GRE Verbal Reasoning Section

The Verbal Reasoning section evaluates how well you can analyze written material, draw conclusions, recognize relationships among concepts, and assess the quality of arguments. This guide covers every question type and format you'll encounter, with interactive practice questions so you can test your skills.

Section Overview

Verbal Reasoning has 27 questions divided across two timed sections. Roughly half are passage-based reading questions; the rest ask you to fill in missing words using vocabulary and context clues.

	Questions	Time	Pace
Section 1	12 questions	18 minutes	~1.5 min each
Section 2	15 questions	23 minutes	~1.5 min each
Total	27 questions	41 minutes	~1.5 min each

The measure uses section-level adaptation: the first section has mixed difficulty, and your performance determines whether the second section is harder or easier. Both sections together produce your final score on the 130–170 scale.

There's no penalty for guessing. Only correct answers count toward your score, so never leave a question blank — even a random guess has a chance of being right.

Three Question Types at a Glance

Type	What You See	What You Select	Partial Credit?
Reading Comprehension — Select One	Passage + 5 choices (circles)	1 answer	N/A
Reading Comprehension — Select One or More	Passage + 3 choices (squares)	1, 2, or all 3	No
Reading Comprehension — Select-in-Passage	Passage with clickable sentences	1 sentence	N/A
Text Completion (1 blank)	Short text + 5 choices	1 word	N/A
Text Completion (2 blanks)	Short text + 3 choices per blank	1 per blank	No
Text Completion (3 blanks)	Short text + 3 choices per blank	1 per blank	No
Sentence Equivalence	Sentence + 6 choices (squares)	Exactly 2	No

Reading Comprehension

Reading Comprehension makes up about half of all Verbal questions. You'll read passages — anywhere from a single paragraph to four or five paragraphs — and answer 1–6 questions about each one. Topics span the sciences, social sciences, humanities, business, and general interest. Every question can be answered using only the information in the passage; outside knowledge isn't needed or expected.

Response Formats

Format A: Select One Answer (5 choices)

The most common format. Five answer choices appear with circular radio buttons, and you pick exactly one. This format is used for main idea, inference, function, vocabulary-in-context, and many other question subtypes.

Format B: Select One or More (3 choices)

Three choices appear with square checkboxes. Any combination — one, two, or all three — may be correct, and you receive credit only if you select every correct answer and nothing else. Evaluate each choice on its own merits rather than looking for a single "best" option.

Format C: Select-in-Passage

No answer choices are given. Instead, you click directly on a sentence within the passage that fulfills a specific description (e.g., "Select the sentence that provides evidence for the author's central claim"). In longer passages, the question usually narrows your search to a specific paragraph.

Content Subtypes

Reading Comprehension questions test a range of cognitive skills. Here are the major subtypes you'll encounter — click each one for a breakdown and strategy guidance:

What it asks: What is the passage fundamentally about? What was the author trying to accomplish?

Common stems: "The passage is primarily concerned with..." · "The primary purpose of the passage is to..."

Strategy: After reading, summarize the passage in a single sentence. The correct answer captures this overarching point without being too narrow (about one detail) or too broad (beyond what the passage covers). Watch for answers that describe something the passage mentions but that isn't the central focus.

What it asks: What does the passage explicitly say?

Common stems: "According to the passage..." · "The passage states that..." · "All of the following are mentioned EXCEPT..."

Strategy: The answer is directly stated or closely paraphrased in the text. Locate the relevant section, match it to a choice. For EXCEPT questions, cross off each choice you can find support for — the remaining one is your answer.

What it asks: What can be logically concluded from the passage even though it isn't stated outright?

Common stems: "It can be inferred that..." · "The passage suggests that..." · "The passage implies..."

Strategy: Good inferences are small, conservative steps beyond what's written. If a choice feels like a major leap, it's probably wrong. Every correct inference should be traceable back to specific evidence in the passage.

What it asks: Why did the author include a particular detail, example, or paragraph?

Common stems: "The author mentions [X] primarily in order to..." · "What is the function of the third sentence?"

Strategy: Focus on why, not what. A detail might state a fact, but its function is to support a larger claim, introduce a counterpoint, or illustrate an abstract idea. Read the surrounding context to see how the element connects to the argument's structure.

What it asks: What does the author believe, value, or endorse?

Common stems: "The author would most likely agree with..." · "The author's attitude toward [X] is best described as..."

Strategy: Carefully distinguish between views the author holds and views the author merely reports from other sources. Look for evaluative language — words like "unfortunately," "compelling," or "misguided" reveal the author's stance.

What it asks: What new information would make the argument more or less convincing?

Common stems: "Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the argument?" · "Which would most support the claim?"

Strategy: Identify the argument's conclusion and its evidence. Find the gap (the assumption). To weaken: attack the assumption or provide an alternative explanation. To strengthen: reinforce the assumption. Accept each choice as true and evaluate its impact.

What it asks: What does a word or phrase mean in the specific context of this passage?

Common stems: "As used in the passage, '[word]' most nearly means..."

Strategy: The tested word often has multiple meanings, and the obvious one may not fit. Substitute each answer choice into the original sentence — the correct one preserves the passage's meaning. The GRE frequently tests secondary or less common definitions.

What it asks: What logical role do highlighted portions of the argument play?

Common stems: "The two boldface portions play which of the following roles?"

Strategy: First identify the overall conclusion. Then classify each boldfaced element: is it a premise, a counter-argument, a conclusion, a piece of evidence, or an assumption? Answer choices describe structural relationships, so focus on the role each statement plays rather than its specific content.

You may also see questions asking you to resolve an apparent contradiction, identify an unstated assumption, complete the logical trajectory of an argument, pinpoint a direct contradiction, or compare and contrast two concepts discussed in the passage. The same core approach applies: read carefully, identify what the question is really asking, and ground every answer in the text.

Try It: Reading Comprehension

Questions 1–4 are based on the following passage.

Question 1 of 10 — Main Idea

Passage

When wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 after a seventy-year absence, ecologists anticipated that the predators would reduce the elk population. What few predicted was the extent to which wolves would reshape the park's entire physical landscape. By altering elk grazing behavior — herds began avoiding valleys and riverbanks where they were vulnerable to ambush — wolves indirectly allowed willow and aspen saplings to regenerate in areas that had been stripped bare. The regrowth stabilized streambanks, reduced erosion, and even altered the courses of some rivers. Beavers, which depend on willow, returned to build dams that created ponds supporting fish, amphibians, and waterfowl. This phenomenon, in which a top predator's influence cascades down through multiple levels of an ecosystem, is known as a trophic cascade. Some ecologists caution, however, that attributing Yellowstone's vegetation recovery solely to wolves oversimplifies a system in which drought cycles, fire history, and human management also play significant roles.

The passage is primarily concerned with

Question 2 of 10 — Inference

Passage

It can be inferred from the passage that during the seventy-year absence of wolves from Yellowstone:

Question 3 of 10 — Function / Purpose

Passage

The author mentions 'drought cycles, fire history, and human management' primarily in order to

Question 4 of 10 — Strengthen / Weaken

Passage

Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the caution expressed in the passage's final sentence?

Questions 5–7 are based on the following passage.

Question 5 of 10 — Main Idea

Passage

The invention of photography in the 1830s is commonly cited as a catalyst for Impressionism, the argument being that painters, freed from the obligation to produce faithful likenesses, turned instead to capturing fleeting effects of light and atmosphere. This narrative, while appealingly tidy, overstates photography's role. Long before the camera, painters had experimented with atmospheric effects: Constable's cloud studies and Turner's dissolving seascapes predate commercial photography by decades. Moreover, many Impressionists were themselves avid photographers who regarded the camera not as a rival but as a tool — Degas used photographic compositions to inform his paintings of dancers, and Monet studied photographs to understand how light behaved at different times of day. What photography did contribute was not liberation from representation but rather a new visual vocabulary: the cropped frame, the off-center subject, the frozen moment of ordinary life. These compositional innovations, borrowed from the camera's mechanical eye, gave Impressionist canvases their distinctive quality of spontaneous observation.

The primary purpose of the passage is to

Question 6 of 10 — Function / Purpose

Passage

The author mentions Constable's cloud studies and Turner's dissolving seascapes primarily in order to

Question 7 of 10 — Vocabulary in Context

Passage

As used in the passage, the word 'fleeting' most nearly means

Questions 8–10 are based on the following passage.

Question 8 of 10 — Supporting Detail

Passage

In 1959, Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith published an experiment that would become one of the most cited studies in social psychology. Participants who had performed an extremely tedious task were asked to tell a waiting participant that the task was enjoyable. Some were paid twenty dollars for this small deception, while others received only one dollar. Counterintuitively, those paid just one dollar later reported finding the task genuinely more enjoyable than those paid twenty dollars. Festinger explained the result through cognitive dissonance: the psychological discomfort produced when a person holds two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. Participants paid twenty dollars could justify their dishonesty by pointing to the substantial compensation, so they experienced little dissonance. Those paid only one dollar had no adequate external justification, and to resolve the tension between 'I said the task was fun' and 'I had no real reason to lie,' they unconsciously shifted their actual attitude toward the task. Critics have noted, however, that the same results can be explained by self-perception theory, which holds that people infer their own attitudes by observing their behavior much as an outside observer would — without experiencing any internal discomfort at all.

According to the passage, participants who were paid twenty dollars

Question 9 of 10 — Inference

Passage

It can be inferred from the passage that cognitive dissonance theory and self-perception theory differ most fundamentally in their assumptions about

Question 10 of 10 — Author's Perspective

Passage

The author of the passage presents cognitive dissonance theory and self-perception theory in a way that suggests

Text Completion

Text Completion questions give you a short passage — one to five sentences — with one, two, or three blanks. Your job is to pick the word for each blank that makes the passage coherent and meaningful. These questions test vocabulary depth and your ability to follow the logical flow of a passage.

For multi-blank questions, there is no partial credit: every blank must be correct to earn the point. However, the choices for each blank are independent — you evaluate them separately, not as combinations.

Signal Words

Signal words tell you the relationship between the blank and the surrounding text. Recognizing them quickly is one of the most important skills for this question type:

Signal Type	Indicates	Examples
Contrast	The blank opposes something stated	although, but, however, yet, despite, unlike, nevertheless
Continuation	The blank aligns with something stated	and, moreover, indeed, similarly, furthermore, likewise
Cause / Effect	The blank results from or causes something	since, because, therefore, thus, consequently, as a result
Explanation	The blank restates or clarifies	colon (:), semicolon (;), dash (—), in other words, that is
Intensification	The blank is a stronger version	not only...but also, even, especially, particularly

Try It: Text Completion

The scientist's findings were so _________ that even her most vocal critics had to acknowledge the strength of her evidence.

Blank (i)

Although the novelist was (i)_________ for her intricate prose style, her later works adopted a tone that was surprisingly (ii)_________ — stripped of ornament and accessible to a far wider readership.

Blank (i)

Blank (j)

Sentence Equivalence

Sentence Equivalence gives you a single sentence with one blank and six answer choices. You must pick exactly two words that each independently complete the sentence in a way that makes sense — and that produces two sentences with essentially the same meaning. No partial credit: you need both correct answers and only those.

Three Rules to Remember

1. Each word must work on its own. Both words must independently create a grammatical, logical sentence.

2. Both sentences must mean the same thing. The two completed sentences should convey essentially identical ideas.

3. Watch for synonym traps. Two choices might be synonyms of each other but not fit the sentence. Always test each word in context before pairing them.

Try It: Sentence Equivalence

Select exactly two answers

Despite the researcher's _________ efforts to replicate the original experiment, the results remained inconsistent and difficult to interpret.

Select exactly two answers

The committee's report was surprisingly _________, offering detailed analysis where most observers had expected only vague generalities.

Strategies for Success

Time Management

At about 1.5 minutes per question, efficiency matters. Don't spend more than 2–3 minutes on any single question. Flag difficult ones and circle back after finishing easier questions — every question is worth the same, so maximize the number you attempt.

Active Reading

As you read a passage, actively track the main claim, the author's tone, and the structure (one viewpoint? two contrasting views? a problem and proposed solution?). Noting paragraph functions as you go saves time when answering questions.

Process of Elimination

Even when unsure of the right answer, you can usually eliminate 2–3 choices that are clearly wrong — they contradict the passage, are too extreme, or fall outside the passage's scope. This dramatically improves your odds if you need to guess.

Predict Before You Peek

For Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence, formulate your own word for the blank before looking at the choices. This prevents you from being lured by plausible-sounding but incorrect options. Then find the choice that best matches your prediction.

Build Vocabulary in Context

Rather than memorizing word lists in isolation, learn words through reading — noting how they're used, what connotations they carry, and what secondary meanings they have. The test frequently rewards knowledge of less common definitions.