Customer Reviews

Essential Words for the GRE (Barron's GRE)

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just finished taking the GRE last month - I had only 3 weeks to study because of an administrative glitch, so I needed a good resource and some quick shipping (thanks, Amazon). For my overall study guide, I picked Princeton Review based on previous use of their products and the overall positive reviews, and I was generally very pleased with it and its ability to help me work through the entire test prep matter in 3 weeks. That said, I could not have achieved my verbal score of 770 without this book from Barron's. I'm actually not sure I would have come closer than 700-720....it's that good. A reviewer for the Princeton Review general guide recommended this Barron book and I must second that review and all other five-star reviews here. The word list is EXTREMELY comprehensive and the exercises and 10-word unit breakdown really help you learn. I wound up going unit by unit. For each one, I'd read all the words and definitions and identify the ones I didn't know (or didn't "really" know...maybe I had a hunch but not a clear sense). For those unknown words, I wrote them down in a notebook, with a definition in my own words and a sentence I made up myself (Barron's also has sentences which will help you understand the word better but I think making up your own definitions and sentences and then writing them down helps it sink in). After working through all 80 units (whew) I turned to the notebook list of "trouble" words and basically quizzed myself and had others quiz me in multiple rounds, where in each round I highlighted the words I still didn't know, until that list got smaller and smaller and then disappeared. It was a lot to do in three weeks but Barron's really helped me focus. Seriously - get this book and you will maximize your score. For people like me whose verbal and essay scores are most important, this book is really worth the time it takes to work through. Get it! Get it now! Good luck, everyone!

After taking a few GRE practice tests, I determined that my score was being lowered because I didn't know the definitions of certain words at all, making it quite difficult to discern the correct answer! I figured any improvement in my vocabulary would help on the test. I took the words in the book and made flash cards of the ones I didn't know. They really helped! I am going to continue trying to learn more words from this book so I can be a better scholar.

I was averaging around 550-600 before using this book, and I ended up with a 660 Verbal score after learning these words. I would highly recommend this book!

In order to score 1400 or higher this set of words might not be enough. I learned the entire 800 list and maybe a 100 more from here and there but there were still few words that I didnt know on the actual test.

However, this is a great book. The words are explained and used in a sentence. Then there is a mini quiz after every 10 words which is extremely beneficial.

This is an extremely must have book but dont rely on it completely. If you have time and you are motivated enough, look for other word lists, e.g princeton review ones.

This book has been a hit with GRE students since the first edition came out in 2007. It greatly increases verbal reasoning scores. The general scholarship and selection of words that appear with high frequency on the test put this book far ahead of other GRE vocabulary prep books on the market.

Both editions that Amazon sells (2007 and 2010) were published before the GRE format changed in 2011, so a few examples of analogies and antonyms (these had not yet been dropped from the test) still appear in the introductory material, pretest and posttest; however, they do not appear anywhere else in the book. The main part of the book focuses on teaching the essential GRE words and their meanings using excellent illustrative sentences and quality exercises which are a mix of true/false, matching, and sentence completions.

Serious students want to improve their vocabulary to score well in the new verbal reasoning section of the GRE, and Essential Words for the GRE achieves results for them. The few examples of analogies and antonyms do not in any way detract from the effectiveness of this excellent book!

As a teacher, I can attest that this review book is effective in large part because of the layout of the book and the amount of practice that it offers each reader.

Regarding the layout, the structure is quite simple: The book has 800 high frequency words divided into 80 units of 10 words each. The words are conveniently alphabetically ordered in categories such as the following: abate to abstinence, abysmal-affinity, etc.

Then within each unit you will find definitions of all 10 words in addition to sentence examples with the key words embedded. All of this is followed by LOTS OF PRACTICE:

1) A matching section
2) A fill in the blank section
3) A sense or nonsense section (Based on your understanding of the new vocabulary, you have to read whole sentences and assess completely if they make sense).

At this point you, the reader, have read the definitions, seen examples of how they fit in sentences and completed three forms of practice.

That's the equivalent of 5 levels of exposure and it's given to you in bite size chunks that you can digest within 10 minutes each. This level of repetition and exposure flat out works!

In fact, this type of learning would work extremely well for some of the English language learners (students who struggle with English) that I teach, because they require much practice to truly internalize vocabulary. I suspect that if you are looking to cram and forget the words right after the exam then simple flash cards would be better suited. That said, I think that this book's structure and amount of practice make it a pretty fail safe solution to improving your reading comprehension score via vocabulary memorization.

I like this book for two reasons. First, unlike other GRE vocab books, it provides reinforcing exercises after every set of words. Secondly, 800 words seems like a sensible middle ground between Barron's full 3,500 word list and the 300 word lists of other publishers.

The bad news is that this book didn't provide the words I needed. This book covers words across the entire spectrum of the GRE, from really simple to totally obscure terms and everything in between. Unfortunately this means that this book is of very limited use to any individual test taker.

I highly recommend that you work with a vocab list that is targeted at your current level. If you already have a strong vocabulary, this book won't be challenging enough. If you are a non-native speaker studying for the GRE, this book does not have enough "easy" words to provide a solid foundation.

My own story: As a non-native speaker, I had some significant gaps in vocabulary that needed to be filled. After I bought this book, I took the first PowerPrep exam and wrote down a list of ~50 unfamiliar vocab words that I encountered on the exam. This book contained only 7 of those words, but Sparknotes' 1000 Words for the SAT had over 30! (Yes, that's right: SAT vocab.) I studied primarily from Sparknotes and raised my score from 480 on the first PowerPrep exam to 620 on the test day.

This book is pretty well laid out. 800 words are broken out into 80 units with 10 words in each. At first I was a little put off by the fact that the words were presented alphabetically. Seemed odd that if I didn't have time to finish the last 4 chapters of the book, I would miss out on every word starting with T-Z. However, as I moved through the book, the organization began to make more sense; I found myself remembering a word by recalling it's neighbors.

My routine was as follows...
1. Spend 5-10 minutes to reviewing 5 previous units
2. Write out the word and review the accompanying sentence
3. Look online [...] for any additional meanings
4. If the word's use was still unclear, look it up on Google News [...]
5. Do the questions at the end of the unit

At this rate each unit took me about 40 minutes, but you can obviously go quicker.
Cheers.

I took the GRE this morning after studying with this book for just ONE WEEK. I split up the 800 words into 120 words a day (roughly) and just cranked through it. I did really, really well, and I think that every single word on my GRE was in this book. It was incredible, they really are essential!

After using this book for a month my score jumped from a 570 to a 670.

I had little time to prepare for the GRE. One week before the test-date, I did some practice-tests, on which I scored pretty low on the verbal part (range 300-400) and not high enough on the quantitative part (600-700).

I decided to buy this book (and also the other book, "Barron's GRE"), it was delivered by express mail and I studied it for almost a week. My verbal score on the real test was 600 (although I am not a native English speaker), and my quantitative score 780, thank you Barron's!