The four sections pertaining to Verbal Ability in GRE are:

1. Antonyms
2. Analogies
3. Sentence Completion
4. Reading Comprehension

Antonyms: You all would love to know that Antonyms are generally restricted to Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives. This lessens your burden of preparation for quite an extent. In GRE you will never find an exact answer. You will always find an answer choice that is very close an option. So here lies your challenge. You have to judiciously sift the options for the right answer choice. This sifting requires elimination of irrelevant, inappropriate or wrong answer choices. Sometimes it might happen that you suddenly forget the meaning of a word. You can then try to define that word by using it in a sentence. Try that way. This will help you in establishing the meaning of a word. Questions sometimes might be indirect. In a situation like that also try deriving the ‘secondary meaning’ of a particular word. If you are unaware of the meaning of a word, try guessing the meaning considering the root, prefix and suffix of the word.

Analogies are slightly tougher, for the fact that you need to precisely establish the relationship between word pairs. Analogies measure your ability to recognize

• Relationships among words and concepts they represent
• Parallel relationships

Things you should never forget while answering Analogies:

1. Read the question and ‘all’ the answer choices at least once thoroughly

2. Do not jump to conclusion

3. Try to draw a connecting link between the two words given as question

4. Apply the same connecting link to all the answer choices

5. The word pair that takes the connecting link perfectly is your answer choice

Read more: GRE: Analogy Segment (Strategies and Techniques)

Sentence Completions

ETS Says:

Sentence completions measure your ability to recognize words or phrases that both logically and stylistically complete the meaning of a sentence.

Important points to remember while answering the Sentence Completion questions

1. Read the incomplete sentence completely, once or twice to understand the meaning better

2. Identify the tone of the sentence. The tone of the sentence could be neutral, acerbic, ironic, descriptive or critical

3. Your answer choices are in harmony with the tone of the sentence. For example a critical tone will never take neutral options as answers.

4. When a sentence has conjunctions like ‘and’ your answer choices are usually synonymous

5. When a sentence has words like but, however, yet, in spite of, nevertheless, the answer choices are usually antonymous. These words also indicate a change of thought, a twist of thought rather

6. Do not jump to hazardous conclusions while answering

7. See that both the options fit into the sentence mellifluously. Sometimes only one option fits into and students hastily select that, without realizing that it was a trap laid by the ETS. Beware!!

8. Please do not be in a haste to complete the segment and jump to the next!

Read more: Sense and Sentence Completion: Crack GRE Verbal with a Bang!

Reading Comprehension Questions

The ETS says:

Reading comprehension questions measure your ability to

• Read with understanding, insight, and discrimination
• Analyze a written passage from several perspectives

The passages for Reading Comprehension are mainly taken from humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.

Some Effective reading techniques for GRE- RC:

1. Lip-sync while reading

2. Read with a sense of inquiry

3. Predict the future of the passage

4. Remember the 5 Ws

5. Guess the meanings of the words ( you don’t know) in broader context

6. Do a progressive reading not a regressive one

7. Jot down the important dates/data on a rough paper

Read more: http://learnwordlist.com/blog/gre-reading-comprehension/2009/08/gre-word-list-test-blog-barrons-vocabulary

With the GRE Verbal Ability Blueprint in your hand you can now aim for an inspiring score. Please do read the strategies once again to perform well in the exam. Once you have grip over the fundamentals try practicing some model GRE questions. This will help you evaluate your performance. And do take all the tests designed exclusively for you on the site. These tests help you gauge your performance.

In case you have queries please do get back to us without apprehensions.

Regards,

Anu Veluri

Manager- learnwordlist.com