Question: Performers Offstage

Comment on Performers Offstage

Looks like the difficulty in 160-170 SE comes from the words you have to choose from. I knew most of the Medium words so i need to build my vocab up. How many hard vs medium questions should one expect if they do good on section 1?
greenlight-admin's picture

That's a very difficult question to answer. Words considered "hard" or "medium" can differ wildly from person to person.

I gotta tell you...the GRE absolutely LOVES words that mean sociable and talkative.
greenlight-admin's picture

So true. Great observation!!

How do you distinguish between easy/medium/hard words?
As I see it, if you know the word then you know it, and if don't then you don't. Kind of a binary option.
English is not my native language so before I studied the words, they were difficult for me in the same way. Maybe this is why I don't understand it. Is it how commonly they are used?
greenlight-admin's picture

Categorizing words as easy, medium, and hard is very subjective, as you have noted. Plus being a non-native English speaker compounds the issue.
That said, I would say each word falls into 4 general categories.
1) You know exactly what the word means, and you have used it correctly in sentences.
2) You don't know what the word means, but you have heard it used in context, which means you have a vague (yet uncertain) idea what the word means.
3) You have heard the word before, but you don't remember anything about the context.
4) You've never heard the word.

In general, I would say that, if you're wondering about the difficulty level of a word, the higher the number, the more difficult the word.

As you can imagine, this is not a foolproof method. For example, it's conceivable that a person has never heard of the word giraffe, in which case of that person would classify the word as difficult.

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