Verbal In the GRE Exam: How to max out this section
The GRE (Graduate Recorded Examination) has taken on a near legendary status among students and is enough to induce a mild heart attack among those who have to endure it. One of the major controversies of the GRE is that it follows (almost religiously) a pre-determined and linear format meaning that the student who is proficient with the style and pattern of the questions will do better.
The GRE is divided into four sections in total and each section is specifically designed in order to test a different component of the student’s English ability. The verbal in gre is further sub-divided into a number of additional sub-sections with one section involving sentence completion.
The sentence completion component of the verbal section in the GRE is very much like a Fibonacci sequence , in that the student will be given a sentence and they will be required to read the sentence and then fill the void. Sometimes completing the sentence will be straightforward as there is a verb or noun missing but other times it will require a degree of logical thought in order to determine the “best fit” for the rest of the sentence.
It is simply remarkable the number of students that actually get flustered by this component of the verbal in gre, thinking to themselves that if the sentence is incomplete then how on earth can they finish it? Well, a good place to start is to convert the sentence into your own words, or to use the technical and academic term “paraphrase” the sentence and make sure you read the sentence carefully and rely upon clues that maybe present such as punctuation marks. Remember, in English a proper sentence must always have two things:
- A verb
- A noun
Without these two prerequisites all you have is a fragment, not a complete sentence. A common method in which the incomplete sentences are presented to the candidate is that there will be two gaps, where one gap will require an adjective and the other requiring a noun. The sentence completion component is multiple choice and will include several options and so if you are still uncertain then you can try each option in turn and see which one fits the best. You may come across words that you are primarily unsure of, and therefore it is crucial that you read the surrounding words and the rest of the sentence so that you can more easily decipher what that particular word means. Also look to the options listed in the multiple choice, as these too can give some indication as to what the sentence as a whole means.