Verbal Reasoning Measure

Reading Comprehension

Reading Comprehension questions include the traditional multiple-choice questions, where you choose among five possible answer choices;  a new variant in which one, two, or three answers of three choices may be correct; and another novel question type called “select-in-passage”, in which you must choose the sentence within a passage which fits a given conceptual description (you choose by clicking anywhere on that sentence.) (See Verbal GRE examples)

Text Completion

Text Completion questions include a passage composed of one to five sentences with one to three blanks. There are three answer choices per blank, or five answer choices if there is a single blank. There is a single correct answer, consisting of one choice for each blank. You receive no credit for partially correct answers.   Correct choices depend not only on knowing the meaning of the words presented, but on being able to correctly grasp the meaning of the sentences and the text as a whole. (See Verbal GRE examples)

Sentence Equivalence

Behind this fancy title we have a variation of what we saw in Text Completion, except that here we have a single blank in a single sentence, and out of six possible words to fill in the blank, TWO are both appropriate to give the same overall meaning to the sentence.  You must choose both words correctly; no partial credit will be given. (See Verbal GRE examples)

Reading Comprehension questions, naturally, come in sets, with their corresponding reading passage; Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence questions are independent.

E.T.S. draws the content of the Reading Comprehension passages in this revised GRE from the following areas, adapting material found in books and periodicals, both academic and non-academic:

• The physical sciences;
• The biological sciences;
• The social sciences;
• The arts and humanities; and
• Everyday topics.

Time management

Each of the two (Verbal Reasoning) sections contains twenty questions; you have a total of thirty minutes to complete the section. Thus, you have an average of a minute and a half per question – but that includes the time reading the passages also.