Quote:
Originally Posted by ward
I think it is funny that the lowest verbal scores (mine included) come from american students.
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A coworker of mine from India told me that a lot of her friends study ridiculously hard for the GRE because they want to come to the U.S. If they don't get accepted (with funding as well, I imagine), then they can't emigrate. U.S. citizens obviously don't have this incentive and hence we don't work too hard at learning all the vocabulary words precisely.
Personally, I spent 0 minutes studying for the verbal and about 30 minutes total for the writing (just reading some sample essays). I consider myself a good writer, but my strong point is style, of which diction is only one component. Usually I know a synonym of the word I am looking for and I use a thesaurus and dictionary to guide me to the best choice.
In general you just have to read a lot of different kinds of writing to gain a large, working vocabulary. I don't especially enjoy reading literature, relative to other leisure activities, so my vocabulary isn't very refined.