The Revised GRE, Part IV: Verbal Reasoning
Guest author Bob Verini is a 30-year Kaplan veteran teacher, trainer, and curriculum developer.
In addition to the reading comprehension changes, which we discussed last time, the 2011 GRE exam is eliminating two old verbal reasoning question types and introducing two new ones. Gone are antonyms and analogies, in favor of variations on the old fill-in-the-blank challenge that will reward independent thinkers with supple vocabularies.
Text Completion is akin to the Sentence Completion question type currently on the GRE in that both feature individual sentences, one or more parts of which are missing and the student must fill in the blank(s). The big difference is that on the current exam, if there are two blanks to fill, the examinee must choose among five pairs (A) separateinstill; (B) appealsupport; and so on and so we can find shortcuts to narrowing down the possibilities. (If support wont fill blank #2, then theres no way (B) can be correct irrespective of appeal.)
On the new GRE, some text completion questions will feature three blanks instead of just two, and the right word for each blank must be independently chosen from a pool of three or more possibilities. The student still needs to know what the words mean and how they fit in context, but the venerable shortcuts no longer apply. And if students miss one of the blanks, while answering the other one (or two) correctly, the entire problem will be marked as incorrect. (No partial credit is offered; its all or nothing for text completion.)
In Sentence Equivalence the new question type taking advantage of the computer format a sentence will contain a blank and a number of options (A-F if there are six, the likely number) for filling them. The difference? Two of the options will work! And you as the test taker must identify both. And again, with no partial credit given, it does no good simply to see that C will fit the bill without seeing that E does, too. This type will place a greater emphasis on synonymy understanding the similar meanings within and among word groups than ever before.
Theres nothing in the new GRE that approaches the GMATs emphasis within Sentence Correction on grammar, usage, and style, but it will require an even greater vocabulary than the current exam. The new GRE will reward word power, for lack of a better term, more than any other current standardized test.
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