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Will Cliffs Notes help me prepare for the GRE Subject Test in English?

grassbeneathmyfeet - 2007-06-11 14:29:31 - Standards Testing

I am an upcoming senior majoring in English. I have just started to prepare for the GRE General Test, but one of the schools I'm interested in requires the GRE Subject Test. I was looking over a practice test and didn't recognize a lot of the authors and the ones I did recognize I hadn't read. I also looked at a list of books that have appeared on past GRE tests with the greatest frequency and was startled to find that I hadn't read them. Some of them are major works that I just avoided in college--Paradise Lost, Canterbury Tales, etc. I was wondering if I could manage by just reading the Cliffs Notes to some of these works, but I'm wondering if that would suffice. I'm very nervous and beating myself up for not taking classes that adhered more to the canon. Any advice?

Best Answer:

Reading the books with the help of Cliff notes would be the best thing to do at this point, but if you don't have time to do that, reading the notes beats going to the exam with no knowledge of those authors and works. I know a young woman who did amazing things with the knowledge she gleaned from watching "Wishbone" on public tv as a little child. I guess it's not knowing everything in great detail, but knowing the major points and why they are significant that really matters.

Answers:

Reading the books with the help of Cliff notes would be the best thing to do at this point, but if you don't have time to do that, reading the notes beats going to the exam with no knowledge of those authors and works. I know a young woman who did amazing things with the knowledge she gleaned from watching "Wishbone" on public tv as a little child. I guess it's not knowing everything in great detail, but knowing the major points and why they are significant that really matters.