Analogies
require you to understand the relationship between pairs of words. You will be
presented with a stem pair such as JOCKEY:HORSE:: (read as: Jockey is to
horse as…”). Your answer choices will consist of five pairs of words or phrases.
The task is to select the answer choice in which the words have the same
relationship to each other that the stem pair words do. For example, a horse
is controlled by a jockey. Thus, the correct answer choice might be
something like PILOT:AIRPLANE. An airplane is controlled by a pilot in the same
way that a horse is controlled by a jockey. You may have 8 or 9 Analogies in a
typical Verbal section. Expect difficult vocabulary on these questions as well.
Reading Comprehension
questions present you with a passage of between 20 and 60 lines in length, which
could be selected from any discipline – the sciences, social sciences, or
humanities. You will then be asked questions about the text. Some questions will
be global in nature, requiring you to understand the meaning of the passage as a
whole. Other questions will require you to go back to the passage and find
specific details in the passage in order to answer correctly. It is important
not to skim while reading the passage, but to read at a healthy pace. You
will have to return to the passage to answer the questions – you will not be
able to memorize the passage. You may have 3 to 8 Reading Comprehension
questions in a Verbal section, with the questions being divided between two or
three passages.
Sentence Completion
questions present you with a sentence that has one or two blanks. Your answer
choices are the words that “fill in the blanks.” You will use your understanding
of the structure and tone of the sentence to pick the answer choice that best
completes the sentence both logically and stylistically. You do
have some context to work with in Sentence Completion questions, but there is no
question that vocabulary is still important. Your understanding of the meaning
conveyed by punctuation is also crucial. You will have 5 to 7 Sentence
Completion questions in a typical Verbal section.
One thing to note is that
there is no particular order to the questions that you will be asked. Just as an
example, you may start with two Analogies, followed by three Antonyms and then
three Reading Comprehension questions and then some more Analogies and then a
few Sentence Completions…continuing in this way until the section is completed.
Due to the Computer-Adaptive format of the GRE, no two tests will look exactly
the same. Before the first question in a section from any given question type,
the directions for that question type will appear on the screen. Don’t waste
your test time reading them – click right through. If you have completed the
PowerScore course, you will not need to be reminded of the directions, and you
should use every second answering questions.
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