Have you seen this post-  guest article on a technique to memorize vocabulary ??

Playing "the game of life" right

 A small note on handling tough times- in GRE and of course in life

The time does come for everyone of us. Time when we tend step back and say-“This is really hard”.  The fear steps in to the heart and starts playing the “what if “game. What if I cant go any further?  what if I don’t do well?  But, there is only one way out of this maze - Fill your heart with courage and awaken the inner hero in you. The one who never gives up. One who never sheds a tear in the toughest of situation, smiles at adversities and looks at the silver lining. There is one in everyone.  The key to facing a tough situation- fill your heart with COURAGE, and tell yourself that you can do it- over and over again, until the fear steps out. And this is how you play the game of life. With the smile of hero always present on your face. Never give up and keep looking for a way. You will find it.

Photo courtesy: PatrickSmith

What NOT to do for GRE?

I thought the readers here would benefit from few of these thoughts.
This post is focused on some common misconceptions about GRE .

Q.  Is the vocabulary section of the GRE tough  ?

A. The vocabulary section of the GRE is indeed viewed as a nightmare by many students.With proper preparation, the vocabulary section is not a hard nut to crack. The lack of proper preparation is often the root cause low scores in this section.  Memorizing long wordlists is not end of the game. GRE focuses on understanding the meaning of the wording and its proper use in a sentence.  Although some words have similar meaning, there is only one right word for the context. Understanding the finer shades of the meanings of these words is important and is often ignored by students.  This  is what is exactly put to test in GRE.

Reading comprehension is another section that is challenge for many. The ability to comprehend tough passages at a quick pace, comes by practice. The GRE BIG BOOK is an excellent resource for practice. Also, this would give you experience in reading topics such as american history etc., topics that student dont usually read about.

Take as many practice tests as you can. Equal amount of time should spent on memorizing words and practice, if high scores are to be achieved.

SO STOP THINKING THAT  VERBAL SECTION IS TOUGH. START PRACTICING. IF SOMEONE CAN ACE THE VERBAL SECTION, YOU CAN TOO.

Q. How many words should I memorize for the GRE?

A. The answer is as many as you can. However, learning atleast 2000 " GRE WORDS" is a must. Dont memorize lengthy words that have a zero chance of appearing in the GRE.

REVISING THE WORDS LEARNT REGULARLY, WOULD IMPROVE THE RECALLING ABILITY. USE MEMORY TECHNIQUES TO MAKING THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE FUN AND EASY.

Q.  Why should I prepare for quant, it is too easy for me?

A. Never ignore your preparation for quantative section of GRE. In fact an engineer/science student is expected to achieve nothing short of 100 % of the marks. Familiarize yourself with all the topics in the quant section. Often students ignore to look at all topics that have to be revised and often end up losing marks in sections like data analysis and interpretation. Please go through (http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_math_review.pdf) and make sure that cover all topics in your preparations. A good practice also improves speed.


Q.  The writing section of the GRE??

A. Make sure you go through all of the pool of topics for issues and arguments.
Remember that you lose points if do not point out the major flaws in an argument.
Think logically when you read an argument, often there would mistakes about generalizing something too much, wrong comparisons, conclusion without enough evidence. The key here is to think and ask " Why did the author reach this conclusion, is it logically correct or wrong".  DO NOT PUT IN YOUR OWN VIEWS ABOUT A PARTICULAR TOPIC IN AN ARGUMENT. THERE SHOULDnt  BE  ANY EXTRANEOUS MATERIAL OTHER THAN WHAT IS GIVEN.

The ideas should be clear, organized well and there be a gradual transition from idea to idea.  Gramatical errors  and typos would cost you points. Check for these in your writing. Revising some topics on sentence structures and grammar would be useful.
All the ideas should be supported with proper and strong reasoning.

In issue, you could use proper examples to support the main ideas. Here you can put in your own perspective of the topic. What you think about this. It should be clear and ideas should be well organized, with a smooth transition between ideas.

http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/analytical_writing/issue/pool
http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/analytical_writing/argument/pool


I believe that there are 3 ingredients for success in GRE

1.Proper plan
2. Proper preparation
3. Good practice

Hi Friends,

Having been associated with Mr. "V " for quite sometime and being a GRE/GMAT/TOEFL/IELTS/Language/Soft Skills/Memory trainer I would love to contribute my experience to this blog.

The Revised GRE demands the takers to have three parameters - Vocabulary, Comprehending Ability and Logical Ability.

It's a misconception prevailing that Vocabulary is not needed for the Revised GRE. It's a myth. You not only need to memorize as many words as possible but also be adept at their usage beside being proficient in understanding the nuances between the synonyms or implied meanings. 

Moreover, ETS is very skillful in giving options which are very close to each other. The probability of guess work is drastically decreased in this version of GRE.

You can not only take the help of "Mr. V." but also get in touch with me. I am based at Hyderabad, India. I also am a moderator of a google group which provides a platform to share knowledge and download lot of material pertaining to most of the competitive exams. 

I also provide students a very innovative technique to memorize the difficult words at an amazing speed of 200 words per hour with 100% recalling ability. 

I enjoy a monopoly of being the only Memory Enhancement Skills Trainer in Andhra Pradesh I use some creative techniques to put those skills in Vocabulary. Feel free to join my group and start sharing the material and knowledge. 

http://groups.google.com/group/satish4exams is my group id and my email id is sashmmm@gmail.com

Wishing you all success in your future endeavours.

Guest article on a technique to memorize words




Photo source: columbiasciencereview.blogspot.com

Sonya blogs over in the Tyrannosaurus Prep webspace: a small corner of the internet galaxy where articles, podcasts and games to practice vocabulary forthe GRE twinkle in the vast blackness.

Greetings, readers of the Preparing for the GRE blog. To build on the post Studying vocabulary for GRE a nightmare? I thought it would be useful to outline a step-by-step method for learning new vocabulary. The steps are at the bottom of the post, but read on for a little background on the research that supports this method.

There are two overarching keys to learning and retaining new vocabulary:

1) Elaborate processing of new words.

2) Repeated study of the word over long intervals.

Key (2) is easy to understand– anyone who has ever tried to commit a name, phone number etc. to memory knows that repeating it over and over is a tried and true method. It is less intuitive that the spacing between your vocabulary study sessions is important – but that is what has been found by Sobel et al. [1].

In this experiment, students were given eight words from a GRE list; four words were studied in two sessions spaced one minute apart, while the other four words were studied in two sessions spaced 1 week apart. After a five week period students were quizzed on all eight words and the results showed that students were three times more likely to recall definitions for words that were studied in the 1-week spaced sessions!

Key (1) is a fancy way of saying that how much attention, and the quality of attention that you focus on new words affects how well you learn them [2]. Pretty obvious, eh? Well, it turns out this goes beyond not having the TV on when you’re studying – there are lots of ways to add more depth to your study of a word. For example, try to picture a distinctive image that you associate with that word, or recall when it was used in a book or movie, or recognize a prefix or suffix and how it relates to the definition. Imagine your word as a new, isolated island in your brain. Every frill and detail you can associate with the word is a new neural pathway that you are hooking onto that island to help you reach it later and retrieve the memory.

One way to get your elaborate processing for free is by learning words in context. Grab a magazine like The Economist, or a classic novel like Jane Eyre and start reading. Whenever you encounter a word you don’t know highlight it and spend some time trying to guess the meaning from the clues in the sentence and paragraph (and any other clues like prefixes or suffixes). Once you’ve thought about it a while, look up the definition to see how close you were and then jot down the real definition and add the word to your word list. You’ll need to engage with the word again in future study sessions, but that is a great start! You may think this is too time consuming to be applied to 3000+ words for the GRE, but consider that reading high-level material is also great practice for the reading comprehension question of the GRE Verbal – double whammy!

Here is an example of a paragraph from Jane Eyre that is a goldmine of GRE words (highlighted):

John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than I, for I was but ten: large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually at table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks. He ought now to have been at school; but his mama had taken him home for a month or two, "on account of his delicate health." Mr. Miles, the master, affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from home; but the mother's heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and inclined rather to the more refined idea that John's sallowness was owing to over-application and, perhaps, to pining after home.

Speaking of 3000+ words, how many words can you expect to stuff into one study session? Research has shown that for difficult words, studying smaller groups gives better long term recall [3]. A common number for word lists is 10, but if you are beginning your GRE preparation very early and can afford the time, consider even smaller groups of five words.

Now we’ll put all of this into a step-by-step method for learning words. You can organize all of your elaborate links to your words in a chart.

1) Generate your word lists:

                a) Read difficult material and note all unknown words (see above).

                b) Find compilations of GRE words, such as Barron’s list and the Kaplan list.

                c) Break your words into groups of 5 or 10.

2) Learning your word lists

                a) Tackle 1 list at a time, perhaps 2 or 3 total lists in a day.

v  For each word:

                                                                    I.            Read the word and definition out loud, pay attention to how the word sounds.

                                                                  II.            Identify roots, prefixes, etymology etc. and why they fit the definition

                                                                III.            Identify any synonyms or antonyms that you already know.

                                                                IV.            Picture a distinctive image that you can strongly associate with the word.

                                                                  V.            Picture anything from your memory that you can link to the word (for example, a friend who is perfectly described by the word).

                                                                VI.            Mime (physically act out) any action that is strongly connected with the meaning.

                                                              VII.            Again, repeat the word and its definition out loud.

v  For each list, write a short very distinctive story that uses all 10 (or 5) words.

                b) Wait 1 week

                                                        I.            Quiz yourself to recite the definition when prompted with the word.

                                                      II.            Revisit and expand your elaborate links for words you didn’t remember.

                c) Wait 5 weeks

                                                        I.            Quiz yourself to recite the definition when prompted with the word.

                                                      II.            Revisit and expand your elaborate links for words you didn’t remember.

                                                    III.            Cross off words you readily remembered – they are part of your vocabulary now!

                d) Repeat (c) until all words are crossed off

Every day you will tackle a few new word lists, revisit a few old word lists and more important, permanently cross off a few words that you have added to your GRE arsenal! 

1. Sobel, H. S., Cepeda, N. J. and Kapler, I. V. (2011), Spacing effects in real-world classroom vocabulary learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25: 763–767. doi: 10.1002/acp.1747

2. Waring, R. and Nation, I.S.P. (1997) Vocabulary size, text coverage, and word lists. InVocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy N. Schmitt and M. McCarthy (eds.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 6-19.

3. Crothers, E. and Suppes, P. (1967). Experiments in second-language learning. New York: Academic Press.

More articles coming soon

Hello Readers-- We have more good articles coming soon....

This time its going to be from a few guest authors.

Writing a personal statement/SOP

What are the main points should I cover in my personal statement?
What do people look for in an personal statement ?

Remember the admissions office receives ton of applications. So the SOP/personal statement is what distinguishes you from the others. Try to be unique. Tell your story. Make it interesting. Tell them about your passion and what you want want to do in life.

More tips at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/642/01/

http://books.google.com/books?id=ekV1JSxRDVcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Writing+the+personal+statement&hl=en&ei=dJ3UTdDRIsaDtgeKp9GACA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CFoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Writing%20the%20personal%20statement&f=false


If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.
Benjamin Franklin

Studying vocabulary for GRE a nightmare??

For many test takers studying long, hard to remember unending list of vocabulary is indeed a nightmare. Improving your vocabulary is more of an art than just cramming word lists.

Often in life you may be required to tasks that seem to be so tiresome and hard to get through. But always remember that you can find a way out the trouble no matter what. In here I would like to summarize a few ways of getting rid the vocabulary nightmare.

1. It is difficult to remember something a word that we dont use often. So incorporate the words that you learn in your speech.

2. Learning words should be a cumulative process. Let say you learnt 10 words yesterday. Before starting 10 new words today, revise the old 10 words and then begin the new words. The day after, revise the old 20 words and learn another 10. The increasing number of revisions help retain the information in your mind better.

3.Here is a small technique to remember words more easily. Break words, to tell a small easy to remember story. You can break it in any language as long as you can make a story. It is a nice and fun way to learn words.

Some examples

Afoot= make progress ( break into a + foot , you can think of walking by foot, and so making progress on a path)
abase = to lower the value of something ( break it into a + base, think of reducing something to the base level, so you lowered the value)
admonish = warning (split it into ad + money , so ads on money is like a warning sign to not spend more money loooking at ads)
accumen = Quickness of intellectual insight ( break it into accu + men, so something like men/women have good IQ and can and quickly and sharply solve a problem)


So get going. Plan your time well and make sure you revise every day.

A little effort everyday adds up to big results.

do you know these words??

Words starting with the letter A

cumen, acclivity, admonish, agrarian, alacrity, amiable, asperity, augury, avid, awry, aver, assuage, arbitrate, abscond, attenuate, audacious, abate, arbor, abet, abut, accost, acerbity, acme, acquit, addle, advert, affable, aggress, aghast, agile, airy, amity, appall, archaic, ardent, arrant, atone, augur, augment, austere, avarice, allot, afoot, abase

GRE verbal revison

How many of these words do you know??
( Must know words)

Set-1

reprove, reprimand, indurate, arcane, impugn, jest, dally, dissemble, flippancy, sere, friable, stoic, mirth, abade, reech, jejune, placate, assuage, erudite, Didatic, taint, fealty, torpor, hale, brazen.
( to be continued)