Books for Prep | |
 - Great BookGreat book for GRE verbal part. I have got a really good score on GRE verbal considering I'm a foreigner. Highly recommend! Rating:  - Good book but not an Encyclopedia of VerbalI bought this book hoping to get some boosts in verbal section of GRE. Well, it did but not big enough. I got only 50 points of increase. Altough, 50 points is quite an achievement but not enough to pass my personal limit. For verbal section, the key is to memorize and eat up as many words as possible. This book do provide SOME words, but not enough. For words I would prefer to go with Barron's or use free vocabulary builder software, eg. guru's wordlist. To ace verbal section will need alot of hardwork, especially for foreigners like me. This book will provide complementary assistant but surely not the bible for verbal section. One thing that I like about this book is it categorizes words according to it meaning, positive or negative, and typical meaning, such as there are many words have the same meaning, this book categorize them. As always Kaplan has the simple strategy to overcome problems. I like the sentence completion stretegy to paraphrase and words elimination. All in all, if you have time (more than 3 months of preparation) I think this book will increase your score alot, then again maybe it's not because of this book, but because you have memorize so many words. Rating: - Lots to study, little to showThough I have to admit my score was probably better on the verbal section having studied this book than if I hadn't, I must say it's a lot of work for such a pittance toward your score. For those who aren't applying to English related programs (or others that specifically require higher verbal scores) I'd highly recommend buying a more general book and understanding the methods for eliminating wrong answer choices. This, along with practicing the test format on the ETS software and other Kaplan software helped me much more than the HOURS and HOURS I spent memorizing a 2,500 word vocab list, only to get in the testing center and discover plenty of words I had never heard. Though the book does include a list of root words and the top 200 words in context (used in sentences, synonyms, etc.) beyond that it simply ranks the remaining 2,300 as equally important. The lists included which group the words into synonymous categories such as "criticize" or "praise" are also too general to be effective if you're working on the harder questions the book is intended to get you to, simply because those questions invariably include multiple antonyms or analogies that could apply and that require you to know the exact nuances of the word. Probably a better idea is to buy flashcards, which are grouped into high, medium, and low frequency words, so you can buy how many ever sets you will have time to study. Rating:  - A must haveGetting a high score in GRE Vocabulary do not necessarily depend upon years of experience with the English Language. Kaplan's Verbal Workbook is a living testimony to this fact. It definitely increased my test taking ability. It is a must have book. You should be honest in doing all your exercises. The list of high frequency words at the end is not meant to be comprehensive, but a combination of the understanding of the word roots and a familiarity with this word list will carry you a long way. Good Luck! Rating:  - Not great preparationI bought this book with the hopes of increasing my verbal scores tremendously on the GRE. Well, it did no such thing. My score only raised 20 points from a practice test taken with no preparation. Don't bother memorizing the 200 Top Used GRE words because only 1 of them was on the test. Waste of valuable preparation time. Buy something else or read lots and lots of scientific journal articles. In association with Amazon.com | |