How to Review a GRE Vocabulary Question
If you want to master the GRE, think like a scientist. Each practice text completion or sentence equivalence question you miss gives you two new pieces of data. When you put enough data together, you learn, grow, and improve.
The first piece of data is the right answer, which tells you something about how GRE problems work. The second piece of data is even more important: reviewing tells you about your own behavior as a test-taker. Do you read too quickly or too slowly? Do you fall for theme traps or choose answers that aren’t synonyms? When you review a problem, you don’t just learn what answer you were supposed to come up with. You also learn from examining the way that you solved it.
That doesn’t mean you should only review problems you got wrong, by the way. If you have a chance, review every problem you do! But, the most important problems to review are the ones that you got wrong, but could have gotten right. Not the absolute hardest, most ridiculously complicated problems — but the ones that challenged you just a little. Identified one of those problems? Here’s what to do with it.
Redoing a Text Completion or Sentence Equivalence Problem
The first step of review is redoing the problem. Don’t look at the right answers immediately after you finish a set of problems. Before you check the answers, go back and quickly try the problems a second time. You can take it easier this time: don’t use a timer, and feel free to look up definitions of vocabulary words.
The point of doing it like this is to challenge your brain to do more of the “heavy lifting.” You’re much more likely to remember something you figure out (at least partially) on your own, compared to something that you passively read. So, if it’s possible, try to figure out the right answer, or at least make a reasonable guess.
Before you move on to reading the explanation, glance at the right answer(s). If the right answer isn’t what you expected, you may still be able to convince yourself of why the right answer was right. But, if you get stuck, use the explanation for assistance.
This first redo should happen shortly after you first try the problem. Once you’ve redone the problem for the first time, take some notes. Here’s how.
Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence Problem Logging
If you don’t have a problem log already, start one now. Here’s how to take great notes on a Text Completion or Sentence Equivalence problem.
Let’s do a Sentence Equivalence problem from the 5lb. Book of GRE Practice Problems to get on the same page. Try this problem before you keep reading:
The answer to this one is disingenuous and artful. If that’s not what you picked, look up those definitions first and see if you can convince yourself! Here’s the official explanation, too. Don’t read it until you’ve figured out as much as you can on your own.
The first step of problem logging, regardless of whether you’re doing Text Completion or Sentence Equivalence, is to jot down any notes you have about the structure and meaning of the sentence.
Student A missed the second meaning of the word “impressed” when she first read the sentence. Here are her notes:
Impressed isn’t always positive! It can be neutral and mean “made a certain impression” or can even be negative (“She impressed me as a liar.”)
Student B picked the opposite of the right answer, because she focused on only one part of the sentence. Here are her notes:
Get the meaning of the entire sentence before you decide! The second part said “did not believe she was naive,” but I only focused on “naive.” But, the first part should say that she probably wasn’t naive, because that’s what “did not believe” implies.
The next step is also important for both Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence. Every GRE vocabulary problem includes clues in the sentence that point to the right answer. When you review a problem, especially if you missed it, identify those clues and how they led you to the right answer.
Here are Student A’s notes on the clues:
‘Education and experience’ = opposite of naive. But, she’s acting naive. So, she’s either a liar or an actor.
Here are Student B’s notes:
- ‘Did not believe’ = she’s lying!
- ‘Impressed’ = looked like, but wasn’t really?
- ‘Naive’ versus ‘education and experience’ = opposites
- The right answer should be something she actually is, not what she’s pretending to be
Finally, take some notes on the answer choices. In a Sentence Equivalence problem, this will be a little more involved than in a Text Completion problem, since the right answers have to be synonyms.
If you picked the wrong answer, identify what thought process caused you to pick it, if you haven’t already. For instance, did you not know some of the definitions? Did you fall for a trap? Did you make an incorrect assumption? Also, if there were words you didn’t know among the answer choices, write them down so you can make flashcards later.
Here are Student A’s notes on the answer choices. She picked accomplished and artful.
- Right answer shouldn’t have been positive (“impressed” isn’t always positive)
- Artful isn’t necessarily positive! It means “cunning,” not “accomplished.”
- Artful and disingenuous both mean “sneaky” or “deceitful” in this context.
- Guileless, innocent, culpable = theme traps (law)
Here are Student B’s notes on the answer choices. She picked innocent and guileless.
- I picked answers that seemed to match “naive” (wrong)
- Guileless = innocent, good match but wrong meaning
- Culpable = too strong, she may not be guilty, just deceptive
Finally, if you learned any general lessons from the problem, jot those down as well. For instance, if you read too quickly and skipped part of the sentence, make a note of that! This is how you identify patterns and key areas to practice for later.
What to do next
Once you’ve written some notes in your problem log, set it aside for a while. Every week or two, schedule a study session where you only redo old problems. You don’t need to redo every problem a second time, but you should definitely revisit the ones that taught you the most.
Every couple of days, you should also glance over your problem log without redoing the problems. Just reread your notes. This is a great thing to do quickly when you have a little bit of downtime, and will help you reinforce what you’ve been working on.
Finally, when you practice Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence problems, you’ll inevitably run into (and write down) vocabulary words you don’t know. What you do with these words depends on what they are. Maybe the unknown word was just a super obscure, rare piece of jargon that you don’t really need to learn, or maybe it’s actually worth learning. If you see an unknown word more than once, definitely make a flashcard for it! You can also get a sense of the value of a vocabulary word by looking up its meaning. A word that means “unpleasant” is more likely to show up on the GRE than a word that means “related to flooding.”
Are you already pretty comfortable with the vocabulary-focused problems? Then just briefly jot down a few takeaways on any problem that manages to trick you. But if Text Completion and/or Sentence Equivalence are weak areas, make your review more intense for a couple of weeks, even if that means you get through fewer problems overall.
[ Related: How to Review a GRE Quantitative Comparison Question ]
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Chelsey Cooley
is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Seattle, Washington. Chelsey always followed her heart when it came to her education. Luckily, her heart led her straight to the perfect background for GMAT and GRE teaching: she has undergraduate degrees in mathematics and history, a master’s degree in linguistics, a 790 on the GMAT, and a perfect 170Q/170V on the GRE. Check out Chelsey’s upcoming GRE prep offerings here.