Lesson: Text Completion - 02

Complex Text Completions (new)

For the remainder of this chapter, you’ll examine what the test designers call the “Complex Text Completion” format. This is a new question type for the GRE; expect to encounter one on your GRE Verbal Reasoning section (although you might not see any). Just to review, here are the key features of Complex Text Completions:

1. The passage contains either two or three blanks.
2. ?For each blank, you select the best of at least three choices.
3. The passage might be a single sentence, although it will probably be a paragraph consisting of two or more sentences.

Like conventional Sentence Completions, Complex Text Completions are designed to gauge:

1. Your ability to understand the intended meaning of a sentence
2. Your ability to distinguish between a sentence that makes sense and one that lacks sense
3. Your facility with the kinds of English-language idioms and rhetorical phrases that are commonly used in graduate-level verbal expression
4. Your vocabulary

Three blank Complex Text Completions

In addition, Complex Text Completions involving a paragraph of two or more sentences emphasize interrelationships among the paragraph’s ideas. Although three-blank Complex Text Completions offer yet another way to respond incorrectly, neither the two-blank nor three-blank variety is inherently more difficult than the other. To boost difficulty level, the test-makers incorporate advanced vocabulary and idioms, as well as longer passages with more rhetorical twists and turns.

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