Easy novels for vocabulary building?
November 5, 2015 11:40 AM Subscribe
My husband needs to take both the OAR and GRE in the next handful of months. He has never taken the GRE and did a good job on the OAR, but needs to do a GREAT job.
We've done the test prep books and flash card route and it doesn't really do it for him. He has expressed the desire for novels or whatnot that he can use to organically increase his big word vocabulary.
The only difficulty is he is not a fast reader, but he does like to read in general.
Anyone have any good recommendations?
We've done the test prep books and flash card route and it doesn't really do it for him. He has expressed the desire for novels or whatnot that he can use to organically increase his big word vocabulary.
The only difficulty is he is not a fast reader, but he does like to read in general.
Anyone have any good recommendations?
Best answer: Because the GRE is focused on academic language, I find that having a great novel-reading vocabulary is not as important as having a great nonfiction-reading vocabulary. The longform nonfiction in the New Yorker hits a sweet spot for me in terms of having a high density of harder vocabulary and really compelling content; well, everybody except Malcolm Gladwell, at least. Failing that, I'd try nonfiction by people like Oliver Sacks and John McPhee.
posted by Jeanne at 11:50 AM on November 5, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by Jeanne at 11:50 AM on November 5, 2015 [4 favorites]
Even though it's not a novel, I think you should tell him to start reading The Economist every week
posted by colfax at 11:58 AM on November 5, 2015
posted by colfax at 11:58 AM on November 5, 2015
Address the 'only difficulty' and improve speed of reading concurrently with introducing different texts.
I'd pick up a couple "Best American" series of books in whatever topic is interesting and relevant to course of study. Gently used copies from prior years can be had for not much money.
There are also GRE vocab oriented podcasts, and flashcard apps that don't suck. Have these options been explored?
posted by enfa at 12:20 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'd pick up a couple "Best American" series of books in whatever topic is interesting and relevant to course of study. Gently used copies from prior years can be had for not much money.
There are also GRE vocab oriented podcasts, and flashcard apps that don't suck. Have these options been explored?
posted by enfa at 12:20 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
William F. Buckley would famously pepper his novels with ten-dollar words.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 1:11 PM on November 5, 2015
posted by paper chromatographologist at 1:11 PM on November 5, 2015
I believe Frankenstein has been used by many teachers for building vocabulary.
posted by gemutlichkeit at 4:55 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by gemutlichkeit at 4:55 PM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Would he consider writing instead of reading? I had great fun writing pulpy fanfiction with GRE vocabulary words.
posted by lakeroon at 8:05 PM on November 5, 2015
posted by lakeroon at 8:05 PM on November 5, 2015
I've found the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times to have a relatively high density of GRE words.
posted by Jacqueline at 10:50 AM on November 6, 2015
posted by Jacqueline at 10:50 AM on November 6, 2015
Best answer: Former GRE teacher (shudder) here: seconding the New Yorker; the New York Review of Books would be good for this too. They often have wonderful long "book reviews" that are really more like short histories of a subject, and I wouldn't be surprised if Princeton is just copy-pasting their words from there half the time.
I haven't read Nicholas Ostler's Ad Infinitum: a Biography of Latin, but I have read and enjoyed some of his other books, especially Empires of the Word. An entertaining history of Latin could serve a great double purpose by including a wide range of obscure, Latinate vocabulary (of which there will be no shortage on the day of the exam).
While novels will often have complicated vocabulary, in this case they might have two problems: 1) as noted above, it's the non-fiction vocabulary, such as that found in the New Yorker or the Economist, that you're likely to see more of in the GRE; and 2) novelists tend to use a limited range of vocabulary, just because it is one person writing the whole thing. I can't substantiate this at all except that I read Hindi for a living, and am always surprised by how quickly I can soak up the language of a given author, to the point where I can near-effortlessly read their works, and then suffer when I try reading someone new. With longform, John McPhee-type articles, you can vary it up to increase your tonnage of crazy words.
One more thing, in case this hasn't come up: I cannot emphasize the importance of studying the test itself, and learning how it works. For instance, the GRE used to work on a computerized system that would give you easier or harder questions depending on how you answered the previous question, with the goal of gradually narrowing down your "correct" score. This meant that if you answered the first few questions wrong you were pretty much screwed, and there was no real way of raising your score past a certain point. IIRC this is no longer the case, but the people making those tests are very smart, and very ruthless, and expend a lot of time and money to produce a range of results every year. There are all kinds of dirty tricks in these exams that can, and should, be learned. Otherwise, no matter how good your vocabulary is, you'll still be at a disadvantage.
TLDR; Yes John McPhee, but make sure you study the test too.
posted by Stilling Still Dreaming at 4:21 PM on November 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
I haven't read Nicholas Ostler's Ad Infinitum: a Biography of Latin, but I have read and enjoyed some of his other books, especially Empires of the Word. An entertaining history of Latin could serve a great double purpose by including a wide range of obscure, Latinate vocabulary (of which there will be no shortage on the day of the exam).
While novels will often have complicated vocabulary, in this case they might have two problems: 1) as noted above, it's the non-fiction vocabulary, such as that found in the New Yorker or the Economist, that you're likely to see more of in the GRE; and 2) novelists tend to use a limited range of vocabulary, just because it is one person writing the whole thing. I can't substantiate this at all except that I read Hindi for a living, and am always surprised by how quickly I can soak up the language of a given author, to the point where I can near-effortlessly read their works, and then suffer when I try reading someone new. With longform, John McPhee-type articles, you can vary it up to increase your tonnage of crazy words.
One more thing, in case this hasn't come up: I cannot emphasize the importance of studying the test itself, and learning how it works. For instance, the GRE used to work on a computerized system that would give you easier or harder questions depending on how you answered the previous question, with the goal of gradually narrowing down your "correct" score. This meant that if you answered the first few questions wrong you were pretty much screwed, and there was no real way of raising your score past a certain point. IIRC this is no longer the case, but the people making those tests are very smart, and very ruthless, and expend a lot of time and money to produce a range of results every year. There are all kinds of dirty tricks in these exams that can, and should, be learned. Otherwise, no matter how good your vocabulary is, you'll still be at a disadvantage.
TLDR; Yes John McPhee, but make sure you study the test too.
posted by Stilling Still Dreaming at 4:21 PM on November 6, 2015 [2 favorites]
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posted by aimedwander at 11:44 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]