GRE Reading Comprehension Question Types

Learn about the types of questions you'll see on the Reading Comprehension sections of the GRE revised General Test in this lesson. Knowing what you're up against can help you a lot on test day.

Reading Comprehension

Reading Comprehension questions on the GRE make up about half of the total Verbal Reasoning questions. They come in a couple different flavors. There are three different formats, and there's a whole range of tasks that the questions ask you to perform, such as finding information, drawing conclusions, or analyzing an argument. In this lesson, you'll get a look at the three different formats that you'll see. Then, we'll go over some strategies for making it all work, whether you're answering a question about factual details or a question about the big picture of the author's argument.

Question Formats

First up: the actual formats that you'll see on the test. The GRE Reading Comprehension test hits you with three types of question formats:

1. Multiple choice with one answer:
   These are standard multiple-choice questions that have five answer choices and are just like every other multiple-choice question you've ever answered. But don't fall asleep yet - it gets more interesting!
2. Multiple choice with one or more answers:
   On these questions, you'll get three answer choices. One, two, or all three of them may be correct. You'll have to pick the correct answer or answers. There's no partial credit, so you only get the question right if you get it exactly right.
3. Select-in-passage:
   These questions ask you to answer a question by choosing a sentence in the passage. Since the test is computer-based, you'll click on the correct sentence to select it.

There's no particular order to the question types - they're scattered throughout the test. And there's also no way to know the difficulty level in advance. The first Verbal Reasoning section will have a range of questions from easy to difficult. The level of questions on your second section will depend on how well you do on the first one. Make sure to look carefully at every question, especially at the multiple-choice questions. Don't assume that each question has only one answer!

Strategies and Tips

The Reading Comprehension questions on the GRE are pretty straightforward, and there's not a lot of fancy formatting to make them tricky, but here are some tips for approaching them strategically:

• Remember to base every answer on the passage. The questions may ask you about the content of the passage, or they might ask you about the structure of the author's argument. But they will always be based on the passage and nothing else - you don't need any outside information.
• On the multiple-choice questions, a good strategy is to remember question-passage-answers. Start by reading the question, then look at the passage and think of the answer in your own words before you read the answers. Go to the answers last and choose the answer or answers that fit your choice. This will keep your focus on the passage and save you from a lot of trap answers that sound right, but don't actually work.
• For all of these questions, there is no penalty for a wrong answer, so you might as well at least try a guess for everything.
• You don't get any extra points for answering hard questions, so if a question is too tough for you, just put a random guess and come back to later if you have time. The computer-based test makes this very easy for you: you can mark a question for review with a button on the screen, and at the end of the section, you'll see a list of all the questions you marked.