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The GRE Verbal Section

The verbal section in the GRE exam tests the candidates’ understanding of the reading a text and answering questions based on it. In addition to this, the reasoning ability of the candidate is also measured. Candidates are also required to form relations between given information. All the above mentioned qualities are desired in graduate students, hence the GRE is widely recognized as a pre-requisite for potential graduate students. The test requires skills like knowledge of English language, ability to differentiate and find similarities between the concepts as well as applying the given information into finding answers to the questions asked. One important task in the verbal section is the reading comprehension. There will around 3-4 passages that are of variable lengths, containing material from various subjects like science, art, social science, literature and humanities. These materials are picked from academic and non-academic books and journals. Students need to be well prepared in these as well as current affairs to score well in this task. Each passage is followed by 2-4 questions.

The student must read the passage carefully and answer the questions according to his understanding of the passage. The Reading Comprehension questions are structured to measure abilities in:
  • Understanding meanings of words and sentences in the passage.
  • Differentiating between minor and major points given in the passage.
  • Concluding and summarizing the information provided.
  • Understanding the author’s point of view.
  • Identifying the relation between the pair of words given as options.
  • Drawing a similarity in the relation of the question pair of words.
  • Suggesting a summary or title for the passage.
Apart from this, sentence equivalence and text completion type questions also appear on the GRE. These have replaced the older antonyms, analogies and sentence completion questions. Removal of the analogies has made the GRE easier than it was. The verbal section has 30 questions and it has to be completed in 30 minutes.
In the text completion type questions, an incomplete sentence is given with one to three blanks. There will be four options per blank, which the students should select accordingly. If there is only one blank in the question, then 5 answer choices will be given. The answer choices of each blank have separate functions, i.e. selecting a wrong answer for one blank will not affect other blanks.
The sentence equivalence type of questions will measure the candidates’ ability to arrive at conclusions that will complete a sentence that has incomplete information. There will be two blanks per question, and the words will be similar. One has to select two out of the six words and fill them accordingly in the blanks. This type of questions will be very tricky and could sometimes be misleading. Students should be careful while dealing with this section.
On the whole, the verbal section of the GRE is difficult that the quantitative section. Logical thinking and proper comprehending of the questions are desired candidate qualities.
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+ comments + 2 comments

December 3, 2016 at 2:20 AM

It has been well initiated on the record and would favorably help students towards better provisions of interest and ideas.

July 28, 2019 at 4:32 AM

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ربة البيت تعاني دائمًا من الصراصير وذلك لأن مشكلة كبيرة لا يمكن حلها بسهولة ما لم يتم التعامل معها
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