The verbal section measures your ability to analyze and evaluate written material and synthesize information obtained from it, to analyze relationships among component parts of sentences, to recognize relationships between words and concepts, and to reason with words in solving problems. There is a balance of passages across different subject matter areas: humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.
The verbal section contains the following question types:
• Antonyms
• Analogies
• Sentence Completions
• Reading Comprehension Questions
How the Verbal Section is Scored
Scoring of the verbal section of the paper-based General Test is essentially a two-step process. First, a raw score is computed. The raw score is the number of questions for which the best answer choice was given. The raw score is then converted to a scaled score through a process known as equating. The equating process accounts for differences in difficulty among the different test editions; thus, a given scaled score reflects approximately the same level of ability regardless of the edition of the test that was taken.
AntonymsAntonyms measure your
• vocabulary
• ability to reason from a given concept to its opposite
Directions*
Each question below consists of a word printed in capital letters followed by five lettered words or phrases. Choose the lettered word or phrase that is most nearly opposite in meaning to the word in capital letters. Since some of the questions require you to distinguish fine shades of meaning, be sure to consider all the choices before deciding which one is best.
Sample Question
DIFFUSE:
(A) concentrate
(B) contend
(C) imply
(D) pretend
(E) rebel
Strategies for Answering
• Remember that antonyms are generally confined to nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
• Look for the word that is most nearly opposite to the given word.
• Try to define words precisely.
• Make up a sentence using the given word to help establish its meaning.
• Look for possible second meanings before choosing an answer.
• Use your knowledge of prefixes and suffixes to help define words you don’t know.
Answer
The best answer is (A). Diffuse means to permit or cause to spread out; only (A) presents an idea that is in any way opposite to diffuse.
Analogies
Analogies measure your ability to recognize
• relationships among words and concepts they represent
• parallel relationships
Directions*
In each of the following questions, a related pair of words or phrases is followed by five lettered pairs of words or phrases. Select the lettered pair that best expresses a relationship similar to that expressed in the original pair.
Sample Question
COLOR : SPECTRUM :
(A) tone : scale
(B) sound : waves
(C) verse : poem
(D) dimension : space
(E) cell : organism
Strategies for Answering• Establish a relationship between the given pair before reading the answer choices.
• Consider relationships of kind, size, spatial contiguity, or degree.
• Read all of the options. If more than one seems correct, try to state the relationship more precisely.
• Check to see that you haven’t overlooked a possible second meaning for one of the words.
• Never decide on the best answer without reading all of the answer choices.
Answer
The relationship between color and spectrum is not merely that of part to whole, in which case (E) or even (C) might be defended as correct. A spectrum is made up of a progressive, graduated series of colors, as a scale is of a progressive, graduated sequence of tones. Thus, (A) is the correct answer choice. In this instance, the best answer must be selected from a group of fairly close choices.
Sentence Completions
Sentence completions measure your ability to recognize words or phrases that both logically and stylistically complete the meaning of a sentence.
Directions*
Each sentence below has one or two blanks, each blank indicating that something has been omitted. Beneath the sentence are five lettered words or sets of words. Choose the word or set of words for each blank that best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.
Sample Question
Early ________ of hearing loss is ________ by the fact that the other senses are able to compensate for moderate amounts of loss, so that people frequently do not know that their hearing is imperfect.
(A) discovery . . indicated
(B) development . . prevented
(C) detection . . complicated
(D) treatment . . facilitated
(E) incidence . . corrected
Strategies for Answering
• Read the incomplete sentence carefully.
• Look for key words or phrases.
• Complete the blank(s) with your own words; see if any options are like yours.
• Pay attention to grammatical cues.
• If there are two blanks, be sure that both parts of your answer choice fit logically and stylistically into the sentence.
• After choosing an answer, read the sentence through again to see if it makes sense.
Answer
The statement that the other senses compensate for partial loss of hearing indicates that the hearing loss is not prevented or corrected; therefore, choices (B) and (E) can be eliminated. Furthermore, the ability to compensate for hearing loss certainly does not facilitate the early treatment (D) or the early discovery (A) of hearing loss. It is reasonable, however, that early detection of hearing loss is complicated by the ability to compensate for it. The best answer
is (C).
Reading Comprehension Questions
Reading comprehension questions measure your ability to • read with understanding, insight, and
discrimination
• analyze a written passage from several perspectives Passages are taken from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.
Directions*
The passage is followed by questions based on its content. After reading the passage, choose the best answer to each question. Answer all questions following the passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
Sample Question
Picture-taking is a technique both for annexing the objective world and for expressing the singular self. Photographs depict objective realities that already exist, though only the camera can disclose them. And they depict an individual photographer’s temperament, discovering itself through the camera’s cropping of reality. That is, photography has two antithetical ideals: in the first, photography is about the world, and the photographer is a mere observer who counts for little; but in the second, photography is the instrument of intrepid, questing subjectivity and the photographer is all. These conflicting ideals arise from a fundamental uneasiness on the part of both photographers and viewers of photographs toward the aggressive component in “taking” a picture. Accordingly, the ideal of a photographer as observer is attractive because it implicitly denies that picture-taking is an aggressive act.
The issue, of course, is not so clear-cut. What photographers do cannot be characterized as simply predatory or as simply, and essentially, benevolent. As a consequence, one ideal of picture-taking or the other is always being rediscovered and championed. An important result of the coexistence of these two ideals is a recurrent ambivalence toward photography’s means. Whatever the claims that photography might make to be a form of personal expression on a par with painting, its originality is inextricably linked to the powers of a machine. The steady growth of these powers has made possible the extraordinary informativeness and imaginative formal beauty of many photographs, like Harold Edgerton’s high-speed photographs of a bullet hitting its target or of the swirls and eddies of a tennis stroke. But as cameras become more sophisticated, more automated, some photographers are tempted to disarm themselves or to suggest that they are not really armed, preferring to submit themselves to the limits imposed by premodern camera technology because a cruder, less high-powered machine is thought to give more interesting or emotive results, to leave more room for creative accident. For example, it has been virtually a point of honor for many photographers, including Walker Evans and Cartier-Bresson, to refuse to use modern equipment.
These photographers have come to doubt the value of the camera as an instrument of “fast seeing.” Cartier-Bresson, in fact, claims that the modern camera may see too fast. This ambivalence toward photographic means determines trends in taste. The cult of the future (of faster and faster seeing) alternates over time with the wish to return to a purer past — when images had a handmade quality. This nostalgia for some pristine state of the photographic
enterprise is currently widespread and underlies the present-day enthusiasm for daguerreotypes and the work of forgotten nineteenth-century provincial photographers. Photographers and viewers of photographs, it seems, need periodically to resist their own knowingness.
According to the passage, the two antithetical ideals of photography differ primarily in the
(A) value that each places on the beauty of the finished product
(B) emphasis that each places on the emotional impact of the finished product
(C) degree of technical knowledge that each requires of the photographer
(D) extent of the power that each requires of the photographer’s equipment
(E) way in which each defines the role of the photographer
Strategies for Answering
• Read the passage closely, then proceed to the questions.
or
Skim the passage, then reread the passage closely as you answer the questions. You may want to try it both ways with sample questions to see what works best for you.
• Answer questions based on the content of the passage.
• Separate main ideas from supporting ideas.
• Separate the author’s own ideas from information being presented.
• Ask yourself...
– What is this about?
– What are the key points?
– How does the main idea relate to other ideas in the passage?
– What words define relationships among ideas?
Answer
The best answer to this question is (E). Photography’s two ideals are presented in lines 7–11. The main emphasis in the description of these two ideals is on the relationship of the photographer to the enterprise of photography, with the photographer described in the one as a passive observer and in the other as an active questioner. (E) identifies this key feature in the description of the two ideals—the way in which each ideal conceives or defines the role of the photographer in photography. (A) through (D) present aspects of photography that are mentioned in the passage, but none of these choices represents a primary difference between the two ideals of photography.
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