GRE 2022 For Dummies with Online Practice. Ron Woldoff

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      All the choices suggest that you did better than expected, but stunned, shocked, dumbfounded, and bewildered imply that everyone thought you would tank, and what kind of friends are those? However, we knew you would do great, probably because you used GRE For Dummies to prepare for the test. The second half of the sentence doesn’t convey doubt (“We knew you could do it!”), so the correct answers are Choices (A) and (C).

Taking the Best and Only Approach

      Whether you’re taking on a Text Completion or Sentence Equivalence question, your approach is the same. These steps are the only way to knock out these questions so you can beat the exam and get on with your life.

      1 Interpret the text without looking at the answer choices.

      2 Complete the text with your own words.

      3 Eliminate wrong answer choices.

      The following sections explain these steps in detail.

      Interpret the text without looking at the answer choices

      First, figure out what the sentence is saying. If you know this, then you know the meanings of the words that go in the blanks. How else do you know which answer choices work, and more importantly, which ones don’t work?

       While interpreting the text, don’t look at the answer choices! Each answer choice not only seems to fit perfectly but also gives the sentence a very different meaning. Then, you have no idea what the sentence is trying to say, and you’ve turned a relatively workable question into something that’s impossible. Whoa, right into the trap. Instead, get the meaning of the sentence first and then look at the answer choices!

       To avoid involuntarily glancing at the answer choices, cover them up with your scratch paper. Hold that scratch paper right up on the computer screen. (You’re not working math now, anyway.) Silly? Yes. Effective? Absolutely. Students tell me it’s a lifesaver.

      The following example illustrates the different meanings that a sentence can convey using different words in the blanks. If you first try out all the answer choices, it becomes impossible to tell what the sentence is actually saying, so they’re not shown here yet.

       Coerced by his kids into watching The LEGO Movie, Andy was (i) _____, although the movie surprisingly turned out to be (ii) _____.

      First, interpret what the sentence is trying to say. The word although in the middle of the sentence tells you that the two phrases have different meanings — that the words in those blanks should be opposite, or close to it. Although is an example of a transition word, which can function as a valuable clue. (See the later section “Use transition words to get the gist of the phrases” for more on this.)

      Ask yourself this: Was Andy eager or reluctant? Was The LEGO Movie surprisingly lame or good? That he was coerced tells you that Andy didn’t want to go, so he probably was reluctant and expected a lousy movie. Then he was surprised, so the movie was probably pretty good. This is how you tell what the sentence is trying to say.

      Complete the text with your own words

      The next step is finding your own words to complete the text. Your words don’t have to be perfect — you’re not writing the sentence — but they do have to support the meaning of the sentence. This way, you know exactly what to look for and can eliminate answer choices (which is the following step). Right now, you’re still covering up the answer choices with your scratch paper.

      Try to picture what’s happening in the text. Even though you may arrange it differently, your key words will match the missing words in the question.

      Coerced by his kids into watching The LEGO Movie, Andy was reluctant, although the movie surprisingly turned out to be, well … awesome.

      You already know that Andy wasn’t looking forward to the movie, but the movie surprisingly was good.

       Your own words may not fit perfectly or match the answer choices — but they don’t have to. Instead, they serve a more important purpose. They make the wrong answers clearly stand out. Now you go to the next step: Eliminate wrong answer choices.

      Eliminate wrong answer choices

      The final step to knocking out these questions is eliminating the wrong answer choices. Now that you know what the sentence is saying, the wrong answers are clear.

      Here’s the example question again, this time with the answer choices provided.

      Directions: For each blank, select one entry from the corresponding column of choices. Fill all blanks in the way that best completes the text.

       Coerced by his kids into watching The LEGO Movie, Andy was (i) _____, although the movie surprisingly turned out to be (ii) _____.

      Compare the answer choices, one at a time, to the words you already came up with on your own (reluctant and awesome). Cross thrilled and excited off the first list, because they have nothing to do with reluctant. Similarly, lousy and subpar are far from awesome. The correct answers are Choices (C), hesitant, and (F), a blast, which both match your predictions and make sense when you read the sentence.

       These questions can be challenging, so if you’re not sure whether an answer choice should be crossed off, don’t spend time on it. Instead, mark it as “maybe” and go on to the next answer choice. Usually, you’ll finish reviewing the answer choices with one marked “maybe” and the others eliminated. Go with the “maybe” choice and move on.

      Worst case, if you have to guess, you’ve narrowed down the answers to guess from. Then mark the question for review and return to it later.

       These verbal questions should take you less than a minute each, saving you valuable time for the time-intensive Reading Comprehension. (For more on GRE Reading Comprehension, read over to Chapter 5.)

Interpreting Trickier Sentences

      If every Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence question were this easy, everyone would get a perfect 170 on the Verbal section (those who have this book, anyway), and testing would be pointless. However, the actual GRE questions can be more challenging to interpret. When you come across these sentences, start with the three basic strategies mentioned earlier and build on them with these steps:

      1 Use transition words to get the gist of the phrases.

      2 Start with the second or third missing word.

      The following section goes further into these steps.