GRE Book Excerpt Exclusive! Sentence Equivalence: Basics And Game Plan

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Sentence Equivalence questions on the GRE have an interesting twist compared to other fill-in-the-blank questions: There are six answer choices, and two of them are correct. 

For example:

The judge dismissed Steffen’s lawsuit, ruling that since Steffen had been the first to _____________ the contract, the company he was suing was no longer obligated to uphold the provisions of the original agreement.

 

 

 

 

The answer choices are marked not with letters (for example, choices A–F), but with checkboxes. Throughout the exam (in math, too), the GRE uses circular buttons for questions that have just one correct answer and square checkboxes to indicate questions that have more than one correct answer.

To get a Sentence Equivalence question correct, you must select both correct answers. There is no partial credit. In the previous question, the correct answer is breach and abrogate, which both mean “fail to do what is required by.”

Take a look at what Educational Testing Service (ETS) has to say about the approach for this question type. According to ETS:

Like Text Completion questions, Sentence Equivalence questions test the ability to reach a conclusion about how a passage should be completed on the basis of partial information, but to a greater extent they focus on the meaning of the completed whole. Sentence Equivalence questions consist of a single sentence with just one blank, and they ask you to find two choices that both lead to a complete, coherent sentence and that produce sentences that mean the same thing.

Success on a Sentence Equivalence question can depend on hard vocabulary words in the answer choices or on hard vocabulary words or complex sentence construction in the sentence itself. Sometimes, success hinges on both of these things at once.

Although the idea of two correct answers is an interesting test-making twist, it doesn’t necessarily make the questions any harder for you. In fact, it opens up the strategic tool of Answer Choice Analysis, which will be explained in this chapter.

There are two main methods of attack for a Sentence Equivalence question, both of which will be reviewed in Manhattan Prep’s GRE Verbal Strategies book:

1. Sentence Analysis
2. Answer Choice Analysis

Sentence Analysis

It is very important to understand that the sentences are not anything like sentences pulled from a newspaper, with a few words blanked out. In such a real-life case, you might not be able to fill in the missing word, since a lot of the necessary context would be contained in other surrounding sentences, not in the one sentence you were given.

On the GRE, all of that necessary context has to be provided in the one sentence you’re reading. In fact, the GRE has to go further: The test makers have to write sentences containing definitive proof for the meaning that has to fit in the blank. If that weren’t the case, the problem would not have two objectively correct answers and four objectively incorrect answers.

It’s not just context or support. It’s proof. The proof is always there. Your task is to learn how to spot it.

Use these three steps to develop a basic process for Sentence Equivalence:

1. Read only the sentence.

Don’t let yourself get distracted by the answer choices. The four wrong answers are in fact called distractors by the test makers. Don’t let the distractors do their job too early.

2. Write down your own fill-in for the blank, using proof from the sentence.

The sentence will give you specific words that help to determine what must go in the blank. This can happen in a positive way (the blank is a synonym of or goes along with something described in the sentence) or a negative way (the blank contrasts with or goes against something described in the sentence).

You can typically narrow down the proof to a couple of key phrases, including anything opinionated or dramatic, as well as signal words that tell you the relationship between that opinionated stuff and the blank.

When you write down your fill-in, try to reuse and recycle text you’ve just been studying in the sentence. Don’t add new ideas. Manhattan Prep’s GRE Verbal Strategies book offers a full section entitled How to Write Good Fill-Ins in the Text Completion chapter, and the same concepts apply to Sentence Equivalence.

3. Compare your fill-in to each answer choice.

Once you have your own fill-in, you can check the answer choices. You’re ready to handle and dismiss those tempting distractors (i.e., wrong answers).

For Sentence Equivalence, you need to find exactly two good answer choices out of the six.

Here’s an example problem with some admittedly tough vocabulary:

The village’s water supply had been _____________ by toxic industrial by-products that had seeped into groundwater.

 

 

 

 

The blank is about something that happened to the water supply. What do you know about that supply? You know that toxic substances seeped into it—that’s a very strong and very negative word. There is no reversal signal (like but or however) that sends the meaning in the opposite direction. If you had to pick a single word as proof for the blank, the word toxic is the word to choose.

So your fill-in could be made toxic or something similar, like contaminated.

The correct answer is adulterated and vitiated. Adulterated means “contaminated,” and vitiated means “spoiled, made defective, corrupted.” (In the incorrect answers, truncated and abridged both mean roughly the same thing; “shortened.” Adumbrated means “outlined or sketched lightly,” and abashed means “made to feel shame.”)

Try another hard one:

Unlike the more genial researchers, who often went out together after work, the __________ Dr. Spicer believed that socializing was nothing more than a distraction, and thus made few friends at the lab.

 

 

 

 

The blank is describing Dr. Spicer. A key signal is the word Unlike, which sets up a comparison between the more genial researchers and the ________ Dr. Spicer. 

Since the two are unlike, the blank should be something that means less genial, in contrast to the more genial folks.

Your fill-in could actually be less genial. Recycle language whenever possible; that’s the safest habit to adopt for both Sentence Equivalence and Text Completion. Once you get comfortable recycling the proof right into your fill-in, you’ll find the process both easier to carry out and more effective. It’s actually less work than coming up with new words and you’ll be much less likely to fall into the trap of bringing in any new, unsupported idea!

It’s okay, though, to put down less friendly, simplifying from “genial” a bit. You can even write something decidedly negative like unfriendly.

The answer is standoffish and glacial. Both words can mean “emotionally cold and distant.” (Glacial can also mean “slow, physically cold, or pertaining to glaciers.”) Both are a good enough match to less genial to be the winners.

What about the four wrong answers? Sedulous and assiduous mean “hardworking or persistent.” Baneful means “harmful,” and partisan means “biased, in favor of only one’s own side or party.”

Answer Choice Analysis

When ETS introduced the Sentence Equivalence format, most people’s natural response was, “So we pick a pair of synonyms, right?” ETS officials insist that the two correct answers don’t have to be precise synonyms:

Do not simply look among the answer choices for two words that mean the same thing. This can be misleading for two reasons. First, the answer choices may contain pairs of words that mean the same thing but do not fit coherently into the sentence, and thus do not constitute a correct answer. Second, the pair of words that do constitute the correct answer may not mean exactly the same thing, since all that matters is that the resultant sentences mean the same thing.

Hmm. When the two correct answers are inserted into the sentence, the resulting sentences mean the same thing? Sounds like those words would have to be pretty close, right?

Theoretically, the GRE could give a question like this one:

Miriam quit her job because it was _____________.

 

 

 

 

 

Since Miriam “quit her job,” you are looking for something negative to fill in the blank. There are only two negative answer choices: boring and stressful. These two words certainly are not synonyms, although each makes sense in the sentence.

Theoretically, could the GRE ask a question like this one? Yes, theoretically. However, there is little evidence for this degree of loose construction on the real GRE because almost anything can fit the blank, as long as it’s negative.

A question like this one, in which the correct choices really aren’t synonyms but share some key feature, would have to have answers that fall into pretty easily distinguishable categories (e.g., something bad versus something good or at least not bad). Such questions would typically be easy to answer correctly.

What seems to be going on is that the GRE is being overly respectful of the English language. To quote the famous science-fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, “There are no synonyms.” 

In other words, subtleties of meaning technically separate any two words you find listed in any individual entry in a thesaurus. Deluge and flood don’t mean the exact same thing (a deluge is, by definition, a severe flood). The GRE wants to acknowledge that the two words you pick will likely differ in terms of some nuance. 

However, unless you are trying to write some very stylish and precise prose, the difference between deluge and flood doesn’t really matter. And on the GRE, that difference definitely won’t matter.

On any real Sentence Equivalence problem we’ve seen, the two correct answers are pretty close to being 100 percent synonymous. 

Try this example:

Many people at the dinner party were inordinately interested in questioning the _____________ new guest, who refused to reveal his profession or even where he used to live.

 

 

 

 

 

Look for the proof. The blank describes the new guest, who “refused to reveal” things about himself. If there were a word meaning “not self-revealing,” you’d pick it. The word needs to be something like secretive or mysterious.

As it turns out, mysterious and inscrutable are the correct answers. Inscrutable means “not able to be scrutinized” and often indicates hiding emotions. It’s not exactly the same thing as mysterious, but there’s a substantial overlap in their meanings. Most correct answer pairs are at least as closely related as these two.

Why It Is Important to Learn Words in Context

Educational Testing Service tells you not only to check that the two answers you select for a question create sentences that mean the same thing, but also to make sure that each one “produces a sentence that is logically, grammatically, and stylistically coherent.”

Hmm. Asking test-takers to check that the completed sentences are grammatically coherent implies that some of the choices will create sentences that are not. Here’s an example:

Education advocates argued that the free school lunch program was vital to creating a school environment _____________ to learning.

 

 

 

 

 

Education advocates are certainly in favor of learning; your fill-in might be something like helpful.

Looking at the choices, conducive, appropriate, and beneficial all seem to be matches.

However, if you place each word into the sentence, one choice creates an incorrect idiom. Conducive to and beneficial to work, but appropriate to is not a correct idiom—instead, you would say “appropriate for learning.”

Thus, it is important not only to memorize dictionary definitions of words, but also to be able to use those words in context, in a grammatically correct way.

Here’s another example:

He’s a _____________ fellow, always grandstanding and deploying his formidable lexicon for oratorical effect.

 

 

 

 

The subject is he and the clue is grandstanding and deploying his formidable lexicon for oratorical effect. That is, he speaks in a pompous way, as though showing off his vocabulary for an audience.

The word florid seems appropriate—it means “flowery” and often applies to words, as in florid poetry. But wait! Florid applies to the writing, speech, or decor itself—not the people who produce those things! (Actually, you can apply florid to people, but in that context, it means “flushed, ruddy,” as in having rosy cheeks, which is not appropriate here.)

The answer is declamatory and grandiloquent, both of which describe pompous orators (that is, people who make speeches) or the speech of such people.

Memorizing that florid means “flowery” is better than nothing, but doesn’t really tell you what kinds of things to describe with that word or how to use it metaphorically. Once again, it is important to learn words in context.

There are several ways to do this. Manhattan Prep’s GRE Vocabulary Flash Cards provide example sentences for all 1,000 words. Many online dictionaries provide quotes from literature in which the word being defined is used in context. In some cases, it is fruitful to simply Google a word to see how different writers are using it.

Whatever your process, your goal is to be able to do two things for any given word. First, work to define it in a concise and straightforward way. Second, practice using it in a sentence in a descriptive way (such that someone reading the sentence would understand what the word meant from the context).

Vocabulary words can be used in a wide variety of ways. For instance, darkness can be used metaphorically (While she at first resisted going on antidepressants, she ultimately decided that she would do anything that might lift the darkness) or enthusiastic can be used sarcastically (As enthusiastic as I am about unnecessary surgery, I will have to decline your offer to appear on an extreme makeover reality show). Grasping the different uses and tones will give you a powerful advantage on the test and during your academic career.

To perform with excellence on the GRE, you’ll need to know your new words inside and out. Be flexible in how you use and interpret those words. The Vocabulary unit in Manhattan Prep’s GRE Verbal Strategies book provides more guidance for formidably fortifying your lexicon.

{Editor’s note: That’s it for our excerpt! We hope you learned something. If you like what you’ve read, you can find the rest of this chapter—and a lot more!—in Manhattan Prep’s GRE Verbal Strategies book. If you’re looking for other free lessons and practice problems, sign up for a free Starter Kit syllabus on our site.}

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Emily Madan is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Pennsylvania. She teaches GRE, GMAT, and LSAT and has worked at MPrep since 2012. She treats these tests like puzzles: If you know how to spot all the clues, the solution will become apparent — you just have to learn what clues to look for!