Prospective GRE test takers often don’t know where to begin when it comes to studying vocabulary for the test. What words should you study? How many words are reasonable to try to learn? What are the most effective ways to go about studying? We’ll answer the above questions and more in this article.
One quick note before we begin. Much of what follows was covered in a podcast that I was featured on, so if you prefer to listen to this information rather than read it, please feel free to do so. However, there are some things explained here that are not mentioned in the podcast, so even if you did catch the podcast, feel free to read on!
Why Study Vocabulary in the First Place?
Let’s start with a caveat: studying vocabulary is probably not the most effective way to increase your GRE Verbal score. The GRE is a reasoning test, so learning how to approach Verbal questions effectively is the most important thing, and it is there that you should focus your attention in the beginning of your prep.
That said, the extent of one’s vocabulary knowledge definitely does weigh in to the Verbal score. Vocabulary is important on Text Completion questions, but on Sentence Equivalence questions it is virtually the only factor (that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it really is the most important factor on those questions). Here at Reason Test Prep we see people all the time who clearly get a boost in their Verbal score from vocabulary study, usually on the order of a few Verbal points.
There’s one other consideration that deserves mention. Studying vocabulary is something that’s easy to do on one’s own. You don’t need a tutor to help you, and that is not true of other aspects of the test. Many of the people we tutor need a lot of help on how to approach questions effectively, how to read passages critically, etc., and it is hard for them to connect those dots without our guidance. But improving your vocabulary is something you can do on your own, so it’s a relatively easy win.
General Pointers on Learning Vocabulary for the GRE
It’s helpful to understand that one can acquire vocabulary in a number of ways. It’s generally best to try to learn words in context. That’s how we acquire vocabulary in the first place: we hear someone use a word that we don’t know or read it in a book or article, and the context helps us really understand the word and commit it to memory. In a way it’s not really “memory” at that point, because once you truly understand a word and how it’s used, it becomes “understanding” not just “memory.” So that is the optimal way to acquire new words, but that kind of learning takes time.
The other option is to go for sheer memorization. Obviously, this is not quite as good because over time the words will slip from your memory, but it has the advantage of being fast. You can try to memorize a whole bunch of words in the couple of weeks leading up to your test, and although you will probably forget most of those words over time, enough of them will probably be accessible during your test.
Below we discuss both of the above options because there is a place for both sheer memorization and deeper understanding…
What Words to Study (And How Many)?
At Reason Test Prep, we use two types of word lists with students (both on Quizlet): Word Groups and Individual High-Frequency Words. Let’s start with the Word Groups…
Word Groups
On the GRE, one does not necessarily need to learn the exact definition of each word. Often it’s enough to know the general meaning or the family of words to which that word belongs. For example, there are many words in the English language that mean something like “praise.” Venerate, laud, and reverence are a few examples. Those words don’t all have the same meaning and are not even all the same part of speech. But on the GRE, it often doesn’t matter. Just knowing that those words belong to the “praise” category would probably be enough. So we give students a list of about 500 words that belong to about 70 categories.
With these words, one could learn the exact definition of each word, but the point of the word group set is really to get a lot of bang for your buck. So with this list, we usually encourage students to try to just memorize the category to which each word belongs. Because this is sheer memorization, it probably doesn’t make sense to start this kind of vocab study months in advance of the test, unless you plan to REALLY stick with it on a weekly basis. If you don’t keep looking at the words every week, you are likely to begin forgetting them. So for the word group list, we usually recommend starting a few weeks before the test.
A couple of other recommendations about the word group set. First, in the beginning you’ll want to have the categories accessible, since you’ll need to know what the “choices” are for each word (if you don’t know that “praise” is one of the categories to choose from, the exercise won’t be very useful). Second, you DO NOT want to learn the words together in their groups. If you study all of the praise words together, you will come to associate them with each other, but on the test you are likely to see the words independently. So it’s best to quiz yourself with each word and try to guess the category to which each one belongs. More on how to do this below.
Individual High-Frequency Words
There are many word lists out there for the GRE, most of which include a lot of the same words. At RTP we use the Barron’s 800 list – it’s a very good list that includes most of the high-frequency words that appear on the GRE, and it’s also a manageable number of words. There are lists of 3,000+ words out there, but most people are just not going to be able to bite off such a large quantity of words. We actually have a method that cuts down the 800 words to something more manageable, and this will be discussed in the next section.
With the high-frequency words, the goal is to really “learn” and “understand” each word, not merely memorize the category to which the word belongs. To this end, it’s helpful to learn the words in context. Nothing is better than really seeing the word used out in the real world somewhere, but we offer 2 separate “in-context” versions of the word list and let students choose the one that resonates more with them. The first has sample sentences that go along with the definitions. The second has pictures, which tend to be better for people who have a more visual memory.
In the case of the individual high-frequency words, it’s probably better to get started further in advance of the test – maybe 4-6 weeks in advance or even more. It can also be helpful to add your own sentences or “context” to the definitions since the very act of finding a use case for the word and recording it will help you learn and retain the meaning.
How to Study the Words
In the case of the Word Groups, leveraging a computer algorithm and just firing through the words over and over is a good method. The lists above are on Quizlet…you can leverage Quizlet’s algorithm, which will spit out the words in a particular order (based on how you respond) to help optimize the learning. There are other platforms that do a similar thing and it’s possible that some of them are more effective or more user friendly than Quizlet, so you could investigate other options. But again, you want the words to be thrown at you randomly and not all together as part of a group.
The above “quiz mode” is effective for learning the High-Frequency Individual Words as well, but because there are more words and because the goal is to really understand each word and not just memorize the group to which it belongs, a couple of other strategies can be helpful.
We recommend separating the 800 words into 4 categories or “piles.” I use the word “piles” here because some people like to have the words physically written out on flash cards…in that case, you could literally make 4 piles. You can also separate the words on Quizlet into new categories, but ultimately you want to be able to move words from one category or pile to another, and it may be easier to do this on other platforms besides quizlet. We are NOT claiming that Quizlet is the best app out there, so feel free to investigate others or go with your app of choice if you already have one.
The first category or pile is for words that you already know. Take those words and set them aside. Now your list is already smaller!
The second category we call the “Strong” group. These are words that you sort of know, but think it would be good to see on a weekly basis to make sure you really remember them.
The third category is the “Weak” group. These are words that you don’t know or perhaps almost know, but believe you could learn or remember pretty easily with repetitive viewing. Maybe you couldn’t guess the word, but when you looked at the definition, it made sense or seemed familiar to you. These words are essentially the low-hanging fruit, and most of your time should be spent on these words.
Finally there is the “I have no idea” category. These are words that you don’t know, and even when you look at the definition, you are still surprised and would never have guessed that meaning. Because you don’t really have an association with these words, they will probably be harder to learn: they are the fruit at the top of the tree. Set these words aside temporarily and forget about them.
Now, start studying/reviewing the Strong and Weak groups. You probably don’t need to see the Strong words that frequently. It’s the Weak group that should occupy most of your focus. Here’s the key. As you study those Weak words, some of them will start to become “Strong.” When they do, move those words to the Strong category. Likewise, some of the “Strong” words will eventually feel like words that you just fully know. When that happens, move those words to the “I already know these words” group.
As you move words from the Weak pile to the Strong pile and in turn move words from the Strong pile to the “I already know these words” pile, the Weak pile will start to get smaller. Once it gets small enough, go through the words in the fourth category (the “I have no idea” group) and move some of those words to the Weak group. Ideally, select the words that you have the strongest association with or that you imagine would be the easiest to learn (again the idea is to grab for the low hanging fruit).
Over time you will see that the first two categories (the “I already know these words” group and Strong group) will get larger and the last two categories (the Weak group and “I have no idea” group) will get smaller. This method allows you to bite off a manageable number of words, focus your attention on the words that would be easiest to learn, and avoid the ones that initially give you the most trouble.
In the end, you may never tackle some of those most difficult words. That’s ok! In a way, 800 is an arbitrary number anyway. Why not 700? Why not 1,000? You can always learn more words. The goal is to learn as many of the most commonly appearing words as possible, but at a certain point you’ll definitely reach diminishing returns, so don’t obsess over learning every word out there or even every word in your list.
Final Thoughts
To repeat, although studying vocabulary will almost certainly increase your GRE Verbal score, it’s not necessarily the best way to do that. You must make sure that you understand how to “reason” in the way that GRE questions expect you to do – that is what is most important on the test. But we definitely see some people who already understand how to do that pretty well and whose obvious weakness is just vocabulary. They will understand, based on their very effective reading of the sentences, exactly what meaning is indicated in each blank, but when they turn to the answers, there are just too many words whose meaning is unknown to them, and they get the question wrong. If this sounds like you, you need to study vocabulary!
One final point. All of the above explains how to “study” vocabulary. As previously mentioned, the best way to acquire new words is really to see/hear them in the wild, in context. So if you have the time and if your test is not imminent, reading GRE-level articles or books or listening to audiobooks or podcasts in which the speaker uses a lot of GRE-type words is a great way to “naturally” increase your vocabulary.
I’ll give a little plug here to a podcast that I listen to that has helped me learn more GRE words over the years: The Making Sense Podcast by Sam Harris. The conversations are interesting (for me anyway), but beyond that Sam is a brilliant communicator. He has a way of expressing his points with pin-point accuracy and always seems to have the perfect word or metaphor to exactly convey his message. Most importantly for our purposes, he has a capacious vocabulary (note my deliberate use of a GRE word there) and often uses GRE words in his natural speech. In fact, I’ve heard him use the word capacious several times on the podcast!
Building your vocabulary in this more natural way (i.e., reading or listening to GRE level books, articles, podcasts, etc.) is how you truly increase your vocabulary for a lifetime and not just for the test. There’s nothing wrong with “studying” or even cramming vocabulary for your test, but if you’re a lifelong learner like me, try to increase your vocabulary not only for the GRE, but also for use in life beyond the test. It will serve you well, especially in graduate school!