GRE Reading Comprehension Practice Test 3
- Reading Comprehension (Set 3)
- 10 questions
- 15 minutes
Three original passages, each printed with its first question: one on a scientific method, one on how historians read sources and one short argument. For argument questions, find the conclusion and the evidence first, then look for the gap between them.
Tap an option to mark your answer. You can change your mind, or tap the same option again to leave the question blank. The correct answers and explanations appear when you finish the test.Tap an option to answer; tap it again to leave the question blank.
Your result
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Question 1
Passage 1
(1) A tree in a temperate climate adds one growth ring each year, and the width of that ring depends partly on the conditions of the season; in many regions a wet year produces a wide ring and a dry year a narrow one. Because neighboring trees experience the same weather, they record the same sequence of wide and narrow rings, much as every copy of a printed barcode carries the same pattern of thick and thin bars.
(2) This shared pattern is what makes dendrochronology, the dating of wood by its rings, possible. By matching the inner rings of a living tree with the outer rings of an older dead one, researchers can extend a chronology backward beyond the lifetime of any single tree, and beams from old buildings can extend it further still. A piece of timber of unknown age can then be dated to the exact year in which its outermost surviving ring formed.
(3) The method has a limit that is easy to overlook. It dates the ring, not the building. If a beam's outer rings were trimmed away when it was shaped, or if the builders used wood that had been cut and stored for years, the date obtained may come well before the construction itself.
The passage is primarily concerned with
Correct answer: A
Paragraphs 1 and 2 explain why ring patterns can be matched and dated, and paragraph 3 notes that the method dates the ring rather than the building. The passage never compares dendrochronology with other methods or discusses climate change.
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Question 2
Passage 1 (see above):
The comparison with a printed barcode in paragraph 1 is used to illustrate that
Correct answer: D
The barcode image appears right after the point that neighboring trees "record the same sequence" of rings: every copy of a barcode shows the same pattern. The comparison stresses a shared pattern, the opposite of a unique one.
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Question 3
Passage 1 (see above):
According to the passage, researchers can extend a ring chronology back beyond the lifetime of a single tree by
Correct answer: B
Paragraph 2 describes matching the inner rings of a living tree with the outer rings of an older dead one and then extending the series with beams from old buildings. A single oldest tree would be limited to its own lifetime.
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Question 4
Passage 1 (see above):
The passage suggests that the ring date of a beam is most likely to match the year the building was constructed when
Correct answer: E
Paragraph 3 names two sources of error: trimmed outer rings and wood stored for years before use. When neither applies, the last ring is close to the felling date, and the felling is close to construction. A trimmed beam is exactly the case the passage warns about.
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Question 5
Passage 2
Historians prize diaries as unguarded testimony, the place where people wrote what they could not say aloud. The appeal is understandable, but it rests on an assumption that many diarists would not have shared. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, diaries were often read by family members, passed among friends or written with an eye to eventual publication, and their authors knew it. A diary, then, can be a performance as deliberate as a letter. None of this makes diaries useless; it means that a historian must ask of a diary the question routinely asked of any other source: for whom was it written?
The "assumption" mentioned in the second sentence is most likely the assumption that diaries were
Correct answer: C
The assumption is what makes diaries seem "unguarded testimony": that they were private. The author challenges it by noting that diarists often expected family, friends or the public to read them. Reading aloud is part of the author's counterpoint, not the assumption.
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Question 6
Passage 2 (see above):
Which of the following best states the main point of the passage?
Correct answer: A
The passage ends by saying diaries are not useless but must be asked "for whom was it written?", like any other source. The claim that diaries are too unreliable contradicts "None of this makes diaries useless," and "most" overstates the passage's "often."
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Question 7
Passage 2 (see above):
The author compares a diary to a letter in order to
Correct answer: E
Letters are obviously written for someone else, so saying a diary can be "a performance as deliberate as a letter" means a diary too may be composed for readers. The author does not rank letters above diaries.
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Question 8
Passage 3
A large study followed thousands of adults for ten years and found that those who reported drinking at least two cups of coffee a day were less likely to die during the study period than those who drank no coffee. A health columnist concluded that adults who do not drink coffee could lengthen their lives by starting to drink it daily.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the columnist's conclusion?
Correct answer: D
If many non-drinkers had quit coffee because they were already seriously ill, that illness, not the absence of coffee, could explain their higher death rate. The other choices are irrelevant or, like a broad sample, slightly support the study.
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Question 9
Passage 3 (see above):
The columnist's conclusion assumes which of the following?
Correct answer: B
The study shows only an association, and the columnist treats it as cause and effect; the argument works only if no other difference between drinkers and non-drinkers explains the result. It does not need coffee to be the most important factor.
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Question 10
Passage 3 (see above):
Which of the following would be most useful to know in evaluating the columnist's conclusion?
Correct answer: C
If the two groups differed in other health-related habits, those habits could explain the difference in death rates, so knowing this tests whether coffee is the cause. Prices, the columnist's own habits and staff recruitment tell us nothing about cause.
Questions you leave blank are not counted as wrong.
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