General advice

• Reading passages are drawn from many different disciplines and sources, so you may encounter unfamiliar material. Don’t be discouraged; all the questions can be answered on the basis of the information provided in the passage and no specialized knowledge is assumed. You don’t need to try to familiarize yourself with every conceivable topic that might be included. If you encounter a passage that seems particularly hard or unfamiliar, you may want to save it for last.
• Read and analyze the passage carefully before trying to answer any of the questions.
• Pay attention to clues that help you understand less explicit aspects of the passage. Try to:
  • distinguish main ideas from supporting ideas or evidence
  • distinguish ideas that the author is advancing from those they’re merely reporting
  • distinguish ideas that the author is strongly committed to from those they advance as hypothetical or speculative
  • identify the main transitions from one idea to the next
  • identify the relationship between different ideas, for example:
    • Are they contrasting? Are they consistent?
    • Does one support the other?
    • Does one spell out the other in greater detail?
    • Does one apply the other to a particular circumstance?
• Read each question carefully and make sure you understand exactly what’s being asked.
• Answer each question based on the information provided in the passage and don’t rely on outside knowledge. Sometimes your own views or opinions may conflict with those presented in a passage. If this happens, take special care to work within the context provided by the passage. You shouldn’t expect to agree with everything you encounter in the reading passages.

Reading comprehension questions seek to assess critical reading skills by using texts that exhibit a level of complexity comparable to that encountered in graduate school. Passages exhibiting this kind of graduate-level prose are adapted from material found in books and periodicals, both academic and nonacademic.

To gain more exposure to High -level reading material, the most fruitful approach would be to become familiar with the kinds of graduate-level prose, logical reasoning and rhetorical patterns typically found in GRE reading passages. The best way to do this is to read a wide variety of texts with similar features on a regular basis or at least for a sustained period of time before your test.

Where can you find these texts? There are many excellent sites for developing the habit of reading challenging prose, many of which are readily accessible. Some of these include:

• feature articles in newspapers such as The New York Times, The Guardian or The Wall Street Journal
• periodicals such as The Economist, Scientific American and London Review of Books
• trade books by experts and journalists for general audiences

If you’re interested in sampling academic prose in more specialized journals, online services for journal content (e.g., IOPscience2 and The Royal Society) provide links to interesting articles, some of which are open access.

You should also cultivate the habit of reading closely and critically. Focus on paragraphs that seem particularly dense in meaning and engage actively with the text:

• How would you sum up the author’s larger point?
• What does a phrase used by the author mean in this specific context?
• What is not said but implied?
• Why does the author highlight this particular detail?
• Where is the argument most vulnerable to criticism?

Ultimately, to succeed at reading comprehension, how you read is just as important as what you read.