GRE Verbal Reasoning Sentence Equivalence

The GRE consists of five sections: one Analytical Writing section, two Verbal Reasoning sections, and two Quantitative Reasoning sections. In the Verbal Reasoning sections, test-takers will encounter three types of questions: Reading Comprehension, Text Completion, and Sentence Equivalence. According to Educational Testing Service (ETS), the organization responsible for administering the GRE, those three types of questions make up the following percentages of Verbal Reasoning questions:

Verbal Reasoning Question Type	Percentage of Verbal Reasoning Section
Reading Comprehension	50%
Text Completion	25%
Sentence Equivalence	25%

Sentence Equivalence questions account for approximately 25% of all Verbal Reasoning questions, and you will find them intermingled with Text Completion and Reading Comprehension questions in each of the two Verbal Reasoning sections.

Sentence Equivalence questions consist of a single sentence with one blank and six provided word choices. Students must select two words that fit the sentence and produce two complete sentences of equivalent meaning. There is no partial credit on the GRE, so to get the answer right and raise your score, you must choose two correct words. This can be particularly challenging since most test questions ask you to select only one correct answer; it takes consistent practice to train your brain to recognize questions where you must select two correct answers before moving on.

Sentence Equivalence questions are similar to Text Completion problems and used primarily to test the understanding of vocabulary in context. Sentence Equivalence questions focus on the meaning of the completed, or whole, sentence, whereas Text Completion questions test your ability to conclude how a sentence should be completed by inferring from incomplete information.

Sentence Equivalence Strategy

Under normal circumstances, it would seem relatively easy to pick two synonymous words from a list; however, Sentence Equivalence questions require students to choose two distinct vocabulary words that fit a sentence in the same way. The accuracy of students’ choices is determined by the meaning of the completed sentence, rather than the definition of the chosen words themselves.

The answers you have chosen are both correct if the two distinct sentences completed with the two chosen words are “equivalent,” meaning they convey the same idea in the same tone and could be swapped in any context without losing significance. For example, ETS provides sample questions where the correct pairs of words are “original” and “innovative”, or “exacerbated” or “worsened”. While these pairs of words would not be synonymous in every usage, in the context of the problem, they both complete the sentence fragment in an equivalent way.

Answer choices may contain synonyms that mean different things in the context of the sentence or pairs of distinct words that complete the sentence in a comparable way. The best strategy is to read the entire sentence and gain an overall impression of it, paying special attention to structurally or syntactically significant words. Next, try to imagine words that are appropriate to fill the blanks before you look at the answer choices. Then evaluate the answer options to determine whether any two words that match your ideas are among the answer choices provided.

One strategy that is not effective is to simply read the given answers and choose two words that mean the same thing. For example, you may see the words “large” and “heavy” and assume they must be the correct answers because they are synonyms and usually mean the same thing. In most cases, using this approach will result in an incorrect answer that receives no points, as it is the meaning of the sentences, rather than the meaning of the individual words, that must be synonymous and interchangeable.

Try out different combinations of answer options, as you might not identify the two correct words until you read them as part of the given sentences and grasp the larger meaning. Once you have chosen both words, ensure that their corresponding sentences are coherent, consistent, and mean the same thing. The reading passages for Sentence Equivalence are not sufficiently long to justify diagramming or charting the sentences, so do not waste the little time you have. If you are unsure of an answer, you may want to mark the question as one you wish to review and return to at the end of the section. You may also want to make a note on your scratch paper so that you can quickly remember what you were thinking about this particular question to jog your memory when you later return to it.

Vocabulary Building

For students preparing to take the GRE, vocabulary knowledge is one of the most challenging components of achieving a high score on the exam. The Sentence Equivalence questions pose a unique challenge to test-takers because the correct answer does not depend on the definition of the vocabulary words, but rather on their specific usage in context.

The key to success on the Sentence Completion and Text Equivalence sections of the GRE is a robust and applied understanding of vocabulary words from diverse contexts. The best way to achieve this sort of vocabulary knowledge is to have taken a challenging and varied undergraduate courseload supplemented by extensive reading of English literature from different time periods and authorial perspectives. The GRE is not intended to test students’ ability to memorize extensive lists of vocabulary words in a short time frame—it is designed to evaluate your ability to apply years’ worth of complex language acquisition to the purpose of solving novel problems and understanding challenging information.

Although the complexity of English language knowledge required by the GRE may seem challenging to prospective test-takers, through dedicated and systematic studying it is possible to earn substantial performance achievements on the Sentence Equivalence questions and Verbal Reasoning sections of the exam. The most important component of a successful study plan is to identify and ameliorate your weaknesses; for the GRE Verbal Reasoning sections, this means quizzing yourself from a vocabulary list, increasing the number of words you recognize, and deepening your understanding of as many words as possible.

Manhattan Review maintains a list of GRE Vocabulary Words that you can review and use to create flashcards for practice. In addition, a variety of websites and applications offer free vocabulary services, including the phone application Magoosh, which presents words arranged by level of difficulty.

Because Sentence Equivalence questions require test-takers to evaluate knowledge of specific definitions or shades of meaning, vocabulary preparation must focus on the distinctions and similarities among words and linguistic families. At Manhattan Review, we use the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the most comprehensive reference text available for the English Language, which is accessible online to anyone with a New York Public Library card. This reference allows us to help students craft a narrative to better remember specific details of the words, as well as the way they have been used throughout human history. This depth of understanding contributes to our expertise as leaders in vocabulary building, and it provides our students with a wealth of knowledge to further build their own skills in preparation for performing well on the test.