meanings, it’s better to adopt proven vocabulary-enhancement tactics like mnemonics, flashcards, learning about root words, etc. Here are some useful tips that will help you enhance your vocabulary -
- Maintain a vocabulary journal
It is important to maintain a vocabulary log in which you can write ten words (or more depending on your retention power) daily. Writing a word with its meaning is not enough. It is important to use the word in a sentence or story so that it is easy to recall. A vocabulary journal will revise words easy.
2. Make learning words interesting
Learning words through roots is one of the easiest and the most effective ways to learn new words. The root is a word or part of the word through which other words grow. For example words like verity, veracity, verisimilitude, veritable all come from the same root ver/veri, which means truth. Similarly, the grouping of words in different categories like synonyms or antonyms also helps.
3. Visualize
It is believed that our visual memory is better than verbal. You can use your imagination to visualize a word. For example, while learning the word ‘assiduous’, which means hardworking, you can imagine a picture of a farmer toiling on his farm. When you make visual associations with words, you are less likely to forget the meanings of new words that you learn every day.
4. The number does not matter
Almost everyone has this question: How many words should I learn daily?
The number of words does not matter. What matters is the number of words that one can retain. There is no point in memorizing 50 words a day when you can’t recall their meanings after a few days. So, learn only those many words which you can remember. Even if you know 60–70% of the vocabulary, you can do almost 90% of the questions using the elimination method.
5. Regularity
Being regular is important. Make sure that you learn new words regularly. At the same time, it is important to revise the words and use them again and again in your written and oral communication. Regularity, revision, and reuse will help you remember words.
Happy Learning!
