Many students know that building up their vocabulary is crucial to success on the GRE’s verbal section. What’s less clear to many people, however, is how to improve their verbal reasoning skills. Reading comprehension questions comprise half of the verbal questions that test-takers see on the GRE, and several of those will test students’ ability to accomplish the following tasks:
Strengthen or weaken an argument, label the roles played by two specific sentences in an argument, recognize a scenario that uses reasoning parallel to that in a passage, and identify information that resolves an apparent discrepancy or paradox.
Answering these questions efficiently comes down to parsing an argument into parts: By separating the author’s conclusion from any evidence that he provides to support it, testers can determine what underlying assumptions must be true in order for the logic to be sound.
We do this intuitively when we discuss topics about which we are knowledgeable, or that interest us – living in Baltimore, for example, I have heard many debates in the past week about what factors led to the Ravens’ Super Bowl win. However, many test-takers have trouble taking apart arguments about the less-than-interesting topics that appear on the GRE.
To improve verbal reasoning skills, GRE-preppers can start by finding newspaper or magazine op-ed pieces about interesting topics, and reading them with a critical eye. If they master the process on stimulating material, then they’ll have far fewer problems applying it to test questions. To get your advisees started on the path to success, send them this New York Times piece on recent Sidney Award winners. It discusses several magazine articles that will both interest students and allow them to hone their ability to analyze arguments, and build reading comprehension and critical thinking skills. With practice, students will see the improvement in their verbal reasoning capabilities and will reap the corresponding payoff on the GRE, in graduate school, and beyond.
