GRE Verbal Reasoning
The new GRE Verbal is a test of, first your vocabulary, second your ability to understand and complete a sentence, and lastly your ability to analyze the sentences and paragraphs provided. If you want to score high in this section, your preparation must start a few months in advance.
The GRE Verbal Reasoning measure is an incredibly challenging test of English grammar, reading comprehension, critical reading, and – most difficult of all – vocabulary! So how do you study for such an intense exam? To start, you’ll need to understand the format of the GRE Verbal section, know the question types you’ll see on test day, and get lots of GRE Verbal practice.
The GRE Syllabus includes the following three sections:
1) Reading Comprehension
2) Sentence Equivalence
3) Text Completion
(Here are few Text Complection Practice questions Click Here)
While test strategies for each of the three sections will be discussed in detail, just by increasing your vocabulary, you will drastically increase your chance of scoring high on all of the sections.In this article, we will explore each of the three sections
Reading Comprehension
Reading Comprehension questions are designed to test a wide range of abilities that are required in order to read and understand the kinds of prose commonly encountered in graduate school.The test makers often purposefully fill the passages with jargon and complex vocabulary. For an untrained test taker, it would take a lot of time to comprehend such passages. Because we usually read essays to retain information and details, while on the GRE, reading that way will get you bogged down and confused with unnecessary information. So you have to learn how to read to ace the GRE.
Questions 1 to 3 are based on this passage.
In the 1980s, neuroscientists studying the brain processes underlying our sense of conscious will compared subjects’ judgments regarding their Line subjective will to move W and actual movement M 5 with objective electroencephalographic activity called readiness potential, or RP. As expected, W preceded M: subjects consciously perceived the intention to move as preceding a conscious experience of actually moving. This might seem to 10 suggest an appropriate correspondence between the sequence of subjective experiences and the sequence of the underlying events in the brain. But researchers actually found a surprising temporal relation between subjective experience and objectively measured 15 neural events: in direct contradiction of the classical conception of free will, neural preparation to move RP preceded conscious awareness of the intention to move W by hundreds of milliseconds.
1. Based on information contained in the passage, which of the following chains of events would most closely conform to the classical conception of free will?
(A). W followed by RP followed by M
(B). RP followed by W followed by M
(C). M followed by W followed by RP
(D). RP followed by M followed by W
(E). RP followed by W and M simultaneously
2. In the context in which it appears, “temporal” line 13 most nearly means
(A) secular
(B) mundane
(C) numerical
(D) physiological
(E) chronological
3. The author of the passage mentions the classical conception of free will primarily in order to
(A) argue that earlier theories regarding certain brain processes were based on false assumptions
(B) suggest a possible flaw in the reasoning of neuroscientists conducting the study discussed in the passage
(C) provide a possible explanation for the unexpected results obtained by neuroscientists
(D) cast doubt on neuroscientists’ conclusions regarding the temporal sequence of brain processes
(E) indicate the reason that the results of the neuroscientists’ study were surprising
Sentence Equivalence
Sentence Equivalence questions, we’ll first look at a basic approach to unlocking the meaning of a sentence, and then we’ll focus on a more subtle example where the correct answers are not themselves synonymous. Finally, we will look at causation on Sentence Equivalence questions.
1. Early critics of Emily Dickinson’s poetry mistook for simplemindedness the surface of artlessness that in fact she constructed with such .
(A) astonishment
(B) craft
(C) cunning
(D) innocence
(E) naïveté
(F) vexation
2. While in many ways their personalities could not have been more different—she was ebullient where he was glum, relaxed where he was awkward, garrulous where he was—they were surprisingly well suited.
(A) solicitous
(B) munificent
(C) irresolute
(D) laconic
(E) fastidious
(F) taciturn
3. Since becoming commissioner, Mr. Vincente has snapped at the heels of the dominant firms in European industry more than his smoother predecessors and has consequently acquired many more enemies.
(A) sporadically
(B) irascibly
(C) persistently
(D) pugnaciously
(E) fitfully
(F) judiciously
4. Even in this business, where is part of everyday life, a talent for lying is not something usually found on one’s resume.
(A) aspiration
(B) mendacity
(C) prevarication
(D) insensitivity
(E) baseness
(F) avarice
5. Economic competition among nations may lead to new forms of economic protectionism that hearken back to the mercantilism of an earlier age: there are signs today that such protectionism is indeed.
(A) evanescent
(B) resurgent
(C) recrudescent
(D) transitory
(E) controversial
(F) inimical
Text Completion
Text completion questions account for about one quarter of the marks for the verbal section of GRE. Each question contains one, two or three blanks, and you have to find the best answers to make the text make complete sense. Be sure to study the text carefully so that you notice all the in-built clues
Text completion practice Questions
1. Nonviolent demonstrations often create such tensions that a community that has constantly refused to its injustices is forced to correct them: the injustices can no longer be .
(A) acknowledge … ignored
(B) decrease … verified
(C) tolerate … accepted
(D) address … eliminated
(E) explain … discussed
2. Since 1813 reaction to Jane Austen’s novels has oscillated between _ and condescension; but in general later writers have esteemed her works more highly than did most of her literary.
(A) dismissal … admirers
(B) adoration … contemporaries
(C) disapproval … readers
(D) indifference … followers
(E) approbation … precursors
3. There are, as yet, no vegetation types or ecosystems whose study has been to the extent that they no longer ecologists.
(A) perfected … hinder
(B) exhausted … interest
(C) prolonged … require
(D) prevented … challenge
(E) delayed … benefit
4. Under ethical guidelines recently adopted by the National Institutes of Health, human genes are to be manipulated only to correct diseases for which treatments are unsatisfactory.
(A) similar
(B) most
(C) dangerous
(D) uncommon
(E) alternative
For quantitative content click here