GRE Prep for Oak’s Students: Reading Comprehension Practice in the Last 2 Months

Dilip Oak's Academy

Practice for Reading Comprehension on the GRE

Once you have completed your preliminary reading, you should have gained several benefits:

  • exposure to fields outside your normal reading
  • knowledge of terms and concepts; personalities, processes, phenomena; and in general ideas and things in those unfamiliar fields
  • an ability to handle complex sentence structure and phrasing
  • an ability to understand the structure of passages and the modes of reasoning used and to understand the author’s main point.

Once you have attained some level of comfort on these fronts, you are ready to tackle the GRE reading comprehension passages in the practice material. The order in which you will do this final material is as follows.

  • Medium-level GRE Reading Comprehension
  • Hard GRE Reading Comprehension
  • ETS Material

Medium-level GRE RC – RC Extra Practice (Sets 1-10)

  • Over 80 passages, over 350 questions (approx.)
  • Sets 1-4 contain:
    • 58 short-medium passages (15-45 lines)
    • 178 questions of the new and modified types:
      • New: select-the-sentence-in-the-passage, double highlighted portion questions
      • Modified: EXCEPT, Triple True/False, single highlighted portion
  • Sets 5-10 contain:
    • 30 long passages (60-75 lines)
    • 201 questions of the older types (those continued in this version of the GRE test with minor modifications)
  • Do the first sets untimed, the latter sets timed when you are comfortable with the techniques

 

Hard RC – Homework Material

  • Verbal Ability Extra Practice Material:
    • passages in pairs (one short, one medium)
    • 11 questions on a pair of passages
    • complete a pair of passages in 15 minutes as practice on timing
  • Book 2 – hard passages and tricky questions; do last

 

ETS Material

This includes:

  • Practice Test PDF – this is a full-length paper-based GRE test with 2 full-length Verbal sections (the PDF is available free on GRE site in the Test Taker’s section)
  • PowerPrep 2.0 – 2 full-length CBTs

Take the PowerPrep tests after you have done all the other computer-based tests available in the market. The PowerPrep will give you the most accurate indicator of what your score is likely to be in the actual GRE. See the blog on Computer-based Practice for the CBT.

  • ETS Official Guide
    • 3 sets of material (easy, medium and hard) for both RC and discrete questions.
    • 2 full-length paper-based tests (different from the one on the site)

The ETS material is the best available. This is what you should be practicing on immediately before your actual GRE test.