GRE Verbal Reasoning Practice: Text Completion
- Text Completion
- 15 questions
- 20 minutes
On the GRE, a Text Completion passage has one to five sentences and one to three blanks; a one-blank item has five choices, and each blank of a longer item has three. Here every item has four options, and for two- and three-blank items each option is a complete set of words written (i) … / (ii) …. Read the whole passage first and look for signal words such as although, far from and yet.
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.
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Question 1
Although the senator was known in Washington for her ________, she surprised her colleagues by speaking for nearly three hours on a minor amendment.
Correct answer: B
"Although" sets up a contrast with a three-hour speech, so the senator must usually say little: taciturnity means a habit of speaking little. Loquacity (talkativeness) would make the long speech unsurprising.
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Question 2
The reviewer's assessment was so ________ that readers finished it unable to say whether she had actually liked the novel.
Correct answer: A
Readers could not tell what she thought, so the review must have been open to more than one interpretation: equivocal. An effusive (gushing) or trenchant (sharply incisive) review would leave no doubt about her opinion.
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Question 3
Far from being (i) ________ by the committee's rejection, the young architect treated it as (ii) ________, reworking the design until even her harshest critics conceded its merits.
Correct answer: C
"Far from" signals that she did the opposite of what a rejection usually causes: she was not daunted (discouraged) but used it as a spur (a stimulus), which fits the reworking that follows. Treating the rejection as a final verdict would contradict her continued work.
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Question 4
The new measurements did not so much refute the theory as ________ it: the original claim survived, but only in a considerably narrower form.
Correct answer: D
The colon explains the blank: the claim survived but was limited, which is what it means to qualify a theory. Demolish would equal refuting it, and vindicate or corroborate would mean confirming it unchanged.
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Question 5
Historians long dismissed the captain's diaries as ________, but a recent comparison with port records has shown that even their most improbable entries are accurate.
Correct answer: A
"But" contrasts the historians' dismissal with proof of accuracy, so they must have thought the diaries were of doubtful authenticity: apocryphal. Calling them meticulous would be praise, not a dismissal.
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Question 6
The minister's speech was intended to (i) ________ public fears about the bank failures, but its evasive answers only (ii) ________ them.
Correct answer: B
A minister would intend to allay (calm) fears, and "but" with "evasive answers" shows the result was the opposite: the fears were exacerbated (made worse). "Allay / assuaged" removes the contrast that "but … only" requires.
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Question 7
Because the evidence for the drug's benefit came from a single small trial, the review panel regarded the manufacturer's talk of a breakthrough as ________.
Correct answer: D
Thin evidence makes a claim of a breakthrough come too early: premature. Incontrovertible (impossible to dispute) contradicts the weak evidence, and talk of a "breakthrough" is the opposite of modest.
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Question 8
Unlike her predecessor, whose decisions often seemed ________, the new director explained the reasoning behind every change in policy.
Correct answer: C
"Unlike" requires the opposite of explained, reasoned decisions, so the predecessor's decisions seemed to have no clear basis: arbitrary. Transparent and deliberate would make the two directors similar, not different.
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Question 9
The essayist's style is deceptively ________: her sentences are short and her vocabulary plain, yet each paragraph rewards several readings.
Correct answer: B
Short sentences and plain words make the style seem simple and natural, which is what artless means; "deceptively" and "yet" show that the simplicity hides depth. Ornate and verbose contradict the short, plain sentences.
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Question 10
Critics who called the composer's late works (i) ________ missed the point: the apparent disorder was (ii) ________, built on patterns that become audible only after repeated listening.
Correct answer: A
The critics responded to "apparent disorder," so they called the works chaotic; the author answers that the disorder was calculated, resting on hidden patterns. "Accidental" would agree with the critics instead of correcting them, and "derivative" (unoriginal) has nothing to do with disorder.
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Question 11
Though generally ________ about his own achievements, the physicist could not resist mentioning, more than once, that he had predicted the result a decade earlier.
Correct answer: D
"Though" contrasts his usual manner with repeated bragging, so he is usually modest and keeps himself in the background: self-effacing. Boastful would remove the contrast.
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Question 12
The committee's final report was a model of ________: in eight pages it addressed every concern that earlier drafts had needed forty pages to raise.
Correct answer: C
Covering the same ground in eight pages instead of forty shows brevity without loss of content: concision. Prolixity (wordiness) describes the earlier drafts, not the final report.
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Question 13
The town's economy, long (i) ________ a single employer, proved (ii) ________ when the factory closed: within two years a third of the shops on Main Street had shut.
Correct answer: B
A town reliant on one employer is exposed when that employer leaves, and the closing shops show the economy was precarious (unstable). "Robust" contradicts the shop closures, and "independent of" makes the factory's closure irrelevant.
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Question 14
Scientists are often accused of ________ when they surround their findings with caveats, yet such caution is usually a sign of honesty rather than of a wish to avoid commitment.
Correct answer: A
The accusation is answered by denying "a wish to avoid commitment," which is exactly what equivocation (deliberately vague, noncommittal speech) means. Dogmatism and hubris imply too much certainty, the opposite of hedging with caveats.
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Question 15
The new biography is neither a (i) ________ nor a hatchet job. Its author, who refuses to (ii) ________ her subject's failings, equally declines to (iii) ________ his genuine achievements.
Correct answer: C
The opposite of a hatchet job is a hagiography (a worshipful biography). The second sentence explains the balance: she does not gloss over (hide) the failings, which keeps the book from being a hagiography, and does not belittle the achievements, which keeps it from being a hatchet job. Refusing to expose or acknowledge failings would make the book the very hagiography it is said not to be.
Questions you leave blank are not counted as wrong.
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