GRE Reading Comprehension Archives -

Mar 2023

How To Learn GRE Vocabulary Quickly and Effectively

By now you know that GRE preparation, for almost everyone, involves studying vocabulary words. Half of the questions on the GRE verbal reasoning sections are vocabulary-based. You will have to select from an answer choice set of vocabulary words to appropriately fill in the blank/blanks in a sentence. It’s hard to get these questions right without knowing the vocabulary. Unless you are an edacious reader with a prodigious vocabulary, you’ll most likely need to learn a few hundred words.

GRE Vocabulary Preparation Lists

How can you complete such a rebarbative task efficiently? Well, there are myriad GRE vocabulary lists out there for you to study, but I recommend making your own flashcards.

As you practice reading comprehension, both from official GRE practice materials and from other good sources like peer-review journals and college textbooks in the sciences and humanities, make a flashcard for every word you encounter and don’t know.

Don’t worry about sciency words that would only ever be used in one context, like phototransduction. You want nouns, adjectives, and verbs that have broad applicability. Even when you come across an unknown word in the course of working or reading for pleasure, jot it down somewhere (digitally or physically) and make a flashcard later.

Once you get into this habit, you’ll be amazed how often you encounter unknown words in everyday life. Most of us just filter these words out or circumvent them by using context clues to get the gist of what was said. A useful skill – but in this case a deleterious one.

Make a Flashcard for Each Unknown Word

And of course, make a flashcard for every unknown word you encounter in any vocabulary-based GRE practice question.

The very act of making these flashcards will reinforce your memory of the words’ definitions, but as you keep shuffling your deck and studying it over time, your retention will multiply.

It’s important to do this regularly. Build it into your daily routine, and take advantage of odd moments. Waiting for the bus/subway/train? Don’t scroll TikTok – study vocabulary words. Go over some definitions mentally while you brush your teeth. See how many flashcards you can get through while your chicken florentine is in the microwave.

Connect Words that are Synonyms or Antonyms

Another reinforcing practice is to connect words in your flashcard deck that are synonyms or antonyms. You don’t have to group them together for study, but if you’re reviewing a word and realize that it has a synonym or antonym relationship to another word in your deck, see if you can list any other synonyms or antonyms in your deck.

This way your individual “definition knowledge bits” can become mutually reinforcing. And as you know, the two correct answer choices on any sentence equivalence question are synonyms, or at least words that can function synonymously in the given context. You’ll be surprised how often sentence equivalence questions feature synonym pairs you identified in your study deck.

If you get into these vocabulary-building habits, you’ll find that they serve you long after you’ve trounced the GRE. A robust vocabulary makes you a more effective communicator, a clearer thinker, and an all-around cooler person – as long as you don’t flaunt it too much.

To supplement your vocabulary-building efforts, it’s important to have a thorough understanding of the structure and content of the GRE verbal reasoning section. The section includes two types of questions: reading comprehension, sentence equivalence, and text completion. Understanding the different question types and their respective formats can help you approach each question with confidence and efficiency.

If you are interested in speaking with one of our GRE tutors, you can sign-up for a complimentary, 30-minute, consultation call. You can also learn more from our past clients who were able to achieve their cumulative 325+ score with us!

Contributor: Elijah Mize (Apex GRE Instructor)

Feb 2023

Master the GRE Reading Comprehension Section

Reading comprehension accounts for half of the questions on the GRE verbal reasoning section. To do well on these questions, you need a framework for understanding the purpose and structure of the passages.

Some passages are very short – really more accurately termed “prompts” than “passages” – and present isolated scenarios followed by a single question about the scenario. For those familiar with the GMAT verbal reasoning section, these are roughly equivalent to critical reasoning questions. But these account for only 4 of the 20 scored reading comprehension questions on a GRE.

The remaining 16 questions are attached to longer passages, and you must accurately comprehend these passages at the “wide angle” level in order to answer most of their questions correctly.

Reading comprehension: understanding the purpose and structure of the passages

The “wide angle” level means that you understand what the passage is doing, or what the author is trying to do in the passage. To understand the author’s purpose, always think in terms of what the author would like you, the reader, (1) to know/understand, (2) to believe/agree with, or (3) to do. Passages of this third variety – the kind that call for action – are rare on the GRE. Even so, you should understand the existence of the category. Let’s call these degrees of purpose. A passage may exhibit more than one of these three degrees of purpose. But any passage – especially one short enough to be a GRE reading comprehension passage – will conform mainly to one of the three.

This is your starting point for understanding not only the passage’s main idea or purpose, but also how the various references and details contribute to achieving the purpose. In other words, this is your key to correctly answering almost every reading comprehension question on the GRE.

However, you need something more. In order to clearly and accurately express the author’s purpose as a useful key to the passage, you need the Levels of Engagement paradigm.

Levels of engagement

The best way to explain this paradigm is to define each of the three levels of engagement:

Level 1: The author/passage interacts directly with the topic.

Level 2: The author/passage interacts with another treatment of the topic, presenting it, critiquing it, or commending it.

Level 3: The author/passage interacts with the scholarly conversation on the topic, perhaps taking a side but mainly presenting the record of discovery or opinion.

To help clarify these three levels, let’s practice with some examples:

Practice Problem 1

Passage: In a plausible but speculative scenario, oceanographer Douglas Martinson suggests that temperature increase caused by global warming would not significantly affect the stability of the Antarctic environment, where sea ice forms on the periphery of the continent in the autumn and winter and mostly disappears in the summer. True, less sea ice would form in the winter because global warming would cause temperatures to rise. However, Martinson argues, the effect of a warmer atmosphere may be offset as follows. The formation of sea ice causes the concentration of salt in surface waters to increase; less sea ice would mean a smaller increase in the concentration of salt. Less salty surface waters would be less dense and therefore less likely to sink and stir up deep water. The deep water, with all its stored heat, would rise to the surface at a slower rate. Thus, although the winter sea-ice cover might decrease, the surface waters would remain cold enough so that the decrease would not be excessive.

Is this a first-level, second-level, or third-level passage? It is quite clearly a second-level passage. Right off the bat, the passage mentions Douglas Martinson’s suggestion and deems it “plausible but speculative.” This is mainly a presentation of Martinson’s theory, but the author does offer his assessment of the theory. So this passage occupies the second level of engagement and the second degree of purpose.

Purpose statement: The author wants me, the reader, to agree that Martinson’s theory regarding global warming and the antarctic environment’s stability is plausible but speculative.

Let’s try another one:

Practice Problem 2

Passage: Scientists formerly believed that the rocky planets – Earth, Mercury, Venus, and Mars – were created by the rapid gravitational collapse of a dust cloud, a deflation giving rise to a dense orb. That view was challenged in the 1960s, when studies of Moon craters revealed that these craters were caused by the impact of objects that were in great abundance about 4.5 billion years ago but whose number appeared to have quickly decreased shortly thereafter. This observation rejuvenated Otto Schmidt’s 1944 theory of accretion. According to this theory, cosmic dust gradually lumped into ever-larger conglomerates: particulates, gravel, small and then larger balls, planetesimals (tiny planets), and, ultimately, planets. As the planetesimals became larger, their numbers decreased. Consequently, the number of collisions between planetesimals decreased.(Separate Paragraphs)

First-level, second-level, or third-level? This is a textbook example of a third-level passage. It is tracing the history of scientific discoveries and scientific opinion regarding the formation of the rocky planets. Third-level passages generally have a first-degree (knowing/understanding) rather than a second-degree (believing/agreeing) purpose.

Purpose statement: The author wants me, the reader, to understand why 1960s observations of moon craters swayed scientific opinion about the formation of the rocky planets away from the then-popular deflation theory and towards Otto Schmidt’s 1944 accretion theory.

This is probably more specific about the science than you really need to get, but it is good practice to write such detailed statements in your preparation.

Now that you’ve seen some good examples of second-level and third-level passages, let’s try reading and classifying two passages at once!

Practice Problem 3

Passage: Was Felix Mendelssohn(1809-1847) a great composer? On its face, the question seems absurd. One of the most gifted prodigies in the history of music, he produced his first masterpiece at sixteen. From then on, he was recognized as an artist of preternatural abilities, not only as a composer but also as a pianist and conductor. But Mendelssohn’s enduring popularity has often been at odds – sometimes quite sharply – with his critical standing. Despite general acknowledgement of his genius, there has been a noticeable reluctance to rank him with, say, Schumann or Brahms. As Haggin put it, Mendelssohn, as a composer, was a “minor master . . . working on a small scale of emotion and texture.”

Historians credit repeated locust invasions in the nineteenth century with reshaping United States agriculture west of the Mississippi River. Admonished by government entomologists, farmers began to diversify. Wheat had come to nearly monopolize the region, but it was particularly vulnerable to the locusts. In 1873, just before the locusts’ most withering offensive, nearly two-thirds of Minnesota farmland was producing wheat; by the invasions’ last year, that fraction had dropped to less than one-sixth. Farmers learned that peas and beans were far less vulnerable to the insects, and corn was a more robust grain than wheat. In addition to planting alternative crops, many farmers turned to dairy and beef production. Although pastures were often damaged by the locusts, these lands were almost always left in better shape than the crops were.

Make your decisions before reading on. Although both passages mention some other view (Haggin’s view in the Mendelssohn passage and historians’ view in the locusts passage), neither passage is second-level! The Mendelssohn passage is third level. Here’s the key line: “there has been a noticeable reluctance to rank [Mendelssohn] with, say, Schumann or Brahms.” The author is presenting the scholarly verdict on Mendelssohn; Haggin is merely an example provided for this verdict. Notice that the author does not weigh in himself or react to Haggin or the prevailing view. If you were given a question about the purpose of this passage and you chose an answer choice saying either “Mendelssohn was a great composer” or “Mendelssohn was not a great composer,” you would be wrong. The correct answer must mention the scholars who hold the view on Mendelssohn.

Purpose statement: The author wants me, the reader, to know that scholars are generally reluctant to rank Mendelssohn among the greatest composers.

How about the second passage? Again, it might be mistaken for a second-level passage, but it is actually first-level. The author mentions “historians” but gives no opinion on whether these historians are right or wrong to credit locusts as they do. Instead, the passage just starts telling us the history. It seems that the historians were right to give credit to the locusts, but that’s not the point of the passage. It’s about events themselves.

Purpose statement: The author wants me, the reader, to understand how locust invasions in the nineteenth century reshaped United States agriculture west of the Mississippi.

Sometimes when writing a purpose statement, you simply copy a key line that functions more or less as the passage’s thesis, framing it in terms of the author’s purpose.

Now you’re ready to “plot” GRE reading comprehension passages in terms of degrees of purpose and levels of engagement, creating the key to correctly answering every kind of RC question.

If you are interested in speaking with one of our GRE private tutors, you can sign-up for a complimentary, 30-minute consultation call. You can also learn more from our past clients who were able to achieve their cumulative 325+ score with us!

Contributor: Elijah Mize (Apex GRE Instructor)

Jan 2023

Anatomy of the GRE Verbal Reasoning Section

Types of Questions on the GRE Verbal Reasoning Section

There are only three types of questions on the GRE verbal reasoning section: text completion, sentence equivalence, and reading comprehension.

Question Order on the GRE Verbal Reasoning Section

Let’s get right to it: there is a standard “flow” to every GRE verbal reasoning section:

Questions 1 – 6: Text Completion
Questions 7 – 11: Reading Comprehension
Questions 12 – 15: Sentence Equivalence
Questions 16 – 20: Reading Comprehension

The two types of vocabulary-based questions stay neatly separated, not jumbled, and the reading comprehension (RC) questions tend to come in equal blocks of 5. Rarely, the two “blocks” of RC questions are 4 questions and 6 questions, or 6 questions and 4 questions, respectively, shifting the numbering of the sentence equivalence questions accordingly.

Timing and Difficulty

The main benefit of knowing this flow is to help you make timing-related decisions. On each verbal reasoning section, you have just 30 minutes for 20 questions, for a brisk pace of 90 seconds per question. Some test-takers who studied their vocab flashcards like to fly through the vocabulary-based questions in order to know how to pace themselves on reading comprehension.

Test-takers who struggle with sentence equivalence (SE, which can be tricky) may prioritize everything else and then make quick decisions on the SE questions before time expires.

Another note: the text completion (TC) questions increase in difficulty and complexity from question 1 through question 6. Generally, expect questions 1 and 2 to be single blanks, questions 3 and 4 to be double blanks, and questions 5 and 6 to be triple blanks.

Since the difficulty of your second scored verbal reasoning section is determined by your performance on the first scored verbal section, a second section with more double and triple blanks is a sign that you did well on the first section.

Reading Comprehension Breakdown

Perhaps even more important than knowing the “flow” of the sections is knowing the breakdown of reading comprehension passages and questions. This is important for allocating your time wisely.

GRE reading comprehension passages may be accompanied by anywhere from 1 to 4 questions. The longer the passage, the more questions accompany it:

4q passage: about 400-450 words
3q passage: about 150-200 words
2q passage: about 125-150 words
1q passage: about 50-125 words

The ETS (Educational Testing Service, the administrators of the GRE) has an established pattern not only for how many passages of each length appear, but for the sections in which those passages appear.

Reading Comprehension Section Breakdown

Section 1:

4q passage
3q passage
1q passages (3)

Section 2:

3q passage
1q passage
2q passages (3)

The best news is that the majority of reading comprehension passages you will encounter on GRE verbal are very short. Even the 3q passages are capped at around 200 words; the biggest jump in length is from these 3q passages to the single 4q passage, which always comes in the first, medium-difficulty section.

More good news: you’ll never get stuck with a long 4q passage that is measurably more difficult than anyone else’s! The GRE doesn’t like to leave these things up to chance. They call it a standardized test for a reason.

Timing on Reading Comprehension

Let’s talk timing: 7 of the 10 RC passages on GRE verbal are less than 150 words and are accompanied by only one or two questions. There’s no reason to think of these passages as a big time drain. Comprehending and retaining such a short passage well enough to answer one or two questions about it is a fairly basic and easily-practiced skill, even though the passages may complicate the matter somewhat by being dense or technical. Bottom line: these passages are nothing to be afraid of.

In a way, the 3q passages provide the most “bang for your buck.” The passages are, on average, hardly longer than a 2q passage, so you get one question for every 50-70 words of passage read. These represent your best opportunity for knocking out a few questions in very little time, and there is one on each verbal section.

The 4q passage has the most potential for derailing your timing strategy. It can be intimidating because of its beefed-up length compared to all other RC passages. The most important thing is to avoid getting lost in the details. You don’t have to remember everything. After all, the passage isn’t going anywhere; if you get a question about a certain detail, you should be able to find that detail in a reasonable amount of time.

Instead of sweating every detail, focus on understanding the overall structure and purpose of the passage. This is the kind of comprehension that RC is built around. This “zoomed out” comprehension can even provide you with a mental map of the passage for finding the details when you need them.

In our next article, we’ll introduce the most powerful tool for understanding the big picture of reading comprehension passages on GRE verbal.

If you are looking for professional help to boost your GRE performance, you book your 30 minutes complimentary assessment session now! You can also learn more from our past clients who were able to achieve their cumulative 325+ score with us!

Contributor: Elijah Mize (Apex GRE Instructor)

Jan 2022

GRE Verbal Section – All You Need To Know

The business world is dominated by numbers, charts, and graphs. Thus, most business school hopefuls understandably focus on developing their analytical thinking and math skills when preparing for the GRE exam. But it’s a mistake to neglect the GRE verbal section. Effective GRE test prep requires a balanced, well-rounded approach.

Here’s what you need to know about the GRE verbal reasoning section.

What is the GRE verbal section and what does it test for?

The verbal section of GRE primarily evaluates the test taker’s overall command of standard written English, their ability to analyze and evaluate arguments, and critical reading skills. As such, the verbal section is made up of three types of problems: reading comprehension, text correction, and sentence equivalence.

The 3 sections have a total of 36 questions, with a time limit of 65 minutes. This leaves, on average, 1 minute and 50 seconds per question.

How Is GRE Verbal Section Scored?

The verbal section of GRE, like the quantitative section, is evaluated on a scale of 130 to 170 in one point increments. A 162 on Verbal and a 166 on Quant is considered an excellent score – it is a 90th percentile score that will be competitive for most graduate programs.

“What are GRE percentiles?” you may ask. Basically, the GRE ranks test takers by percentile. The percentile system uses GRE scores from the previous three years to calculate how applicants performed compared to their peers. For example, if an applicant scores in the 80th percentile, it means he or she performed better than 80% of test takers over the last three years.

Although the GRE scaled scores don’t change over time, the percentiles do. Graduate schools assess both the scaled and percentile scores to get an adequate understanding of the applicant’s strengths and weaknesses.

Language on the GRE Verbal Section

The language on the verbal section is more sophisticated and academic than what is used in everyday vocabulary. If you aren’t accustomed to reading formal English, your verbal prep might require some extra time and energy.

It will be easier to identify errors, main points, and bias statements once you’ve trained your ear to formal English. Practice reading formal texts efficiently and effectively, and avoid vernacular texts. Instead, choose sources that are known for using elevated writing styles, such as The New Yorker or The New York Times.

GRE Reading Comprehension

The reading comprehension subsection of GRE evaluates not only the candidate’s understanding of words and statements, but more importantly, the underlying logic behind them.
In this subsection, you’ll find passages of texts followed by several questions about the text’s details and implications. Some passages draw from various disciplines, such as the physical, biological, or social sciences, while others refer to business-related fields.

Here are some tips to make the process less tedious and more efficient:

Read the whole passage without taking too much time to memorize details
Analyze the logical structure of the passage
Ask yourself:

What’s the main argument?
What does the author state explicitly? What is implied?
How would you describe the author’s tone and attitude?

Keep an eye out for opinionated words–for example, “clearly,” “obviously,” or “apparently”–these words hint at the author’s attitudes, and they’ll help you suss out the main point.

GRE Text Completion

Text Completion is another subsection of GRE consisting of questions designed to test candidates’ abilities to build coherent and meaningful sentences. What test-takers should do is to read short passages that miss crucial words in them. Then, based on the remaining information, they need to choose the word or short phrase that would best fit the blank and thus, construct clear and logical texts.

Here are a few tips to nail the GRE Text Completion subsection:

Don’t focus only on the sentence with the blank space, read through the whole passage to learn the context.
Don’t waste too much time on the first blank – if you can’t think of anything at the moment, continue filling the rest and then come back to it.
Keep an eye on words like although, therefore, as they are connective words setting the direction of the passages.

GRE Sentence Equivalence

Similarly, the sentence equivalence subsection of the GRE aims at assessing a candidate’s ability to formulate a meaningful “whole” by choosing the proper way to fill in the blank spaces. Test-takers will have to complete a sentence by choosing two of the six answer options to fit one blank. The two words must be synonyms and lead to the constructing of a sentence with, more or less, the same meaning. No credit is provided for partially correct answers.

Here are some tips to consider while doing the GRE sentence equivalence subsection:

First and foremost, you need to equip yourself with rich vocabulary, as you need to identify perfect synonyms.
As there may be more than one set of synonyms among the answers, make sure that the words chosen by you are appropriate for filling in the blank.
After you’ve made your choice, make sure to read the sentence again in order to ensure it is grammatically and logically coherent.

Conclusion

Taking the GRE quantitative section into account, there are a number of score combinations that will lead to the same overall score, which leaves plenty of room to maneuver. However, given the rise in GRE quantitative scores in recent years, total scores and percentile rankings have shifted. This gives candidates an opportunity to boost their overall scores by mastering the verbal section of the GRE.

Contributor: Bilhen Sali

Nov 2021

How To GRE Verbal Like An Expert

If you are interested in attending graduate school, it may be mandatory to take the GRE. This standardized exam tests your capabilities as a student and lets prospective schools know how well you may function during your graduate studies. The GRE is split up into numerous sections: Quantitative, Verbal, and Analytical Writing. Often, test takers tend to spend the most time on the Quantitative Section, as proficient quant skills are more difficult to establish than verbal skills. However, it is important not to overlook the benefit of studying for the verbal section of the GRE exam. In order to Verbal Like an Expert, you need to fully understand the sections, question types, and layout of the GRE Verbal section.

GRE Verbal Section

The Verbal section of the GRE has three questions types. These include:

- Reading Comprehension
- Text Completion
- Sentence Equivalence

These three sections have been meticulously designed to measure your ability to analyze and break down written data while synthesizing the information garnered from the passages/sentences/paragraphs. The aspects of the GRE verbal sections are meant to imitate the types of verbal work often confronted in graduate-level work. Showing prospective graduate schools that you are proficient in the verbal portion of the GRE shows admissions committees that you can handle the difficult and strenuous nature of the graduate school workload. This includes thinking ‘outside the box’ while drawing conclusions and interpreting information from the given material.

Reading Comprehension

During graduate school students are confronted with words and phrases not common in the English vocabulary. From reading scholarly works to writing academic essays many pages in length, being able to use archaic and uncommon words in the correct way is essential to doing well not only on the GRE but also in graduate school and the professional world.

The structure of the reading comprehension section contains around 10 different passages varying in length and topic. Including passages ranging from a paragraph in length to numerous sections. The content of these written passages encompass topics ranging from biology to humanities. The verbal comprehension tests your ability to:

- Understand and interpret words, sentences, paragraphs, and passages
- Summarize texts and differentiate their main points
- Drawing conclusions, reasoning, and inferring missing information
- Analyze the assumptions and perspectives from authors
- Interpret strengths and weaknesses of an argument
- Consider various explanation

These skills are tested through a number of questions based on the passages. The majority of these questions are multiple-choice questions. At times the questions are asked in a format where you are required to select multiple correct answers out of a list of potential answers or where you have to select a particular sentence from a given passage.

Text Completion

As the title suggests, in the text completion section test takers are asked to complete a portion of a sentence or passage with the correct word. This assesses your ability to create a coherent sentence using uncommon words or phrases. The question structure of this section uses a passage template of one to five sentences each composed of one to three blanks. Per each blank, test takers have five different answer choices to choose from.

When answering text completion sentences remember that credit is given per each blank. These blanks are scored independently of each other meaning an answer given in the first section of the passage does not affect the answer of the last portion. Tips for completing the text completion section include:

- Answer the blanks as a complete set as opposed to answering each blank individually
- Make sure to pay attention to the grammar and style of the passage when deciding on your selection.

Sentence Equivalence

On the sentence equivalency section test takers should be able to properly draw conclusions from given information. The structure of the section includes a sentence with a single blank and six potential answers where you need to select two proper answers. Test takers need to be able to discern the correct choice so that they formulate a sentence that is coherent and complete. When completing a sentence equivalence question be sure to read the sentence all the way through. Fill in the blank with a word that you believe fits best, basing the second answer off of the first answer choice you have chosen. Often, the GRE has question pairs as part of the potential answer in an effort to throw the test taker off. Once you have selected the potential answers, be sure to read through the sentence one last time to be sure the words fit properly.

To Conclude

Excelling on the verbal reasoning portion of the GRE may appear as less of a challenge than the Quant portion of the exam. However, it is vital to do your due diligence when studying for the GRE. The Verbal Section is important for all future graduate students. Applicants must be able to show admissions committees that they can interpret the works of scholars and draw unique conclusions. This is especially true for anyone hoping to enter into the social science and humanity fields. We offer help with future GRE test takers at any point of their studying timeline. To learn more about how we can help you excel on the GRE and obtain admission to a top graduate program, visit us at our website.

Contributor: Dana Coggio