The Verbal Reasoning measure of the GRE General Test assesses your ability to analyze and evaluate written material and synthesize information obtained from it, analyze relationships among component parts of sentences and recognize relationships among words and concepts.
Verbal Reasoning questions appear in several formats, each of which is discussed in detail in the corresponding sections linked to below. About half of the measure requires you to read passages and answer questions on those passages. The other half requires you to read, interpret and complete existing sentences, groups of sentences or paragraphs.
Verbal Reasoning Question Types
The Verbal Reasoning measure contains three types of questions. Click on the links below to get a closer look at each, including sample questions with rationales.
Reading Comprehension
Text Completion
Sentence Equivalence
Analyze and draw conclusions from discourse; reason from incomplete data; identify author's assumptions and/or perspective; understand multiple levels of meaning such as literal, figurative and author's intent.
Select important points; distinguish major from minor or relevant points; summarize text; understand the structure of a text.
Understand the meanings of words, sentences and entire texts; understand relationships among words and among concepts. But when you are worrying about your vocabulary I can give you some tips to memorize them:
Make it relevant to you. Create a backstory for the vocab words that are frequently tested on the GRE Verbal section, or associate them with something meaningful to you. This will make them easy to learn and fun to study. Do you have a brother who is pugnacious or an ex who is pusillanimous? Associate these descriptive GRE vocabulary words with people in your mind. Creating mental connections will help you master new vocab.
Learn word groups. Think like a thesaurus, not like a dictionary. Knowing detailed definitions for 100 GRE vocabulary words is not as useful as knowing approximate synonyms for 200-300.
Create a support system. Get friends and family involved. Send out daily emails or texts using your GRE vocabulary word of the day, and ask your study partners and supporters to use these new words with you—they’re likely to appreciate both the initiative and the study help. Besides, who wouldn’t want to incorporate the word nugatory into their day?
You can practice your test on this site:
http://www.greguide.com/gre-sample-tests.html