How to guess new words when taking GRE?

[Azzkikr6969]

Hi, everyone. I had my first dire GRE attempt on 9/30, and my 2nd and last attempt is imminent. I've been doing additional memorizing on words that are in Barron's, and I'm getting better to know most of the words. However, when I start doing practice questions, there are some new words which I have not even seen before and most of the time guess them wrong. This is one reason I failed the GRE. I'm a very bad guesser when I have never seen a word. The probability of guessing it right is less than 30%. I need some advice on how to guess those words because ETS will give you some new words which exist only in huge dictionaries. Do I look at the prefix or the subfix more? Are there other ways of attacking obscure new words. Any input would be appreciated.

[zorrillo]

Originally Posted by Azzkikr6969

Do I look at the prefix or the subfix more?

Absolutely! When ETS throws a strange word at you, you can bet your farm that in 95% of the cases, the word has a familiar root or in some way resembles a word you already know!

Here's why they have to do this: if they put the most obscure english words into the test, we'd all fail, and the test would serve no purpose at all. ETS understands that we're mostly undergrad students, not literary giants, and hence only wants to test the vocabulary commonly encountered in graduate school.

To make the test challenging they sometimes ask you seemingly difficult words to gauge if you are discerning enough to recognize it or guess it's meaning. No matter how difficult, the word will have a common root, suffix or prefix-there is some sort of clue in the word 100%.

[Odyssey Think SAT]

Actually, root learning is not the best way to learn GRE words, despite the fact that some 96% of English words contain Latin roots. And even despite that one of my psychology professors, Dr. Levine, had scored an 800 on her GRE verbal and told me "learn 100 roots, learn 1000 words." And even despite that a college friend of mine, who was a math and languages (German and Spanish) double major, who got an almost perfect GRE verbal said the same thing. And my old Kaplan manager said the same thing to me as well.

So how can this be? Well, most American root-building books and test prep company root lists contain 260 to 300 of the most common roots. Some of these roots are the same ones we learned in high school while some are quite esoteric to most people. Most of these "Top 300" will not help much on the real GRE. If you don't believe me, you can do an observational experiment TAILORED TO YOURSELF by getting the GRE NUMBER 9 book (years ago, the GRE was given in paper-and-pencil format and you could buy nine released tests much like the SAT has the 10 REAL SAT's book) and writing down every single word you don't know among the sentence completions, analogies, and antonyms. This experiment works more easily if you have ALREADY STUDIED a root book, as I had. You will find that the vast majority of words you don't know do not contain roots from the root-building books. However, this does not mean those words don't contain Latin roots. They do. They're just not the most common 300 in most root books. I mean, you literally have to have thousands of Latin roots under your belt.

Why would an 800 verbal professor and others like that preach learning roots? Because Dr. Levine is Jewish and, presumably, she studied Hebrew and/or Latin. My college friend studied two romance languages, German and Spanish, and he is of German American descent. Both individuals went into the test knowing a TON of words. They are able to compare a bunch of candidate roots and select the ones whose meanings fit what they already know the overall word to mean. In science, we call this posthoc or adhoc analysis. You and I would go into the test seeing some of these words for the very first time. Either you may not find a root you know or you may be at risk of misidentifying roots.

As for my old Kaplan manager? Well, he's just jumping on the bandwagon because he doesn't know any better. Like almost everyone else, he's never done a scientific analysis. I have. And you can too.

Then why does every test prep program contain a list of roots? Simply because everybody else does. For as long as anyone remembers. It creates a sense that your book/program is comprehensive, complete. But if you open up a Kaplan or Princeton Review book, you will notice the writing is like that of a lawyer. They never say root learning is the best way to learn GRE words. Rather, all they say is root learning is a great way to learn words. LOL.

REGARDLESS, if you have ample time, do the roots (I did) AND the high frequency word lists. If you have less than a month, skip the roots in favor of high frequency GRE word lists like those from Princeton Review's Word Smart 1 and Word Smart 2.

As for AZZKIKR's concern about what to do when you see a word you don't know on the real test? Well, sure, you've got to use everything you got under your belt, whether it's related word groups, a sentence you've heard the word used in before (a context), root decoding, or foreign language (basically the same as decoding roots). Generally, prefixes and roots in the middle of the word are more important than suffixes because suffixes mostly give you the part-of-speech of the word. BUT STILL, DON'T EXPECT root decoding to be magical.

[Azzkikr6969]

[Dingus]

I think Odyssey has a point here. Quite an interesting post. I suggest going through all the Non-Barron word lists here at the forum. (In the Not In Barron thread; just put in a bunch of attachments, one of them contains an "Imported" word list, i.e, words from a foreign Language adopted into English )

[Erin]

Yes, it is an interesting point. I personally don't use word roots to learn new vocabulary. I much prefer to learn vocabulary in context, e.g., look up a word when I come across it in my reading. This has worked fine for me.

However, what about people who don't know such common roots as gen, bene, mal, etc? For those aiming for the middle ranges, learning these roots could be helpful.

But back on topic here--I'm afraid that are few effective "tricks" to help you guess the meaning of the word, especially if you're scoring above average on the vocab sections. The problem is that the clever folks at ETS know people will use various strategies such as these to guess the meanings of the words they don't know. Unfortunately, there are quite a few words that look like other words or don't mean what they seem. There are also quite a few English words of Germanic origin that coincidentally contain the same string of letters as the Latin or Greek roots, but don't mean the same thing.

[zorrillo]

There's no harm in learning basic roots like those Erin has suggested. (IMO the best way to learn them is to study Norman's Lewis' Word Power Made Easy). I don't know why everyone thinks ETS is out to rout them in their effort to get a decent verbal score. These guys are villians, but they aren't that bad. For example, on my GRE, I encountered only one word I didn't know : 'sidle'. This was in an analogy question and the word corresponding to 'sidle' was something like 'sideways' (I keep forgetting the exact word). This was a major clue - I thought 'sidle' looked quite like 'sideways' (and guess what it means!). Of course, this is only an example; I do NOT suggest you guess a word meaning based on appearances, but I do suggest you to look at the word CLOSELY, use every tool at your disposal to guess it's meaning (roots, prefix, suffix,context, etc.) and as a last resort, take a guess based on intuition.

It's not a good policy to throw up your hands and say that you'll never be able to answer questions with words you don't know. If you've prepared well for the GRE, you'll notice that ETS questions have a peculiar style and that often they're quite predictable. Take the clues.

[Econ]

One Question (to Zorrillo or anyone other):

Do you think that guessing upon what ETS likes to ask is indeed a good strategy? For example, you get:

XXXXTRKXIQSD:

(A) uefuwsf
(B) flexible
(C) pliant
(D) obstinate
(E) bewfduewgf

Is it a good strategy to think that ''Hm..ETS likes to test the obstinate vs flexible type of question and since I see two synonyms of flexible in the answer choices, the stem word must be also a synonym of flexible e.g. supple, so I choose (D) ??
Is this (sneaky) guessing a good strategy or in the end maybe you end up answering less than 1/5 questions correct (that you would probably get correct if you stick to the blind guessing system) ?

[Odyssey Think SAT]

Well, you don't usually get perfect synonyms among answer choices. If you do, then you can safely eliminate both. More likely, you may get two answer choices that are similar (they could be different-level or imperfect synonyms or even loosely associated words).

When all else fails, you've got to move forward somehow. Random guessing doesn't move you forward. Knocking out two similar answer choices would be taking a big risk because they might be sufficiently different such that one may be the correct answer (i.e., you better know the subleties of the two words).

What I'd do is look for answer choices with no clear opposites (again, you'll be lucky if ETS gives you these) and backsolve the answer choices you can handle by defining them in your own words, then defining the opposites in your own words, and sensing if the stem word MIGHT possibly fit.

But what you said about assuming the stem word is a synonym of two synonym answer choices, I would not assume that. Did you get that from some test prep program?

[zorrillo]

Originally Posted by Econ

Is it a good strategy to think that ''Hm..ETS likes to test the obstinate vs flexible type of question and since I see two synonyms of flexible in the answer choices, the stem word must be also a synonym of flexible e.g. supple, so I choose (D) ??
Is this (sneaky) guessing a good strategy or in the end maybe you end up answering less than 1/5 questions correct (that you would probably get correct if you stick to the blind guessing system) ?

First off, blind guessing never gets you right answers. There are critical times when you may have to do it, but don't expect to get those questions right by 'luck'. Also, I agree that you've got to move forward in the test, but what's the point being able to finish all questions in time and ending up with a below average score? I personally think quality is more important than quantity and it's much better to miss the last few questions after having answered the first ones correctly, than to run through all the questions and finish on time. Don't let a single question go without giving it all your effort.

As for your question whether using the 'sneaky' strategy (trying to guess what the ETS test-setter had in mind while framing the question) is a good think - as a last resort, ABSOLUTELY. I used it all the time, on my GRE and TOEFL. That is not to say I haven't been wrong in my guessing, but I find it much useful than blind guessing, where you leave your fate to luck and the rules of mathematical probability.

Also, it's not fair to call this strategy 'sneaky'. After all, every test taker should know the scope or range of the test s/he is giving. The GRE tests a limited set of principles (as you know, matrices, trignometry, etc. is not tested) and there's nothing wrong is trying to figure out the reason a particular question is being asked.

For example, if ETS says John lives 10 miles due north of Mary and Jane lives 20 miles due west of John, I'm not being 'sneaky' in trying to construe that they want me to use the Pythagoras theorem. Quite on the other hand, I think such an approach is an intelligent one. It's not about getting questions right or wrong, but about understanding the purpose of the question being asked and not clicking away like a mouse-happy automaton.

Incidentally, Chinese websites like downdowndown teach how to tackle GRE questions using the same strategy. They add notes like "wants you to use such-and-such rule", etc. There's nothing wrong with this practice. If ETS was against the use of such tactics, they shouldn't have made all the fuss with the "math review" and "ETS Big Book". They could have simply said "ETS math: anything can be asked".