I think repetition is the key. But not everything needs to be memorized. I remember when I was studying for GRE, the most difficult section for me was Verbal (I score 100% in Quantitative and Analytical). To overcome it, I started reading a lot - whatever I could find - novels, magazines, essays and the GRE book. I never tried to memorize the words from GRE book instead I would just go through them repeatedly. During GRE, I didn't remember the words but I could figure out the meaning and context. That helped me. And yes, the pocket cards helped in that.
This posts provide good suggestions but I can understand what other commenters are talking about. May be the title and the introduction are not exactly coherent with the content. Expectations vs. satisfaction.