Excerpt
What This Book Is About
This book is designed to improve your vocabulary. The focus is on the advanced vocabulary you will need for the GRE revised General Test. Having a well-developed vocabulary is useful in many settings and especially critical to successful performance on the GRE. In particular, the Verbal Reasoning section relies heavily on an understanding of advanced vocabulary.
The quality of your responses to the Analytical Writing prompts depends in part on your knowing vocabulary that allows you to express your ideas clearly.
We use a contextual approach to teach vocabulary. This approach does not rely on conventional flash-card methods. Rather, words are introduced in meaningful contexts—i.e., in passages, most of which consist of brief narratives. Numerous exercises, activities, and puzzles are provided in order to reinforce your understanding of the words. Through this approach, learning new words should be fun rather than just being limited to the use of flashcards and drills.
Outline of the Book
The book consists of six chapters:
Chapters 1 and 2 provide context-based vocabulary instruction, along with exercises, activities, and games.
Chapter 3 consists of challenging crossword puzzles that test your understanding of what you learned in Chapters 1 and 2.
Chapter 4 introduces strategies and resources you can use to build your vocabulary further.
Chapter 5 presents a brief introduction to the GRE Verbal Reasoning section.
Chapter 6 describes strategies that will help you do your best on the GRE Verbal Reasoning section.
Guide to the First Two Chapters
Following is some information that will be helpful as you read Chapters 1 and 2—the chapters that provide instruction, and are the longest chapters in the book.
Chapters 1 and 2 consist of 12 units apiece. Each unit begins with a story in which advanced vocabulary words are underlined. You will be asked to guess the meanings of these words, and the meanings will then be provided.
Next you will work through a series of exercises, activities, and games that reinforce and test your understanding of the new words. These exercises and so on consist of matching, fill-in-the-blanks, puzzles, and more.
In Chapters 1 and 2, every third unit will consist of a review that provides additional exercises, activities, and games that cover what you learned in the previous two units. Most of the review units will also introduce one or two new words. Answers to all of the exercises, activities, and games in the main units and review units are provided at the end of each chapter.