How to get better at verbal reasoning?

[i-am-bored-69]

Hey, i noticed a lot of high stakes entrance examinations ( selective schools, private, med etc) have this as a form of assesment, and i heard it's really hard since it tests your innate ability. can someone give me advice on how to improve these skills?

[brightsky]

Verbal reasoning tests your innate linguistic skills as well as your vocabulary and ability to reason and look for patterns. I think the best way to improve on these skills is learn a whole chunk of vocab. You can't improve on the "skills" per se, but most of the times the skills involved are quite simple, it's just the vocab you'll get stuck on.

Take this as an example:

Which is the odd one out:

A: misconception
B: predicament
C: quandary
D: dilemma
E: pickle

You'll need to know what all those words mean in order to select the odd one out. The skill involved here is just knowing which one stands out from the rest of the words, but the real thing you'll be stuck with in the exam is knowing what they mean. Hope this make sense somehow.