Shekhar Niyogi provides tips for tackling the verbal section of the GRE

There are simple strategies you can use to improve your performance on all these types of questions. Here is an overview to these questions and strategies to solve them effectively.

Sentence Completions

Sentence completions measure your ability to understand the logic of a sentence and recognise words or phrases that complete the meaning of a sentence. You are shown a sentence with either one or two words missing. Your job is to pick the answer choice with the word, or words, that best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole. There are usually six sentence completion questions.

Sentence Completion strategies:

1. Read the incomplete sentence and try to fit your own words in, before looking at the answer choices
2. Pay attention to grammatical clues
3. Break down sentences with two blanks into parts and analyse each part individually
4. See that both parts of your answer choice fit the sentence correctly

Antonyms

Antonyms measure your vocabulary and ability to reason from a given concept to its opposite. You are presented with a single word followed by five answer choices containing words or short phrases. You have to select an answer that's most nearly opposite in meaning to the original word. Since the questions often require you to distinguish finer shades of meaning, go through all the possible answer choices before making your selection.

Antonyms strategies:

1. Try to define the word precisely
2. Look for shades of meaning of the given word
3. Make a sentence with it
4. Analyse the prefix or suffix to help establish a word's meaning
5. Eliminate irrelevant answer choices

Analogies

Analogies measure your ability to recognise relationships among words, the concepts they represent and parallel relationships. You are presented with a related pair of words followed by five answer choices containing lettered pairs of words or phrases. You need to select the lettered pair that best expresses a relationship similar to that expressed in the original pair. There are usually seven analogy questions.

Analogies strategies:

1. Try to establish a strong relationship between the given pair of words
2. Consider relationships of kind, size, spatial contiguity, or degree.
3. If more than one of the answer choices seems correct, try to state the relationship more precisely.
4. Check for second meanings of the given words

Reading comprehension

Reading comprehension is the toughest part in the Verbal section. Many students get a poor score in the Verbal section because of the toughness of these questions. Reading comprehension measures your ability to read with understanding, insight, discrimination and ability to analyse a written passage from several perspectives. The passages are taken from the humanities, social sciences, biological sciences and physical sciences. They are of varied lengths, but generally of 75 to 150 lines. The number of questions pertaining to a particular passage could range from three to five. There are usually about eight reading comprehension questions.

Reading comprehension strategies:

• Go through the passage once to get the general idea of the passage
• Don't try to memorise details but instead pay attention to the topic and the focus of the passage as you read.
• For questions asking you to give the passage a title, look at the first and last lines of the passage for clues.

In conclusion

Use your time judiciously. Work gradually up to pre-set goals of accuracy and achievement. Do not test yourself till you reach a comfortable level of accuracy. Pace your preparation, in order to reach peak performance at the time of taking the GRE.

(The author is an education and career consultant and faculty for studies abroad) 

GRE: Additional sections and questions
Shekhar Niyogi gives information about the additional sections and new questions in the GRE   The Educational Testing Service (ETS) has introduced an additional Quantitative Ability or Verbal Ability section, featuring questions that may be used in future versions of the GRE. Additional section The additional Quantitative Ability or Verbal Ability section will comprise questions that may be used in future versions of the GRE. This is an experimental exercise by ETS, so you need not worry - your score on this section will not count towards your final score. However, it will be impossible to distinguish between the scored and un-scored section. New question types The two new question types being slowly added by the ETS are: text completions and numeric entry. At present, these question types are only found in limited versions of the computer-based test. Some students may encounter one or two numeric entry questions in the Quantitative Ability section and one or two text completion exercises in the Verbal Ability section. Numeric entry: These questions require you to produce a written answer to a mathematical problem Text completion: These questions require you to fill in several blanks in a short passage, with the most appropriate additions. They test your grammar, syntax, and punctuation skills. Each problem will be based on a passage of text, from one to five sentences long. Each of these passages will have two or three blanks. Beneath the passage will be a list of words. Your task will be to identify the answer choices that best fit the respective blanks to produce a coherent and sensible passage. It is possible for you will select the same answer choice to fill more than one blank. No partial marks will be awarded and if you make an incorrect selection, you will receive no marks. The best way to approach these questions is by reading the passage slowly and carefully, in order to develop a general understanding of what each blank requires. For instance, you should be able to determine which part of speech (for example, noun or verb) is required for each blank in the text. You should also be alert for any contextual words that indicate what must fill each of the blanks. Once you have made your selections, you should re-read the completed passage. If your selections have created a logical and grammatical passage, you can feel good about your prospects. You will not be given any extra time to answer these questions, so it is a good idea to learn their format before taking the test. In conclusion At present, your performance on these new question types will not affect your score, as they are at an experimental stage now. However, the GRE will soon begin including these questions in the scored version of the test, so students should strive to answer them correctly. In general, testing research has indicated that students perform well on these questions, so long as they are familiar with the format and structure. The content knowledge required to answer numeric entry and text completion questions will be the same as that required for the rest of the GRE. More details about these changes and inclusions will soon be available on www.ets.org/gre (The author is an education and career consultant and faculty for studies abroad)