Section 2 in Oblique: Vocabulary List (Part 3)

A vital part of Section 2 is improving your vocabulary. This doesn't mean you ought to know a lot of big words but rather that you should be able distinguish between the meaning of very similar words. This can't be done unless your vocabulary is at an exceptionally high level. There are many ways of going about this. The most obvious way to achieve this is through a UCAT prep course and answering a large number of practice questions. This is a very useful method for a number of reasons but mainly because it encourages you to learn words in context. Of course, in addition to enriching your vocabulary, answering practice question has the added benefits of developing your time management and general exam skills. However, it is not a very systematic approach and with the luck of the draw, you may miss out on a lot of useful vocab.

The second way that people tend to suggest improving vocabulary is through reading- whether it is specific UMAT® Exam-prescribed texts or simply newspapers or autobiographical novels. Even reading general fiction may be quite useful. First, fictional texts may have credible character development and highly emotional scenes and the wide array of emotions and vocabulary utilised by fiction writers aren't generally available anywhere else. Secondly, it can give you a bit of a break. UMAT® Exam preparation can be very full on but reading a casual novel, while a good way to prep for UMAT® Exam, can be very relaxing and enjoyable. The downside to this method is that yet again, it is slightly haphazard and not very systematic.

Moving on to the final, and in my opinion the best, way of improving vocab: rote learning. No one particularly enjoys rote learning and memorising but unfortunately it is the most systematic and effective method of improving your vocabulary. By making your own vocab lists from what is available to you through UMAT® Exam prep courses  and your reading, you will allow yourself to form a systematic approach and cover much more material.

At the end of the day, the best approach is always going to be a combination of the three methods. It is very important that you don't ignore vocab building in your section 2 preparation and I would go so far as to suggest that it is almost as important as doing practice questions!