GRE Verbal Reasoning Guide

• Score: 130–170 in 1-point steps.
• Adaptive by section: your first Verbal section decides how hard the second one is. Inside a section, you can skip, mark, go back and change answers.
• Three question types: Text Completion, Sentence Equivalence and Reading Comprehension. Reading questions include short argument paragraphs as well as longer passages.
• No partial credit on multi-blank or multi-answer questions.

That pace is tight. A one-sentence completion should take well under a minute, which banks time for the passages.

ETS describes Verbal Reasoning as testing whether you can understand and analyze written material the way graduate work demands. In practice, that means you can:

• work out the meaning of words and sentences from context
• tell a main point from a supporting detail, and summarize accurately
• follow the structure of a passage and the job each part does
• draw inferences the text supports, and spot the ones it doesn't
• identify an author's assumptions and evaluate an argument's reasoning

ETS says roughly half of the Verbal measure is passage-based. The rest is Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence, and you'll see a mix of all three types in every section.

A sentence or short passage with one to three blanks. One-blank questions have five choices. Two- and three-blank questions give three choices per blank, and you get credit only if every blank is right.

Example. Although the senator's speeches are famously (i)______, her legislative record is remarkably (ii)______: in a decade in office she has introduced only two bills.

• Blank (i): voluminous / terse / tepid
• Blank (ii): slender / prolific / controversial

Start with the blank that has the clearest clue. The colon says the record is defined by “only two bills,” so (ii) is slender. “Although” sets the speeches against that thin record, so they must be abundant: voluminous. “Terse” is the trap. It sounds like a speech word, but short speeches wouldn't contrast with doing little.

How to attack them:

1. Cover the choices and read for the clue: the part of the sentence that tells you what the blank must mean.
2. Circle the signal words. Contrast: although, but, yet, despite. Continuation: and, indeed, because, a colon or semicolon.
3. Predict a word of your own, then find the closest match.
4. On multi-blank questions, do the easiest blank first; it often settles the others.
5. Reread the finished sentence. If it doesn't read as one logical thought, something is off.

One sentence, one blank, six choices. You pick exactly two answers that each fit the sentence and produce sentences alike in meaning. Both must be right to get credit.

Example. Despite the mounting evidence against him, the defendant remained ______, insisting to the end that he would be vindicated.

Choices: sanguine, optimistic, contrite, despondent, belligerent, candid.

“Insisting … he would be vindicated” means he's hopeful: sanguine and optimistic. “Despite” tempts you toward “despondent,” which gets the contrast backward. “Contrite” (remorseful) contradicts insisting on vindication.

The trap to know: the choices often include a pair of synonyms that don't fit the sentence. Don't hunt for synonyms first. Predict the meaning from the sentence, then find the two words that deliver it.

Passages range from a single paragraph to several paragraphs, drawn from the sciences, business, the arts and humanities, and everyday topics. You'll see three formats:

• Multiple choice, select one: five choices.
• Multiple choice, select all that apply: three choices, and one, two or all three may be correct. You need every correct choice and no wrong ones.
• Select-in-passage: click the sentence in the passage that does what the question describes.

Some “passages” are short arguments followed by one question: which choice weakens or strengthens the argument, what it assumes, or what role a highlighted statement plays.

Example. After a city added bike lanes on Main Street, bicycle accidents on Main Street fell by a third. So the lanes made cycling there safer. Which choice weakens this? The best answer is the one that gives another explanation for the drop, for instance that many cyclists moved to a new trail and stopped riding on Main Street at all. Fewer riders means fewer accidents even if the lanes did nothing.

How to read:

• Read for structure: what's the main point, and what job does each paragraph do?
• Answer from the text, not from what you know about the topic.
• Distrust extreme wording (“always,” “proves,” “no role”) unless the passage is equally extreme.
• On “select all,” judge each choice on its own. Don't assume there must be two.
• On argument questions, name the gap between evidence and conclusion before you look at the choices.

Enough to recognize the words that GRE completions lean on: words about tone and attitude (laudatory, disparaging, equivocal), about argument (corroborate, refute, undermine), and about behavior (garrulous, reticent, obdurate). You don't need an enormous list. You need words you can actually use.

• Learn words in sentences, not as isolated definitions.
• Make your list from the words you miss in official questions. Those are the ones that matter.
• Review in short daily sessions with spaced repetition instead of cramming.
• Read dense, well-edited writing, such as long-form science and culture journalism, for 20–30 minutes a day. It trains the passage stamina the test needs.

• The right word for the wrong direction. Missing “although” or “far from” flips the meaning. The trap choice fits the topic but reverses the logic.
• The pretty synonym pair. In Sentence Equivalence, two synonyms that don't fit the sentence are a deliberate decoy.
• True but irrelevant. In reading questions, an answer can be accurate to the passage and still not answer the question asked.
• Too strong. “The author argues X plays no role” when the author only said X isn't proven.
• Strengthener disguised as weakener. In argument questions, check which way a choice pushes before you pick it.

1. Week 1: Baseline. Take ETS's free timed POWERPREP test (or our full-length practice test). Sort your misses by type: completion, equivalence, passage or argument.
2. Weeks 2–4: Build method. Practice the predict-then-match routine on completions until it's automatic. Do one passage set a day, untimed, justifying every answer from the text. Start your word list.
3. Weeks 5–6: Add the clock. Do 12- and 15-question sets at 18 and 23 minutes. Track which question types burn your time.
4. Weeks 7–8: Full tests. Take whichever of our full-length GRE practice test and the timed POWERPREP test you didn't use in Week 1. Review every miss until you can explain why the right answer is right and why the trap is wrong.

For Quant, see the GRE Quant guide. For extra material, see the best GRE prep books, starting with the official ones.