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    Indian engineer lost in the mysticism of life. Sometimes agnostic, sometimes full of faith, sometimes depressed, sometimes blessed. Sometimes recluse, sometimes extravagantly social. Sometimes feel the need of psychiatrist consultation.


    Sometimes love to play and compose music, sometimes make computer vision and robotics projects, very few times like to write and rarely like to read.


    This defines my life almost completely.

How To Memorize Barron's GRE Word-List Effectively and for Free

Are you planning to give your GRE? Started Yet? Feeling difficulty in verbal section as your vocabulary is not that strong and accurate, you don’t like reading novels, news papers etc. either? Here is the tutorial on memorizing GRE wordlists effectively with fun and for free.

The first step everyone takes or thinks is to start with the Barron’s Master Wordlist, going through word by word, with each one’s meaning and sentence usage. But the question comes, after putting a grueling effort of a month or so, is one able to recall every meaning with reasonable accuracy? Yes, it is desirable, to crack GRE Vocabulary Section that one must know the exact meaning of words as well as usage for correct answer. If one can, then this tutorial is wastage of time and should continue his/her efforts, others, like me, can practice the following methods.

Using Commercial Software that Provide Vocabulary Revision

There are various software available to effectively rote master vocabulary word-list. Some of them which I tried are as follows:

These software are definitely very effective for memorizing up the important words, and they do provide good revision practice. GreBible has 5 types of games for revision and costs around 30 USD. Ultimate Vocabulary software uses a lot of fancy techniques for revision and costs around 67 USD.

Using Open-Source Automatic Words Scheduler Software for Revision

When I started roting GRE word-list from Barron’s book, I realized that after 1 month of rigorous roting, I couldn’t recall the meaning words which I studies few days back.So I started revising words from the word-list-1. I thought that it would work fine but the memory I started developing proved to be dependent on the spatial location of the words, as I only able to recall words in the same order or in their vicinity as given in book. I was taking hard time recalling words randomly. Therefore, I felt that random scheduling in necessary for revision of words for an effective memory response.

Later, after some time, I devised a software system which could provide these qualities:

  1. Random scheduling facility for words
  2. Their usage in a sentence
  3. Revision adaptive to the difficulty, according to the reader, of the words

Based on the above requirements I started making my own software, but later realized that I should rather focus on GRE than being a software developer as I had to go for PG studies immediately. Fortunately I found flash card software in sourceproject named Mnemosyne, which is available for free and surprisingly having all three qualities described above. The Download link is given in my download page.

Mnemosyne

Mnemosyne can take user input as well as xml or text files that can be imported manually. The question and answer should be according to the format specified. For storing the words, Mnemosyne creates a memory file with extension .mem on the hard-disk.

I have put my complete wordlist file in my download page (completeWL.mem) which also includes some extra difficult words not given in Barron’s book. I have also put alphabetical word-list in text format in an archive (word-lists.rar) in my download page.

In this software, questions are presented first and on pressing ‘Show answer’ button answer is shown. User can rate questions (words) the according to the quickness of response in 0 to 5 ratings. Each word is placed in two categories: memorized and not memorized. If the user rates any question with 0 or 1 rating then it is placed in the not memorized category and repeated within the 10-15 number counter (adjustable in Mnemosyne configuration) until it is given rating higher than 1. If the word is given 2 or higher rating, it is placed in the memorized category. Rating equal and higher than 2 controls the question repetition schedule, suppose a question is rated 2 then it will be scheduled for repetition on the next day (date), 3 rated question will be repeated after 2-3 days and so on.

Although the exact pattern of repetition schedule is hard to predict and I found this software’s scheduling algorithm not much efficient. I continued with the same software with some continuous parameters tweaks as it was hard to get even 2-3 hours for study after my job. In the next sub-section I have explained all the practices that I used with Mnemosyne.

My Practices with Mnemosyne

I found this software repetition algorithm a little bit inefficient so I used the same with some, you may say tricks and tips, practices:

  • I labeled words in the software with different category based on their first alphabet. Then I started studying with the category having lowest words first for memorizing new words. This helped me in studying words selectively and with constant motivation.
  • For memorizing new words I used to select only one category while for revision I used to select all of them. This facilitated randomized revision of words.
  • I used to memorize only 50-60 words daily. One can go for large number depending on one's capability.
  • I used to revise all the scheduled words presented for revision in the software. This made my recalling power so effective that in my actual GRE and other practice exams almost all antonyms and other questions, based on the actual definition of words, I hardly took few seconds to answer. Believe me that the meanings of words came from the subconscious mind (this means that they are deeply stuck in the brain). This saves a lot of time during exam for other questions.
  • Additionally I used dictionary software, available for free, to get the usage of each word in simple sentences and also I copied and pasted each word usage into the flash cards during memorizing new words. This gave one more dimension to recall exact meaning of words through its usage. In my opinion, Barron’s sentences are bit complex to remember while with this practice you can actually add your own simple sentence usage into the answer. Also I checked each word’s pronunciation in the dictionary at the time of copying sentence usage.
  • I tried to use these words in my daily routine to revise them. I ignored my mistakes but made sure to check them from dictionary or word-list.
  • I used this software consistently almost every day for three months before solving GRE problems.

Other Complementary Practices

After finishing wordlist with Mnemosyne, one should not break the habit of revision till GRE exam date. It makes the memory quicker to response and retentive. Also, one should revise Barron’s wordlist. It will boost the confidence as there be hardly any word remaining that is not easily recallable. There are other GRE words that are not given in Barron’s book. So they also can be added into wordlist database.

Final Words

I have written this tutorial so that everyone, like me, can use this technique to improve vocabulary effectively and for free. I used the above method for my GRE preparation, noticeably sufficient and very easy to put into practice, and thereby my GRE score in my first attempt is 640 Verbal and 800 Quantitative. Please mail me your feedback if you find this tutorial, in any way, useful. Thanks.