Just as you must spend time analyzing passages for clues that will lead you to right answers, you should spend time analyzing answer choices if you want to become better (and faster) at eliminating wrong ones. This analysis is important because, as you will notice, there tend to be patterns in answer choices to GRE Verbal questions.

In other words, the GRE has certain traps and tricks it likes to employ in order to get test-takers to choose wrong answers, and the more you analyze answer choices, the more you’ll pick up on “recurring themes” in how the GRE is trying to trick you. This is true across all types of GRE Verbal questions.

For instance, you’ll often notice that,in Sentence Equivalence and Text Completion questions, the answer choices will present antonyms of the word(s) you need. So, when deciding between answer choices, it’s helpful to notice whether any choices have opposite meanings. Doing so will allow you to quickly eliminate any choices that go in the opposite direction of a plausible choice. Of course, the fact that two choices are opposites does not mean that you can assume that one of them will be the correct answer. The point is that, if a choice seems plausible and you identify other choices that are (or nearly are) its antonyms, you’ll be able to narrow down your remaining choices.

Another common trap that you may notice is that RC answer choices often will say something that is true in the real world (or sounds very likely to be true) but does not answer the question being asked or is not really related to what is said in the passage. It’s easy to fall for this kind of trap because the information is correct; it’s just not the information you need.

Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence questions employ a similar trick by evoking “real-world” scenarios in answer choices. For instance, a sentence describing some research that was performed may be followed by answer choices that include “comprehensive” and “meticulous,” both words that are frequently used in real life to describe “research.” Of course, those adjectives may have nothing to do with what is actually being depicted in the sentence. As with the “true but irrelevant” answer trap in RC questions, test-takers may be drawn to “real-world” answer choices in TC and SE questions because they pair words and concepts that people naturally associate. However, if you identify that GRE Verbal questions use this trap, you can stop yourself from falling into it.

So, being able to recognize the types of trap answer choices that repeatedly appear in GRE Verbal questions is a very useful skill. As you analyze more and more practice questions and answer choices, you’ll notice more of these traps. It may make sense for you to keep a list of the common trap choices you notice in Verbal questions, and briefly note how they try to trick you. For instance, your list might include “partially correct” as one type of RC trap, and then the description “answers only part of the question or is only partially true.” This list shouldn’t be too long, but it’s a good way for you to process what you’re seeing in GRE Verbal questions as you’re doing your untimed practice, so you can be aware of what to look out for going forward. Again, as you continue to identify recurring trap answers, quickly noticing them will become second nature.

Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep