GRE-2

In my first ever post in blogger, I express my amateur thinking regarding the GRE. This is how i feel like, after having gone through the preparation and the test.


" I agree with the introductory statements even now.. i feel there is still a little lack of preparation, since I did not by heart the Barron's word-list, which is considered a must for GRE preparation. I don't think the way to start our preparation is mugging the word lists in order. If you want to retain all the words that you have read by then, completing the word list would take a lifetime! instead go thru some word groups. By word groups I mean, arrogance has a lot of synonyms some of which directly indicate arrogance and some of which indicate in a sinuous way, similarly there are many groups like irascibility, hard working, laziness, etc..
If you take hard working a variety of words express it : industrious, assiduous, sedulous,diligent, so on. similarly something/being in the starting stages or birth: incipient, inchoate, genesis, fledgling, germinal, seminal, etc..
similarly other word groups include broad topics like law, sports, mythology, etc..
these cover most of the words you need to learn. not all but the very important part of the word lists. other words are not very frequent..
The most repeated smaller topics are arrogance, friendliness, stubbornness, laziness, working hard, quarrelsomeness, criticizing, praising, hugeness or lightness, being sad,being cheerful, type of personality, nonchalant attitude, active or inactive, copying, stealing, deceiving, exaggerated speech, patriotism, cunning, innocence, kinds of literature, mockery etc..
After having gone through these topics the questions will be relatively easy since most of the questions should use this kind of topics, and then one can target the remaining words. No need to be very upset if one doesn't know many of them. very specific nouns like parapet are not seen very regularly. After taking so many tests I haven't seen many words like that.

barron's includes words like parapet which means a small wall at the edge of a balcony or terrace for which you try hard to remember when it is relatively a very unimportant word. Moreover when u do not remember the word with a context, it is highly likely that you forget it. Instead take a topic "spontaneous presentation w/o prep": some words that have a similar meaning are extempore,ad lib,improvise,impromptu. These words will be easy to remember if studied as a group and can be considered as a single reading, whereas if studied from a word list they would constitute a different read every time one of these comes across.

contrary to what I said in the post earlier mentioned, we prepare for vocab not because a professor at a very good univ speaks a high level english, but the vocab skill is more or less equivalent to one's logical skill! it serves an additional purpose of testing if we have enough vocab skill to be able to live there may be!!
In my first days of preparation I didn't find any logic in the questions, once I had enough words in my grip I started to find some logic. In fact, a word can be used in various ways and thereby different logics.
analogies have two words in which we have to find a reln between the words.the relation should be modified if necessary in a more specific way depending on the options . all this accounts to a logic.
sentence completion tests how one thinks in a situation,a blank.
similarly the opposite of something can be taken in various ways and our thinking should be in tone with the options again.

That's all for now!! I've been talking too much about the GRE as if I succeeded in getting a great score!! So I stop this for now!!My next topic is one, whatever bub says!! ;)