GRE Verbal: The Three Question Types

The big picture

• GRE Verbal (27 Qs, 2 sections)
  • Text Completion — Fill 1–3 blanks from context
  • Sentence Equivalence — Pick TWO words → same meaning sentence
  • Reading Comprehension — Passages + inference/detail questions
  • Vocabulary + logic — Meaning from context is everything

Text Completion — read the clue, then the blank

A short passage has one to three blanks; choose the word that best fits each (no partial credit for multi-blank — all must be right). The trick: find the clue and the signpost (a word like 'although', 'because', 'yet') that tells you whether the blank agrees or contrasts with the rest.

Sentence Equivalence — two words, one meaning

One blank, six options — pick the TWO that both fit AND produce sentences with the same meaning. So you're hunting a synonym pair, not just any two workable words.

Reading Comprehension — answer from the text, not your view

Passages come with detail, inference and 'purpose' questions. Every answer must be provable from the passage — the right choice is supported by specific lines; wrong ones are true-in-the-world but unsupported, or distort the text.

Vocabulary in context wins Verbal

GRE Verbal rewards knowing words in context far more than obscure trivia. Build vocabulary through word families and roots, and always learn a word inside a sentence — that's exactly how the test uses it.

Test yourself before you move on

Re-reading a note feels like learning and produces almost none. The retrieval below is what actually builds the memory, so cover the map above and answer these from memory — out loud or written down, not in your head, because "I know this" is the feeling that fails under exam pressure.

1. Without looking: what is Text Completion, and how does it connect to GRE Verbal (27 Qs, 2 sections)?
2. Without looking: what is Sentence Equivalence, and how does it connect to GRE Verbal (27 Qs, 2 sections)?
3. Without looking: what is Reading Comprehension, and how does it connect to GRE Verbal (27 Qs, 2 sections)?
4. Without looking: what is Vocabulary + logic, and how does it connect to GRE Verbal (27 Qs, 2 sections)?

Anything you could not produce is the part of this note you have not learned yet — regardless of how familiar it felt while reading. Re-read only that node, then re-test the whole set. Testing the whole set matters: recalling one idea in isolation is easier than recalling it among 4 competing ones, which is the situation the exam actually puts you in.

When to come back to this note

Spacing is not a scheduling detail, it is the mechanism. Meeting this material again just as it starts to fade forces the effortful retrieval that consolidates it, which is why a note reviewed four times across three weeks outlasts the same note read four times in one evening. The built-in scheduler resurfaces these questions at widening intervals for exactly that reason — the prompt arriving when you feel you have half-forgotten is the system working, not failing.

A practical rhythm for GRE Verbal (27 Qs, 2 sections): today, again tomorrow, then after three days, then after a week. If you fail a review, shorten the next interval rather than re-reading the note end to end — the failure identifies the gap precisely, and re-reading everything wastes the diagnosis.

Then apply it under pressure. Knowing a concept in isolation and using it in a timed paper are different skills, and only the second is examined. There are 90 free GRE practice tests here covering 1,650 questions — counted from the test files, not estimated. Take a full timed GRE mock →