GRE Reading Comprehension Question Types: How to Master the Strategy for Each One

By Vince Kotchian. Full-time GRE tutor since 2007, author of Barron's 6 GRE Practice Tests, three perfect 170 verbal scores on the real GRE, and moderator of r/GRE.

The GRE is a standardized test, so it has very predictable types of questions for both verbal and quant. There are several important strategies you can learn to make your life easier on most questions. By "strategies", I mean things like pairing the choices on Sentence Equivalence questions and choosing numbers in quant. Time spent on improving these strategies will raise your score.

However, the typical person (maybe you?) tends to just scratch the surface of what it takes to master strategies, and by the time they take the test, it's unlikely they remember all of what they've learned. This is pretty easy to observe: take out a piece of paper, and write down all the quant, verbal, essay, and timing strategies you remember. I am going to guess you missed some stuff!

A 5-Point Checklist for Every GRE Strategy

Let's think about a simple checklist for each strategy:

1. Where does it live? If you need to review the strategy, where can you do that?
2. Have you written down the strategy in your own words in terms of how and when to use it?
3. Have you practiced the strategy on at least several ETS questions? Where are those questions if you want to review how the strategy works?
4. Can you easily explain how the strategy works on those questions if someone asks? Hint: to test this, post a question in the forums and explain it as best you can, and ask for feedback.
5. Do you have a strategy mountain - i.e., a system to memorize strategies in which you verbally recite the details of each on a regular basis?

Everyone serious about their score should be doing all of the above. This is non-negotiable stuff.

GRE Reading Comprehension Question Types in the ETS Verbal Practice Book

Now, let's take a look at the ETS Verbal Practice book, 3rd edition. It's pretty obvious what strategies to use on Sentence Equivalence and Text Completion questions, so I'm going to give you a breakdown of all the RC questions in terms of their type. Your goal is to be able to answer the above 5 questions for any given RC question's strategy.

As you can see, the verbal book isn't adequate for drilling certain types of verbal questions - for additional practice, use the ETS Official Guide and the ETS Big Book. But this should give you a good start.

The Bottom Line

Since strategies work so well on certain questions, we need to devote time to making sure we master them. The good news is that there aren't all that many strategies to master. Whatever stage of GRE prep you're in, see if you can find anything else you can do to make it more likely you'll pull the right strategy tool from your toolbelt for each question on test day.

The Six Question Types at a Glance

• Primary purpose: asks why the author wrote the passage, or a single paragraph of it.
• Detail (including inference): asks what the passage says, or what must be true based on what it says.
• Critical Reasoning: a short argument followed by one question, such as what strengthens it, weakens it, or what it assumes.
• Function: asks why the author included a particular sentence or phrase, and what job it does in the passage.
• Think Outside the Passage
• Word in Context: asks what a word means as it is used in the passage.

In the table above, there are 32 Detail questions, 11 Critical Reasoning questions, 8 Primary purpose questions, 6 Function questions, 2 Think Outside the Passage questions, and 2 Word in Context questions.

Frequently Asked Questions

What types of Reading Comprehension questions are on the GRE?

In the ETS Verbal Practice book they fall into six types: primary purpose, detail (including inference), critical reasoning, function, think outside the passage, and word in context.

Which GRE Reading Comprehension question type is most common?

Detail questions, by a wide margin. They make up about half of the RC questions in the ETS Verbal Practice book.

Is the ETS Verbal Practice book enough for Reading Comprehension practice?

Not for every question type. It has only a handful of function, word in context and think outside the passage questions, so add the ETS Official Guide and the ETS Big Book.

How do I know if I have mastered a GRE strategy?

You know where to review it, you have written it in your own words, you have practiced it on several ETS questions, you can explain it to someone else, and you recite it regularly from memory.