This free GRE Verbal practice test follows the current format: Section 1 has 12 questions in 18 minutes and Section 2 has 15 questions in 23 minutes, 27 in all. It mixes Text Completion, Sentence Equivalence and Reading Comprehension, scores each section with the GRE's credit rules and explains every answer.
GRE Verbal Reasoning practice test: 27 questions, 41 minutes
Section 1: 12 questions, 18 minutes
Average difficulty, as on the real test.
For each blank, select one entry from the corresponding column of choices. Fill all blanks in the way that best completes the text.
Questions 4 to 5 are based on this passage.
For much of the twentieth century, historians of reading treated the spread of silent reading as a simple story of progress: as literacy rose, readers abandoned the slow, communal practice of reading aloud for the faster, private habit of reading to themselves. Recent scholarship complicates this account. Diaries and letters show that many readers who could read silently still chose to read aloud, often to family members who could not read, so that a single book served a whole household. In such homes, reading aloud was not a sign of limited skill but a social obligation. The persistence of the practice, then, says less about readers' abilities than about who else was in the room.
Select the two answer choices that, when used to complete the sentence, fit the meaning of the sentence as a whole and produce completed sentences that are alike in meaning.
Questions 8 to 10 are based on this passage.
Engineers designing earthquake-resistant buildings once concentrated almost entirely on strength, reasoning that a structure stiff enough to resist shaking would survive it. Experience with major earthquakes exposed the flaw in this reasoning: a very rigid building transmits the ground's motion to every floor, and the resulting forces can exceed what even strong materials tolerate. Many modern designs therefore aim not to resist motion but to absorb it. Base isolation, for instance, places flexible bearings between a building and its foundation, so that the ground can move beneath the structure while the floors above move far less. The approach has a cost that its advocates rarely emphasize: because isolated buildings must be free to shift, they need open space around them, which is hard to provide on crowded urban lots.
Question 11 is based on this passage.
In the two years since the town of Fairmont replaced its streetlights with brighter LED fixtures, reported nighttime burglaries in the town have fallen by 30 percent. The town council concludes that the brighter lighting deterred burglars and plans to install the same fixtures in the neighboring districts it is about to annex.
For each blank, select one entry from the corresponding column of choices. Fill all blanks in the way that best completes the text.
Section 2: 15 questions, 23 minutes
A fixed, harder set. On the real GRE this section adapts to your Section 1 performance.
For each blank, select one entry from the corresponding column of choices. Fill all blanks in the way that best completes the text.
Select the two answer choices that, when used to complete the sentence, fit the meaning of the sentence as a whole and produce completed sentences that are alike in meaning.
Questions 8 to 11 are based on this passage.
For several decades, a single argument dominated discussions of shared natural resources such as fisheries, forests and grazing land. Because each user gains the full benefit of taking more from a common pool while bearing only a fraction of the cost of its depletion, the argument ran, users acting in their own interest will inevitably exhaust the resource. The only remedies, on this view, were to divide the resource into private holdings or to place it under the control of a central authority.
Field studies of communities that had managed common resources for generations told a different story. In many mountain villages and coastal fisheries, users had developed their own rules (limits on when and how much could be taken, systems for monitoring one another, and penalties that grew with repeated violations) without either dividing the resource or handing it to the state. These arrangements were not universal successes; they tended to fail where users could not exclude outsiders or where the community was too large for members to observe one another's behavior. But their durability suggested that the original argument had mistaken a possibility for a law: depletion was likely only under particular conditions, chiefly when users had no means of communicating and enforcing agreements.
Question 12 is based on this passage.
At Corvel Software, each team was allowed to decide whether to switch to a four-day workweek. A year later, the teams that had switched had completed a larger share of their planned work, on average, than the teams that had not. Corvel's managers concluded that the shorter week made teams more productive, and they plan to require it of every team.
Questions 13 to 14 are based on this passage.
Museums that display medieval sculpture often present the works as bare stone, and generations of visitors have come to see that bare surface as the essence of the style. Yet traces of pigment on many of these figures show that they were once brightly colored, and some conservators have argued that museums should display painted reconstructions alongside the originals. Opponents of the proposal object that reconstructions involve too much conjecture: the surviving traces reveal which colors were used, but rarely how they were applied. The objection has force, but it applies with equal weight to the unpainted figures, which are themselves a kind of reconstruction, one that simply happens to omit the color.
Select the two answer choices that, when used to complete the sentence, fit the meaning of the sentence as a whole and produce completed sentences that are alike in meaning.
Answer key
Section 1: 1. D 2. B, D 3. B, F, H 4. C 5. A and C 6. B and E 7. C and F 8. B 9. sentence 5 10. D 11. E 12. C
Section 2: 1. D 2. B, F 3. C, E, G 4. B, F 5. D and F 6. B and D 7. C and E 8. A 9. A and B 10. sentence 4 11. E 12. D 13. C 14. E 15. B and F
Text Completion blanks: (i) A–C, (ii) D–F, (iii) G–I. Original questions by Test Ninjas, test-ninjas.com/gre-verbal-practice-test
GRE Verbal Reasoning has two sections: 12 questions in 18 minutes, then 15 questions in 23 minutes. That's 27 questions in 41 minutes, the format ETS has used since September 22, 2023 (ETS test structure). The whole GRE General Test now takes about 1 hour 58 minutes. Analytical Writing always comes first, and the Verbal and Quantitative sections can follow in any order.
| Section | Questions | Time | Average per question |
|---|---|---|---|
| Section 1 | 12 | 18 minutes | 1 minute 30 seconds |
| Section 2 | 15 | 23 minutes | 1 minute 32 seconds |
Before the change, each Verbal section had 20 questions in 30 minutes, and the test could include an unscored section. Older books and PDFs still use that format, so check the question count before you time yourself with one. The current test is shorter, but the time per question is about the same: roughly a minute and a half.
Within a section, the testing software lets you skip questions, go back, change answers and use Mark and Review to flag questions and see which ones you haven't answered. The practice test above copies those features. They work within a section only: once a section ends, it's scored as it stands.
There are three question types: Text Completion, Sentence Equivalence and Reading Comprehension. About half the questions are based on passages, and no question gives partial credit (ETS, Verbal Reasoning).
| Type | What it looks like | Credit rule |
|---|---|---|
| Text Completion | A passage of one to five sentences with one to three blanks. One blank: five choices. Two or three blanks: three choices for each blank. | Every blank must be right |
| Sentence Equivalence | One sentence, one blank, six choices. Pick the two that each complete the sentence and give sentences that mean the same thing. | Both choices must be right |
| Reading Comprehension, select one | A question on a passage with five choices. | The one right choice |
| Reading Comprehension, select one or more | Three choices, of which one, two or all three are right. | Every right choice and no wrong one |
| Reading Comprehension, select in passage | Click the sentence in the passage that fits a description. In long passages the question names the paragraphs to look in. | The one right sentence |
ETS says most passages are one paragraph and one or two are several paragraphs long, with one to six questions each. Our test follows that: five one-paragraph passages (two of them short arguments) and one two-paragraph passage in Section 2. Because a web page can't let you click sentences the way the test software does, our select-a-sentence questions list each sentence as a choice.
Since a three-blank Text Completion is all or nothing, two right blanks out of three score the same as none. That changes how you work: start with the blank that has the clearest clue, then check that the other blanks fit what you chose, and reread the whole passage before you move on. For Sentence Equivalence, don't just look for two words that mean the same thing. ETS itself warns that the choices may include two words that mean the same thing but don't fit the sentence (three of our questions have such a pair), so predict the blank first. Our Sentence Equivalence guide and Text Completion practice go further.
GRE Verbal is reported on a 130–170 scale in 1-point increments (ETS, get scores). Your raw score is the number of questions you answer correctly across both sections, and ETS converts it to the scale through equating, which accounts for the difficulty of the second section you received (ETS, understanding scores).
The section lengths, timing, question types and credit rules match the real GRE. The main difference is that our Section 2 is one fixed, harder set; on test day, the second section is chosen based on your first.
| Section | Text Completion | Sentence Equivalence | Reading Comprehension | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Section 1 | 4 | 2 | 6 | Average |
| Section 2 | 4 | 4 | 7 | Harder (fixed) |
If you want a few new questions every day rather than a timed test, our GRE Verbal practice questions page posts a fresh set daily.
Plan on an average of 1.5 minutes a question: 18 minutes for 12 questions in Section 1, and 23 minutes for 15 in Section 2, which works out to 1 minute 32 seconds each. The results panel compares your time with that benchmark.
An average hides a lot. One-blank Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence questions can take under a minute once you've predicted the blank, which buys time for the passages. A sensible plan for a 15-question section:
Our guide to flagging and reviewing in GRE Verbal covers when to mark and move on, and what to do when the second section is hard explains how to handle a difficult Section 2.
Use the results to decide what to study next. The score by question type tells you where points are being lost; the missed-question list tells you why.
Compare your two sections too. If you did much better on Section 1, your next gains are in the harder material of Section 2, which is what a strong Section 1 leads to on test day. For a deeper look at each type, our GRE Verbal Reasoning section guide explains each type in depth.
Two weeks is enough to learn the formats, fix your pacing and close the gap on your weakest question type. It won't rebuild a vocabulary, so focus on the words you actually miss. Plan on 45 to 60 minutes a day.
| Day | What to do |
|---|---|
| Day 1 | Take this test with the timer on, both sections. Write down your raw score by section and by question type, and your time used against the 1.5-minute benchmark. |
| Day 2 | Review every miss from day 1. For each one, write a sentence on why the right answer is right and why your choice was wrong. Add every unfamiliar word to a list with its meaning. |
| Day 3 | Text Completion: 15 questions untimed. Before you look at the choices, underline the signal words and write your own word for each blank. On multi-blank items, start with the easiest blank. |
| Day 4 | Sentence Equivalence: 15 questions. Predict the blank, then find two choices that both fit and give the same meaning. Note every trap pair that fit each other but not the sentence. |
| Day 5 | Reading Comprehension: 3 short passages and 1 long one. For each, write a one-line summary of the main point and the author's attitude before answering. |
| Day 6 | Mixed timed set of 12 questions in 18 minutes. Practice Mark and Review: answer what you can, mark the rest and come back. |
| Day 7 | Rest from timed work. Review your word list and all explanations from week 1. |
| Day 8 | Take an official POWERPREP Online practice test from ETS, or at least its Verbal sections, under test conditions. |
| Day 9 | Review the POWERPREP misses by type. Spend the session on the type with the lowest percent correct. |
| Day 10 | Select-all and select-a-sentence day: practice judging each choice on its own. A choice is right only if the passage supports all of it. |
| Day 11 | Harder Text Completion: three-blank items and secondary meanings of common words (qualify, obtain, check). Add each to your list. |
| Day 12 | Retake this test, timed. Compare your raw scores, your weakest type and your pace with day 1. |
| Day 13 | Light practice: 10 mixed questions untimed. Review your word list once. |
| Day 14 | Rest. Check your test-day logistics and get a full night's sleep. |
For words, start with the GRE vocabulary list. For passage practice, use GRE Reading Comprehension practice. If you have both measures to prepare, the 2-week GRE study plan fits verbal work around Quant.