How to Build on Your English Skills for GRE Verbal

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NO, GRE Prep is not tough!

NO, GRE Prep is not tedious either!

Those planning to prepare for the GRE must have heard the word – Vocab and you must be thinking about this as this GRE Vocab is quite extensive. The first question that may come to your mind is how many words will I have to mug up? Chill. Learning GRE vocab can be easy and it is never boring. GRE verbal being an important part of the exam which is why the GRE preparation has to be best. In this article we will be discussing how you can build on your English skills for GRE verbal preparation along with a few sample GRE verbal questions.

GRE Verbal Questions

Ques 1 : This is the kind of movie — stuffed with intimations of faraway strife and people in suits talking frantically on cell phones and walkie-talkies — that is conventionally described as a political thriller, but the film is as apolitical as it is_____________.

A. intense

B. unprecedented

C. subtle

D. humdrum

E. refined

F. dull

The D option ‘humdrum’ also means boring.

Tedious – Humdrum – Boring.

Look at this GRE verbal question now –

Ques 2: Torpey’s study has turned a seemingly__________topic, the passport, into a fascinating one by making an original contribution to the sociology of the state.

A. ironic

B. banal

C. provocative

D. witty

E. insipid

F. stimulating

The options B & F, banal & insipid – both mean boring. In this case it’s little different. Banal & Insipid mean something that’s cliche, that has nothing original or new to offer, hence boring.

Tedious – Humdrum – Banal – Insipid >< Boring

So all these synonymous words that come on GRE mean boring. Wouldn’t it be good if you can have these synonymous words listed together? You could study and learn them together. This is exactly what you get in our Jamboree Vocab Lists. Synonymous words are grouped together. Learn the words by the group.

Target to study one such group from the Vocab List daily. One day One group. Make it a daily habit. This should be your First Everyday Habit to build on English Skill for GRE Verbal.

Checkout to understand how GRE test questions are created.

Everyday GRE Vocab : No Cramming

Use Roots, Prefixes, Suffixes & Mnemonics. Look at the below GRE verbal question.

Ques 3: In his initial works, the playwright made physical disease (i)_________factor in the action; from this, his early critics inferred that he had a predilection for focusing on (ii)_________subject matter

Blank (i)

Look at the F option, ‘morbid’.

Whenever we have the root ‘mor’ in a word, the word generally means something to do with Death. You must have heard the proverb, ‘man is mortal’! Also, what about Post Mortem, Morgue or Mortuary! (In Hindi also Death is ‘Mar jana’, right! It’s coz Latin root ‘mor’ and Sanskrit root ‘mr’ both mean death).

Look for roots when you learn words’ meanings. Roots are very helpful in making you guess, decipher and remember the meanings.

But be careful too! There are exceptions.

For instance, adding the prefix ‘un’ to educated you get antonym Uneducated. But adding ‘un’ to canny you get uncanny. Canny means Shrewd, cunning. Uncanny means Mysterious. Not antonyms.

See, as you love twists in your movies, here you can enjoy some while preparing GRE Vocab!

Use Mnemonics to Learn GRE Vocab

This is Another Ninja technique you can use while preparing for GRE verbal. Read the question below:

Ques 4: When she first came to France from Bulgaria, she was hardly the _________ student she later made herself out to be, since she had access to considerable family wealth.

Check out the e option, ‘assiduous’. Assiduous means hard working. Is this a difficult word and you have never heard this before? How many times you must have said ‘working like an ass,’ haven’t you? Ass means donkey, a very hard working animal.

Assiduous – working like an Ass – hard working.

This is mnemonic. Remembering words’ meanings by associating it to something familiar and related. And here is a good news? You can search and find mnemonic for any word on google. Make sure you learn GRE Vocab using Roots & Mnemonics on a daily basis. Don’t cram. Don’t work like an ass. Ace GRE vocab like a pro by learning from Jamboree vocab lists using roots and menmonics. This should be your second everyday habit to build on your English for

GRE Prep.

Everyday Practice of Text Completion & Sentence Equivalence

Decode Sentences using Keywords

GRE verbal Text Completion & Sentence Equivalence questions can be tricky, no doubt. You read again and again and still struggle to understand what the sentence means and what the right word for the blank would be. Keywords are very helpful in understanding sentences and even getting a lead to choose the right word for the blank. Look at this question below.

Ques 5: An investigation that is _______ can occasionally yield new facts, even notable ones, but typically the appearance of such facts is the result of a search in a definite direction.

1. A) timely

2. B) unguided

3. C) consistent

4. D) uncomplicated

5. E) subjective

Look at the ‘but’ in the sentence. ‘But’ is a contrast keyword. So ‘but’ here signifies that what happens typically and what happens occasionally are in contrast to each other. So typically if it’s a search in a definite direction, occasionally it’s a search without a direction.

Ques 6: It comes as no surprise that societies have codes of behavior; the character of the codes, on the other hand, can often be _________ .

1. A) predictable

2. B) unexpected

3. C) admirable

4. D) explicit

5. E) confusing

Check out the phrase ‘on the other hand’ which is again a contrast keyword. So, societies have code of behaviour is no surprise or expected. The character of the codes are in contrast to that, hence unexpected.

There are lists of Contrast, Similarity, Cause & Effect keywords in your book. Study and revise them on a daily basis. As you keep doing your regular practice of Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence, identify, use and take notes of the keywords in the sentences. If a sentence is a code, the keywords are your tools to break the codes.

Everyday Reading Comprehension Practice

Primary Purpose

As you keep doing your regular GRE reading comprehension practice one particular type of question that you struggle with is Primary Purpose. The question asks you what the primary purpose or central theme of the passage is. Always look for the primary purpose in the beginning and ending of the passage.

Look at the passage below –

Some researchers contend that sleep plays no role in the consolidation of declarative memory (i.e., memory involving factual information). These researchers note that people with impairments in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep continue to lead normal lives, and they argue that if sleep were crucial for memory, then these individuals would have apparent memory deficits. Yet the same researchers acknowledge that the cognitive capacities of these individuals have never been systematically examined, nor have they been the subject of studies of tasks on which performance reportedly depends on sleep. Even if such studies were done, they could only clarify our understanding of the role of REM sleep, not sleep in general. These researchers also claim that improvements of memory overnight can be explained by the mere passage of time, rather than attributed to sleep. But recent studies of memory performance after sleep—including one demonstrating that sleep stabilizes declarative memories from future interference caused by mental activity during wakefulness—make this claim unsustainable. Certainly there are memory consolidation processes that occur across periods of wakefulness, some of which neither depend on nor are enhanced by sleep. But when sleep is compared with wakefulness, and performance is better after sleep, then some benefit of sleep for memory must be acknowledged.

The primary purpose of the passage is to?

A present the evidence that supports a particular claim regarding REM sleep and memory

B describe how various factors contribute to the effect of sleep on memory

C argue against a particular position regarding sleep’s role in memory

D summarize the most prevalent theory regarding sleep and memory

E defend the importance of the consolidation of declarative memory

The author starts the passage saying that some researchers think sleep has no role to play. The author ends the passage concluding sleep has some benefits. So clearly in the passage the author contradicts the researchers thought. So the primary purpose of the passage is C option, arguing against a particular position (the researchers’ position).

Use this technique to get the primary purpose while practicing GRE Reading Comprehension.

Everyday Reading Comprehension Practice

Look For Repetitive Keywords

Check out the passage and the question that follows –

Most recent work on the history of leisure in Europe has been based on the central hypothesis of a fundamental discontinuity between preindustrial and industrial soci-eties. According to this view, the modern idea of leisure did not exist in medieval and early modern Europe: the modern distinction between the categories of work and leisure was a product of industrial capitalism. Preindustrial societies had festivals (together with informal and irregular breaks from work), while industrial societies have leisure in the form of weekends and vacations. The emergence of leisure is there-fore part of the process of modernization. If this theory is correct, there is what Michel Foucault called a conceptual rupture between the two periods, and so the very idea of a history of leisure before the Industrial Revolution is an anachronism.

To reject the idea that leisure has had a continuous history from the Middle Ages to the present is not to deny that late medieval and early modern Europeans engaged in many pursuits that are now commonly considered leisure or sporting activities— jousting, hunting, tennis, card playing, travel, and so on—or that Europe in this period was dominated by a privileged class that engaged in these pursuits. What is involved in the discontinuity hypothesis is the recognition that the people of the Middle Ages and early modern Europe did not regard as belonging to a common category activities (hunting and gambling, for example) that are usually classified together today under the heading of leisure. Consider fencing: today it may be considered a “sport,” but for the gentleman of the Renaissance it was an art or science. Conversely, activities that today may be considered serious, notably warfare, were often described as pastimes.

Serious pitfalls, therefore, confront historians of leisure who assume continuity and who work with the modern concepts of leisure and sport, projecting them back onto the past without asking about the meanings contemporaries gave to their activities. However, the discontinuity hypothesis can pose problems of its own. Historians holding this view attempt to avoid anachronism by means of a simpledichotomy, cutting European history into two eras, preindustrial and industrial, setting up the binary opposition between a “festival culture” and a “leisure culture.” The dichotomy remains of use insofar as it reminds us that the rise of industrial capitalism was not purely a phenomenon of economic history, but had social and cultural preconditions and consequences. The dichotomy, however, leads to distortions when it reduces a great variety of medieval and early modern European ideas, assumptions, and practices to the simple formula implied by the phrase “festival culture.”

The author of the passage asserts that the “dichotomy” (line 26) can lead to which of the following?

A) Reliance on only one of several equally valid theoretical approaches

B) The imposition of modern conceptions and meanings on past societies

C) Failure to take into account the complexity of certain features of European culture

D) Failure to utilize new conceptual categories in the study of the history of leisure

E) Failure to take account of the distinction between preindustrial and industrial societies

The question asks about the ‘dichotomy’. As we check out the location and read we see repetitively it’s called ‘simple’(my highlight). So we choose the option C which talks about its failure to take into account the complexity.

You’ll find such repetitive keywords in GRE passages. Let the keywords guide you to have a better understanding of the locations and answer the question.

Everyday Practice

Time yourself

A major challenge faced by the students in GRE Verbal is time. So timing yourself while practicing on a daily basis is very crucial. You can set hourly targets while practicing Reading Comprehension or Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence. For instance, first you try to do three Reading passages in an hour and check how many questions you go correct. The very next one hour you can try to do four Reading passages and check your accuracy level has decreased or is same.

This way you can push yourself to attempt more questions in the same time frame. This really helps.

Everyday Doubts

Don’t let doubts pile up

As you practice GRE Verbal daily you may have a doubt in any question. Take a note of the doubt. You can take a photograph of the question and save it in a separate folder Doubts on your mobile. Or you can send that doubt then and there to your teacher on Whatsapp or Telegram. Later when you and your teacher decide to discuss the doubts, online or in person, you can refer to the doubts saved in the folder or already sent to and shared with your teacher. If you don’t take note of your doubt promptly while practicing you may forget it.

To sum up, practice daily. Keep some time aside from your everyday schedule to practice GRE Verbal. Also keep revising the questions discussed with your teacher and the vocab lists already learnt. Revision helps a lot. It is important to use the right techniques, study daily, get your doubts cleared with the help of your teacher and then write a good test and reach your dream school.

Cracking GRE can be your dream project. So, you need to make the best out of your GMAT prep.

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