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Summing up Vocabulary

  • The Verbal Reasoning section contains about 7 (out of 30) Antonym questions, which test your vocabulary and your ability to recognize subtle distinctions between words with similar meanings.
  • On the , the emphasis on vocabulary is stronger with Antonyms and Analogies than it is with Sentence and Complex Text Completions—but it comes into play with all four question types, so be sure to review vocabulary thoroughly.
  • Of the four Verbal Reasoning question types, Antonyms test your vocabulary most directly.
  • In Analogy questions, you need to create and identify links between words, so you need some understanding of what the words mean to determine relationships between them.
  • All of the answer choices in Sentence and Complex Text Completion questions are words or phrases. The broader your vocabulary, the easier time you’ll have determining which word or phrase makes the most sense.
  • Although Reading Comprehension does not emphasize vocabulary, tougher passages contain more advanced vocabulary, which increases the reading difficulty level. You may also encounter one or more vocabulary-in-context questions, which will ask you for the intended meaning of a word from the passage based on the word’s context.
  • Test designers will generally use words that are uncommon enough for a at percentage of test-takers to be unfamiliar with them, uncommon words with roots and prefixes that provide useful clues about what they mean, “fake-out” words that might remind you of certain other words but have different definitions, and distinctive words whose definitions are nearly impossible to guess, that only well-read and well-prepared test-takers will know. They will not use highly technical words that only specialists or experts would know, non-English words not widely used among English speakers or those with diacritical marks or non-English characters, archaic English words, or vernacular and informal words (jargon, slang, and colloquialisms).