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This article briefs you about GRE’s Verbal section, along with tips on how to ace it.
The Verbal Reasoning measure of the GRE assesses your ability to analyze and evaluate written material, identify information contained in it, analyze relationships among parts of sentences, and recognize relationships among words and concepts. This article briefs you about GRE’s Verbal section, along with tips on how to ace it.
Read more about: GRE Syllabus
The GRE Verbal consists of three separate areas of testing:
The ability of interpretation and evaluation is judged in this section. Crucial words are omitted from short passages asking you to use the remaining information in the passage to select words or phrases to fill in the blanks and create a meaningful sentence.
The passage is composed of 5-6 sentences, with 1-3 blanks. There are choices given for a blank, out of which only one is correct. No credits are given for partially correct answers.
Sentence Equivalence tests your ability to reach to the conclusion of a passage. Questions consist of a single sentence with just one blank, and they ask you to find two choices that lead to a complete, coherent sentence while producing sentences that mean the same thing.
A question of this section consists of a sentence with a single blank with six options out of which two are to be chosen. There are no credits for partially correct answers.
Read more: Best GRE Test Preparation Course Online
Reading comprehension is designed to test you on various aspects like understanding the meaning of individual words and sentences, understanding the meaning of paragraphs and larger bodies of text, distinguishing between minor and major points and summarizing a passage etc.
Each Reading Comprehension question is based on a passage that may range in length from one paragraph to several paragraphs. The test contains approximately 10 passages, and about half of the questions in the test are based on these passages!
Master the Vocabulary:
One thing which plays a crucial role in the verbal section is your command of vocabulary and grammar.
John Stephen who scored 167 out of 170 in the verbal section in GRE 2013 quotes,
“I think Verbal is about targeting your weakness and working on turning them into strengths. If you tend to shy away from vocabulary, it’s good to dive into vocabulary lists. I went about working on as many passages as I could during my preparation. “
He further goes on to say, “Vocabulary and its usage can be strengthened by studying lists and writing out sentences that use these words so that they’re easier to remember.”
There is no alternative to reading when it comes to reinforcing your vocabulary and understanding. English articles from prominent newspapers like The Hindu, can be of great help in the purpose. You can give some time to English magazines and also start reading reputed novels/ blogs.
When Ashwini Nene, who scored 340/340 in 2013 was asked about her strategy for the Verbal section, she quoted that understanding the actual definition of words within different kinds of context is very important. In order to develop that kind of understanding, she explained that reading is very important.
One of the toughest parts of the GRE is the Reading Comprehension (RC). Acing RC will require a combination of a good amount of practice and right strategies. Passages of different kinds to be asked in GRE require a different strategy. Different types of passages include analytical passages, which generally deal with the analysis of ideas/issues/events, descriptive passages, which generally describe an event/a person/a place, etc. and statistical passages, which present statistics and data.
While you practice RC, engage into active reading – extract essential information from the passage, capture new words and focus on the main points of the passage. Learn more about about active reading techniques to enhance your comprehensive abilities.
You can understand your overall standing and identify your weakness via Mock Tests. Giving a mock test in a test simulated environment gives you the actual exam experience. You should start the mock tests at least a month prior to actual GRE to identify the sections where you’re scoring below par and try to overcome the shortcomings in subsequent tests.
Next up, we discuss some useful preparation resources to ace the GRE Verbal section.
On the basis of recommendations from past, some of the best books are:
Read more about: GRE Preparation Book
There is plenty of mock examination available. Some of the most popular ones are:
GyanDhan has premium partners with great expertise in preparing students for GRE exams. These courses vary in duration and are also priced accordingly. With GyanDhan, you can enroll in these courses at heavily discounted rates. GyanDhan has partnered with Galvanize Test Prep to provide you expert help in GRE preparations. Via GyanDhan, you can get 25-30% discounts on GRE preparation from Galvanize. The instructors are GRE experts and graduates of top universities such as Stanford University, the University of New Mexico, and more. Students in more than 100 locations in India and more than 40 countries worldwide have enrolled in these courses by GyanDhan and have paved their way towards scoring big in the test. If you also want to prepare for the GRE test and interested in knowing more about the preparation courses & fees, you can fill this form to get a callback.
All the best!
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