GRE Verbal Reasoning

GRE Verbal Reasoning Mock Test Paper 2024 | Practice Free Online

GRE Mock Test 200: Practice free online GRE Verbal Reasoning exam questions and answers and detailed solutions.

GRE Verbal Reasoning Pattern

For admission to postgraduate, masters, and a number of other programs of American universities, each candidate must pass a standardized examination GRE (Graduate Record Examinations). With this test, the admissions committee evaluates the level of knowledge as well as analytical skills and critical thinking of future students. By itself, the GRE exam is quite complex, so it is extremely important for him to be well prepared.

The verbal section of the GRE examines the participant's skills in the areas of reading comprehension, critical reasoning, and vocabulary usage. As the main validation tools are several passages and questions that need to be answered after reading them. They are all designed to assess the student's ability to draw conclusions, to use the arguments to identify the key points, and to understand the printed text and individual words.

The verbal part, like the quantitative part, is graded on a scale of 130-170, and each section also consists of 20 questions, and unlike the quantitative part of the 20 questions, only 30 instead of 35 minutes are available. The 20 questions in each section always split into 6 "Text Completion" questions, 4 "Sentence Equivalence" questions, and 10 "Critical Reasoning" questions.

Verbal Reasoning consists of 3 types of questions :

  1. Text Completion: inserting words in the blanks
  2. Sentence Equivalence: the selection of synonyms
  3. Reading Comprehension: selecting the answers to the questions based on the given passage

Text Completion & Sentence Equivalence

Students should first emphasize these two parts - (i) Text completion (fill in the blanks) and (ii) Sentence Equivalence (selecting synonyms). Normally, it is believed that in order to succeed in these two sections, about 3,000 words have to be learned. The problem is that these are special words and it is very difficult to remember them because they are rarely used in everyday conversation. There are many online sources where these words can be easily found together. However, if you know 3,000 words, you should be able to understand the general meaning and find the right word.

In the Sentence Equivalence part, you are given 6 words, out of which only one option is correct. Of these six words - four words include synonyms and antonyms, and the remaining two words are absolutely incorrect (in terms of meaning/form). You must first separate the antonyms from the set so that you are left with only 4 words. This way, it will be easier for you to choose the right option.

Reading Comprehension

Speaking of reading comprehension, for most students, it is known to be the toughest part because they are unrealistic for the amount of time being given to read passages that are usually very long and complex. Sometimes, non-native speakers are not able to understand the correct meaning of the comprehension even after translating it into their mother tongue.

Here in this section of the GRE verbal reasoning, you are given a comprehension, and after that, there are some questions based on it. The GRE comprehension passages are much harder than that of IELTS and the time to read is comparatively less. The questions are not designed so that the information is in the comprehension, and you will need to find out the conclusions and answers based on this comprehension reading. If you do not understand large comprehension passages then you will feel the difficulty in solving the related questions. You should not spend the time to read the big passages and move forward to small and medium first.

GRE Verbal Reasoning Preparation Strategy

The process of preparing for the GRE test is very laborious and time-consuming because its successful completion needs good knowledge and skills in various fields. Today students are able to use to various preparation materials for the GRE test practice. However, the first thing you need to pay attention to is the level of English. Even those who consider their level of English is good enough, experts recommend to additionally work on its improvement.

In order to successfully cope with all questions, preparation for GRE should include the regular reading of a variety of literature, learning new words and complex lexical structures. In addition, the candidate must learn quickly to identify the conclusive point of the reading and be prepared to deal with the usage of the available data. In preparation, it is recommended to practice on the basis of mock tests and various exercises.

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How to Improve Reading Skills?

GRE reading volume is very large, many candidates could not even read all the articles within the time prescribed, the so-called "Scan read" and "skip reading" and "skimming method" is also only applicable to some articles, it is difficult to resolve the nature of the problem. Then, the question is how to read? In a word, actively read the key parts of the article.

The so-called Active reading is not like a General reading; you have to focus on the key parts, each at the beginning and end of the article. GRE's reading comprehension articles are all selected from official publications, the logical structure of which is very rigorous in nature.

Thus, by reading a few key parts, you can quickly grasp the entire article's structure and inherent logic relations and solve upto 70% of the questions with great accuracy.