<p>Actually, memorizing vocab and reading will help build a better reading/comprehending machine. And frankly, a better machine can be better at any passage. It is sad that only a tiny percentage of the words one memorizes may appear; nonetheless, no other approach seems that fruitful.</p>
<p>No matter how hard and passionately one studies the patterns and word roots, the test can be merciless here and there. Sometimes the passages seem very dense, with a series of unknown words; other times, looking for something "positive", you end up choosing vindictive after "scrutinizing the roots/suffix/prefix" because you know that vindicate is something related to exoneration and the two words-vindicate, vindictive- should definitely be related and positive.</p>