Top Tips For GRE Text Completion

In the GRE text completion section, you will be given a sentence with a few blanks and you will just have to fill up the blanks with the correct words.

There are about six GRE text completion questions on each 20-question subsection of Verbal.

The question structure is:

• Passage composed of one to five sentences
• One to three blanks
• Three answer choices per blank (five answer choices in the case of a single blank)
• The answer choices for different blanks function independently; i.e., selecting one answer choice for one blank does not affect what answer choices you can select for another blank
• Single correct answer, consisting of one choice for each blank; no credit for partially correct answers.

Click here to check out a few sample questions based on GRE text completion. Now that we know what GRE text completion is all about, let us move on to understanding some GRE text completion tips.

It is very important that you do your GRE sentence completion practice very well so that you can avoid making all the silly mistakes in this section.

You can use the following GRE sentence completion tips to analyse the passage or sentences given:

1. Read Carefully: One of the first and foremost tips for text completion in GRE would be to  read the overall passage or sentence very carefully to get an overall sense of it. Attempting to answer without reading the entire sentence could increase your chances of making mistakes.

2. Identify Signal Words: Identify the words or phrases that seem particularly significant. Words like although, moreover, however, etc reflect the overall structure of the sentence; thus, you can find the correct answer easily.

3. Try To Come Up With Your Own Answer First: After you read all the sentences carefully, try to come up with words that you think would fit in the sentence, then see if similar words are offered among the answer choices. You can also use the process of elimination and strike out the wrong answer choices which you think would not fit the sentence at all. This will help you guess the right answer more easily.

4. Improve Your Vocabulary: It may happen that you see a word whose meaning is not known to you and it might be the correct answer but you end up selecting another answer choice. Therefore, read as much material as you can and try to improve your vocabulary during your preparation so that you don't get confused after seeing new words.

5. Fill Up The Blanks That Are Easier: Always fill-up the blanks whose answer you know for sure and the blanks that are easier. It is not necessary that the first blank is the one that should be filled first. Therefore, solve whatever feels easier and do not waste much time on the difficult questions because you can always come back and solve the difficult questions later.

6. Read The Entire Sentence After Filling Up The Answers: Make sure that you read the entire passage/sentence once again after filling up all the answers to check if everything makes sense as a whole and if everything sounds logical, grammatically and stylistically correct.

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Those were all the GRE sentence completion tips that you must keep in mind while attempting the questions. Let us now move on to understanding which books and resources you can use to study for the text completion section.

There are a lot of books & resources available to study for the GRE text completion section. However, it can be confusing to find the best book that fits all your needs. Thus, we have made a list of the best books & resources you can refer to which will help you ace your text completion section.

Since the text completion section comes under the GRE Verbal section, there are many books catering to the GRE verbal section through which you can solve GRE sentence completion practice questions.

Here are the best books & resources for GRE text completion that discuss the text completion strategies GRE.  

1.  Official GRE Super Power pack By ETS

Key features: 

• Most authentic source of study for GRE.
• 4 full-length practice tests
• 150 verbal reasoning questions covering all three sections: text completion reading comprehension & sentence equivalence.
• Authoritative overview of AWA section
• Detailed explanation of everything

2.  Barron’s GRE Verbal Workbook

Key features: 

• Contains diagnostic tests which can help students learn about their strengths & weaknesses.
• Extensive practice & review chapters that cover all 3 question types - text completion, sentence equivalence & reading comprehension.
• Concise GRE dictionary for practicing vocabulary

Suggested: How to Prepare for GRE Vocabulary?

3.  GREGMAT

Key features: 

• Very affordable
• Live & recorded classes along with study plans, practice questions & tools.
• Dictionary with GRE words
• Greg Mat’s List - selection of most common GRE words

4.  Magoosh Online GRE Prep

Key features: 

• Detailed video lessons on all types of questions.
• Option to study anywhere online.
• 1200 practice questions
• Full-length practice tests
• Magoosh Flashcard app & vocab builder app

5.  Manhattan Prep GRE Verbal Strategies

Key features: 

• In-depth analysis of all three GRE verbal question types.
• Strategies to help you solve tricky questions
• List of plenty of GRE words & roots.

You can get the above-mentioned books easily from Amazon.

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Apart from these books, you can also refer to previous year’s GRE question papers wherein you will find many more GRE sentence completion practice questions. You will get many GRE text completion questions for free and you will understand more text completion strategies GRE. Doing this will ensure that you get a stellar score on your GRE text completion. To know more GRE verbal tips check out this video below: 

We hope that this blog was able to give you a great insight into what to expect in the text completion section, how to practice for the section and some strategies to keep in mind. If you wish to get more guidance on the GRE or any other entrance exam, get Yocket premium and get in touch with Yocket counsellors who will guide you through all your study abroad-related doubts.

All the best!