Monthly Archives: October 2015

GRE Solutions Manual, Problem 3.4

Exam Prep, GRE

This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 3 a shot before reading this!

3.4: “The unironic representation …”

This is the first of our multi-column Text Completions (TC), and the rules are a little different. In contrast to the single-column format, two- and three-column TC tends to rely more on context clues — especially those which point to a relationship between the blanks. Because the answer for one blank can influence our choices for the remaining blanks, the “cover and pre-fill” technique we used in single-column TC is not as useful here.

One recurring form of context clue is parallelism, in which the passage repeats or paraphrases itself, either for emphasis or by way of example. In question 3.4, the second half of the sentence (after the colon) is basically a paraphrase of the first half. Note the similarities:

“unironic representation” means the same thing as “straightforward depiction”
“serious … art” is the kind of work that “‘high’ artists” do
and so forth…

We can use this parallel structure to find both answers. Blank (ii) asks, in essence, “What kinds of things were ‘straightforwardly depicted’?” It must be the same things that were “unironic[ally] represent[ed]” in the first clause — namely, “everyday” objects. Of the three answer choices, only commonplace (E) means the same thing as “everyday.”

Similarly, blank (i) asks, “What is the status of these everyday objects in ‘serious American art’?” Well, we know that the “high” artists ceded (i.e., gave away) the chance to depict them, so it’s reasonable to conclude that they’d be missing from (A) serious art.

GRE Solutions Manual, Problem 3.3

Exam Prep, GRE

This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 3 a shot before reading this!

3.3: “The author presents…”

The author’s attitude (“not even convinced that Grey was a good writer”) sounds like indifference or perhaps disinterest. Right away, we can eliminate zeal (A) as the opposite of what we want. Three of the remaining choices – deftness (B), eloquence (D), and imaginativeness (E) – describe the author’s skill but don’t say anything about his attitude. A deft person is skillful and clever; an eloquent person uses language in an expressive way. (Remember the compatibility test from question 3.1: the writer could be eloquent or deft and still care about his subject.) That leaves us with detachment (C), which nicely captures the neutrality of the author’s stance toward Grey.

Vocab Notes

Zeal means “great enthusiasm or dedication to a cause.” By itself, it is a neutral word. The noun form, zealot, typically carries a negative connotation, the implication being that a person has too much enthusiasm or dedication, perhaps to the point of obsession.

GRE Solutions Manual, Problem 3.2

Exam Prep, GRE, Verbal Reasoning

This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 3 a shot before reading this!

3.2: “Most spacecraft…”

The first clause describes an orbital environment that presents little risk to spacecraft. For our blank, then, we might say that the environment is becoming less safe or less low-risk. (Remember, when pre-filling blanks, aim for accuracy, not elegance.) The closest match for safe is benign (E), in the sense of “not harmful.” Crowded (A) and polluted (D) are the opposite of what we want. Invulnerable (B) and protected (C) might seem like attractive options; these words would aptly describe the spacecraft, but not the environment.

Vocab Notes

Most people have encountered the word benign in the context of medicine. When describing an illness or tumor, benign means “not seriously harmful” and is the opposite of malignant. But this is a specialized meaning. In general, benign has a stronger positive connotation; it means “gentle and kind.” So, for example, someone who “exerts a benign influence” is doing something good, and not merely refraining from doing harm.

GRE Solutions Manual, Problem 3.1

Exam Prep, GRE, Verbal Reasoning

This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 3 a shot before reading this!

3.1: “Many find it strange …”

Our clue in this Text Completion problem is tortuous, which literally means “full of twists and turns.” When used to describe a piece of writing, it means “lengthy and complicated.” Before we look at the answers, we want to fill in the blank with our own best guess. In this case, that would be something that means the opposite of tortuous: straightforward or simple. Of the choices given here, only clear (E) shares that meaning.

Even if you’re not sure exactly what tortuous means, you may be aware that it has a negative connotation; that is, it’s not a good thing for writing to be tortuous. On this logic, people rightly exclude tedious (B; “dull and repetitive”) and possibly painstaking (A; see below). But what about insightful (C) and sophisticated (D), both of which have a positive connotation? We can weed these out by using a compatibility test:

Can a piece of writing be insightful and tortuous at the same time? Absolutely.
How about sophisticated and tortuous? Again, yes.

Since we already know that the correct answer means “not tortuous,” (C) and (D) must be incorrect.

Vocab Notes

Be careful to distinguish between tortuous and torturous. The latter means “characterized by cruel pain or suffering.” (Mnemonic: the extra r in torturous stands for “rack.”)

Note also that painstaking (A) means “involving care and diligence,” not “painful” as is sometimes thought. (This is one case where etymology can help you to lock in the correct meaning of the word.) When asked to hyphenate this word, students often write “pain-staking,” conjuring up images of Dracula or maybe of a painful gambling loss. In fact, the word painstaking comes from pains-taking, and to take pains to do something is to do it with great care. The original phrase rarely appears in contemporary writing, but the compound word painstaking survives.