What are some tips to increase GRE verbal score?

GRE is not a test of English language so your command of the language rarely comes handy. Hence one must realize that merely knowing the word list is not enough tool to crack GRE verbal. So what’s the key?

I wrote the exam in 2020 and scored 170 in GRE Verbal. I often come across this question from my students and here are five tried and tested techniques.

1. If you are a voracious reader and you have already read on a wide variety of topics, you are having an edge over others. But for most of us that’s not the case, so merely picking up some books on odd topics that too for 3 months can never be your saviour. Advise like Read Newspaper, The New Yorker, The Economist etc. is all but a recipe of disaster one must AVOID. Read genuine GRE content. NOTHING ELSE.

2. Word list may seem intimidating so check the high frequency words 1500 max. But give it a closer look and you will find if you learn in groups or clusters, its way easier to remember. Else one word at a time in Silos is an very tedious affair. You can group them in any fashion but NOT ONE WORD AT A TIME. Also check their usage, its will help you remember them longer.

3. Break down the test into small sub sets like RCs, SEs and TCs and practice solving them within a given time frame. You will soon realize that a timed approach shakes your accuracy level. But that will bring you close to realty and make you redo your strategy.

4. Once you are done with each section, club them together into sets and try answering in sets of 20 mixed bag questions in 30 mins. That’s GRE 10 Reading Comprehension questions drawn from 4-5 passages and 10 TC and SE questions. Time them and check your accuracy level.

5. GRE is a long exam and you are required to sit long, and to score high you have to be mentally agile throughout the exam. So practice sitting long without breaks, 20 RCs at a time, 50 to 100 SE or TC questions in one go.

I do realise its frustrating and one tends to give up BUT remember you must keep pushing yourself out of your comfort zone if you really want to achieve something.