GRE-Style Reading and Comprehending

Recently a reader asked me to post about strategies for long Reading Comprehension passages and Bolded Statement questions. (Mohamed also asked about vocab strategies, which I will discuss soon. Be sure to see previous vocabulary-related posts from my Kaplan colleagues.)

The Kaplan New GRE Verbal Workbook includes a chapter devoted to Reading Comprehension, as well as sets of practice questions and additional resources. One of these resources is a list of additional tips for tackling the Reading Comprehension section, including Bolded Statements questions. These tips are found on pages 78-80, and I’m going to borrow from them here.

There are differences between real-world reading and reading GRE passages is that on the GRE:

• On Test Day, you don’t care about the facts in the passage — you only care about ideas. A passage might tell you that the character Superman first appeared in 1938. You don’t care what year Superman was introduced, but you care about WHY the author told you that. The passage may then go on to describe how the powers attributed to Superman have changed over time. In that case, knowing that Superman has been around for 70+ years might be important.
• Prior knowledge is not welcome on Test Day. Forget everything you might know about Superman — everything  you need to know will be contained within the passage. Wrong answer choices play on things that test-takers understand to be logically true, but if those facts aren’t mentioned in the passage, you don’t care.
• If a passage tells you Superman has a twin sister, then as far as you are concerned, he has a twin sister. The passage text is TRUE. Period. You may question texts as much as you like in real-world reading, but on the GRE, accept that whatever the passage is telling you is correct.

Bolded Statement questions should be tackled the same way as other Reading Comprehension question types. In these questions, you REALLY don’t care about the facts or details. You ONLY care about the purpose of the statements, and you consider each statement separately. Is it an opinion? An example? An argument? If it is an argument, is it the passage’s primary or secondary argument, or perhaps a counterargument? Is it evidence, and if so, of what? You care about the purpose of each statement in relation to the other sentences in the passage.

Let me repeat that. Just as with other question types, you must consider Bolded Statements in the context of the passage as a whole. Do not skip the un-bold statements; they are your context clues for figuring out the role the Bolded Statements play.

Have a question about grammar, punctuation, usage, or style? Email me at jennifer.land@kaplan.com and put “blog question” in your subject line. Then look for a response here!