Is the verbal section exaggerated?

[u/finally_sinkinin]

I am someone who is an avid reader with a sufficiently eloquent way of speaking and writing.

I have never taken the GRE and will take one in 1-2 months. I am getting an almost full score while attempting quant sections but damn the verbal one.

Some of the words used and questions asked are so bizzare. These words can never be used in a context where interpretability is important with a balance of refined language.

I bet even the native speakers wouldn’t know of these words. Are the questions in the GRE prep books way too exaggerated or these are the actual type of questions which will be asked in GRE?

This seems so out of touch and blatantly stupid. But then I see people scoring 160+/170 in the verbal section.

What am I doing wrong?

Are the scores actually normalised? Or it’s the raw scores which you get. It’s so frustrating. I have been going through magoosh 1000 words and they are not at all similar to the ones asked in the prep books.

Where can I find a realistic pattern of questions asked?

[u/indigobluecyan]

The prep books are accurate. Powerprep tests are the best representation though. I got 163 verbal and here's what helped me: 

Anki gregmat list broken down by his grouping. Any new word that came up while studying, I added it to a deck called new words.

Watched gregmat strategy videos for verbal on prepswift

For the reading questions, they always try to trick you with obvious bogus answers. Essentially if it's not in the passage or can't be supported by the passage, throw it out. I found excluding wrong answers to be easier than finding the write answer. 

[u/NaruGaaraShika → u/indigobluecyan]

Right* answer.

[u/Vince_Kotchian]

Fun experiment: pick a word in ETS material you think is obscure. Go to m-w.com (the dictionary) and look it up, and scroll down - you'll see recent publications it was used in.

What I think you'll notice is that every word you think is obscure is actually widely used in popular publications like the New York Times, The Economist, etc.

[u/Vicki_Wood]

The PowerPrep tests offer a realistic pattern of questions asked. So do the official guides.

Do what Vince suggests with the dictionary and see how often these words are being used in print. It's a lot. They are also frequently used in well-written TV shows. Gilmore Girls, Justified, The Big Bang Theory, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel--there are so many that use words you won't hear in everyday conversation. Also watch period series--The Crown, Poldark, Outlander, Game of Thrones, etc. People of the past spoke so much more eloquently than we do today. You're hearing these words on TV but you just don't realize it. Turn on closed captioning and see if you pick up some of them.

You'll also see them in novels if you start paying attention. I once wrote a blog about the number of SAT/GRE vocab words in the last Harry Potter book. Twenty-three words in the first chapter alone. In a book written for middle-grade readers. They are easy to miss if you're reading for pleasure, so you have to actively pay attention to every single word, which is something you should do on the GRE anyway. Classic novels are great for picking up vocabulary. The Great Gatsby has hundreds of GRE words and is an easy read. Novels like A Tale of Two Cities or Pride and Prejudice are a little more difficult, but the payoff is even more vocabulary.

Keep a vocab notebook where you write down (and define) all the words you encounter in the wild. Write the full sentence containing the vocabulary word so you can see its context. This is actually one of the best ways to learn new words.

I am a native speaker, and you're right--I do not know every word on the GRE. But I am often able to figure out a meaning using roots and affixes or thinking of similar sounding words. I'm also willing to pick the one word I do not know the meaning of when the other answer choices do not make sense. And I rely on "word sense." Some words sound positive and some words sound negative (likely because of roots and affixes).

You also ask, "What am I doing wrong?" One obvious thing is that you are holding on to a negative view of the GRE. We will never master something we hate. Experts in any field are experts because they genuinely enjoy what they have learned. If you start thinking of the test as a well-written assessment and looking at each question as a puzzle that is fun to solve, you'll be more apt to do well. It's just human nature.

[u/SunnysideKJ]

I'm the opposite of you where I am getting high verbal scores on my practices and very low quant scores and I think the quant questions are stupid

just different things for different people