Soon the simple sentence completion of today will be a relic of the past. We may even look back fondly on it when we grapple with what’s in store on the revised GRE: five sentence paragraphs with three blanks, dual blankers where randomly guessing correctly is a 1 in 9 shot, and a single blank requiring two of six possible answers.
Convoluted, no? Well, to keep everything ordered let me first introduce an important distinction that will help you navigate the new changes coming to the test:
GRE Sentence Equivalence
Sentence Equivalence questions have vague instructions (“select exactly two words that best complete the sentence and produce sentences that are alike in meaning”): even though the Revised GRE has debuted, many are still scratching their heads, wondering what the difference is between synonymous sentences and synonyms.
Even if a Sentence Equivalence question is straightforward, you may suddenly find yourself unsure of how to proceed. What if three answer choices work? Two of them are synonyms, and one of them isn’t. You feel, however, that one of the synonyms somewhat works in the sentence, but the one lone word that does not have a synonym amongst the answer choices works even better. What, then, is the answer?
Here are some good strategies for dealing with Sentence Equivalence questions:
- Always look for synonyms.
- If you can’t find any synonyms amongst the answer choices, given you know the definition of every word, then the correct answers will be non-synonyms.
- If you do not know a few of the words, do not just pick two words because they create synonymous sentences.
- Choose a word you do not know, and match it with one of the answer choices that work.
- If the above sounds like a gamble, that’s because approaching Sentence Equivalence, in terms of guessing, is so complex, at least compared to the old GRE’s one in five answer choices. Essentially, you will want to do anything to increase the odds of guessing correctly. And, to do so, the steps above will be your most helpful strategy.
This cumbersome name has replaced sentence completion. The two are not exactly the same—while some strategies do overlap, sentence equivalence requires that you not only find a word that fits in the blank but two words that fit in the blank.
Here is the key part: equivalence. The two words (out of six) that you choose must be synonyms. Or phrased differently, the correct answers must be synonyms.
Let’s try the problem below. But before you attack it, let me give you the directions word-for-word as they appear in the new ETS book.
“Select the two answer choices that, when used to complete the sentence, fit the meaning of the sentence as a whole and produce completed sentences that are alike in meaning.”
Unlike many poets, who are inspired by — settings, Harrison favored urban backdrops to call forth his muse.
(A) unpopulated
(B) bucolic
(C) typical
(D) unknown
(E) rural
(F) sentimental
Let’s say this is the first time I’ve ever seeing a sentence equivalence question. My first instinct is to pick unpopulated. After all, aren’t urban areas the opposite of unpopulated? And we know that Harrison isn’t like other poets who do not favor urban settings.
Next I look down the row of answer and I see (E) rural. Well rural works too. The opposite of rural is urban.
I pick (A), (E) and…I get the question wrong.
So what happened?
Well, unpopulated and rural are not synonyms. Many people succumb to the temptation to link them but remember—just because one word is associated with another word in certain context doesn’t mean that the two words are synonyms.
Rural means in the countryside, an area that tends to be unpopulated. But you could have rural areas where you have people. (This logic is very similar to the weak bridges ETS would use to trap students, i.e. rural : unpopulated is a weak bridge.)
So now we must return to the sentence and find which word is a synonym for rural. Why not unpopulated? Well, we are contrasting urban to rural. By definition, urban does not mean populated.
Now me must go back to the original words. Which word is a synonym for rural? Well, if none of the words seems to work except for the difficult vocabulary word—bucolic—then you guessed it. Bucolic means rural.
The answer is (B), (E).
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