👋 Hello, my friends at GRE Prep Club!

One key to performing well on GRE Text Completion questions is understanding that the obvious answer isn’t always correct. In fact, what seems to be the most obviously correct answer choice is often a trap in Text Completion.

Remember, the GRE tests you on the skills you need to be successful in doing graduate-level work. And graduate-level work requires relatively sophisticated thinking, right?

So, we have to go beyond the kind of surface-level reading of sentences in which we assume that the first answer choice that jumps out as correct must be the correct answer. If we choose an answer by simply relying on associations we have between concepts and words, then we’re not doing a deep analysis of what the sentences presented actually say.

Think about it. If the word among the answer choices that was typically associated, in real life, with the sentence topic was always correct, Verbal questions wouldn’t present much of a challenge or be particularly predictive of a test-taker’s ability to tackle graduate-level coursework.

Surface-level thinking can be especially troublesome in multi-blank questions, whether we’re dealing with 1 or multiple sentences. For instance, say we’re dealing with 1 sentence containing 2 blanks. We may not have much information to go on in the sentence. So, we’ll really have to use our critical thinking skills to piece together how various answer choices work with each other to produce a logical meaning in the sentence structure and context provided.

Similarly, say we’re dealing with 3 blanks spread over multiple sentences. We’ll need to analyze not only whether a word fits logically into a particular sentence, but also how the various sentences fit with each other to produce a coherent passage.

Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep