Vocab Strategies
Once you get past the new formats, Sentence Equivalence and Text Completion questions are mainly hard because of the vocab. The GRE test writers really do love their $10 words, and trying to memorize all the vocabulary words you're likely to see on the test would take you several years of study.
The solution: don't try to memorize every word on the test! You don't have time to do it anyway, even if you wanted to try. Instead, use these tips to maximize your vocabulary with minimal memorization:
Use roots, prefixes, and suffixes to clue you into the meanings of different words. The fancier and more obscure a word is, the more likely it is to have Greek or Latin roots.
Learning Greek and Latin roots can help you a lot with these huge fancy words; use them to break a word down into its component parts and at least guess at the meaning from there. For example, take the word 'somnambulating'. You might not know what that means, but you can figure out from roots that 'somn-' has to do with sleep (as in 'insomnia') and 'ambul' has something to do with walking (as in 'ambulatory'). So, you can probably figure out that 'somnambulating' has something to do with walking and sleeping, which is exactly correct!
Use elimination. You don't have to know exactly what a word means to eliminate it. For example, if you know the word is negative, but you want a positive word, you can cross it out regardless of what it means.
Build your vocab list strategically. Instead of starting with a massive list of words that sound like they ought to be on the GRE, build your vocab list from words you actually encounter in prep materials. This will be less overwhelming, and you'll be more likely to actually remember the words if you focus on a manageable number.
Other Strategies
Getting a handle on roots and elimination strategies and taking a strategic approach to your vocab list are all helpful for the vocab GRE questions. But here are some other miscellaneous tips and strategies that will help you on both the Sentence Equivalence and Text Completion strategies:
- Use your scrap paper. On the GRE, the questions are all computer-based, but you get as much scrap paper as you want. Use it. Don't waste your brain space trying to remember which answers you've eliminated or not; just write down the letter of each answer choice on your paper and cross choices off as you eliminate them.
- Start with the sentences, not the words. Yes, these are ultimately questions about vocabulary words. But on both question types, you can do yourself a big favor by starting with the sentences. Use context clues from the sentences to get an idea of what should go in the blank or blanks, and write in your own answer. Then look down the answer choices to see what matches.
This strategy will help you avoid getting confused by words that are relevant to the topic of the sentences but don't actually logically fit into the sentences, or by words in the Sentence Equivalence answer choices that are synonyms but don't actually fit the sentence as a whole.