GRE Text Completion Examples

GRE Text Completion Examples

The Revised GRE is specifically designed to push you away from the rote memorization of regular midterms or finals in school to critical thinking, which is required in graduate school. One of the ways that it does that is with the GRE Verbal section. Not only will you need to complete sentence equivalence and reading comprehension questions testing your ability to reason, infer from context, evaluate, and judge, you'll also need to complete text completion questions like the following that assess your vocabulary in context skills, as well.

What Are GRE Text Completion Questions? 

When you sit for the exam and dive into the GRE Verbal section, you'll see text completion questions that have the following parameters:

• A short passage of text containing 1-5 sentences per passage
• The passage itself will contain 1-3 blanks 
• There will be three answer choices, one per blank, or five answer choices if there's only one blank
• There is just one correct answer per question, and the answer will consist of one choice for each blank. 

Confused? I hope not! Let's dive into the following GRE text completion examples to see if you can make more sense of this special type of question on the Revised GRE Verbal test.

GRE Text Completions Set 1

Directions: For each question with more than one blank, select one entry from the corresponding column of choices. Fill all blanks in the way that best completes the text. For each question with only one blank, select the entry that best completes the sentence.

Question 1

In 2005, The American Physiological Society initiated The Living History of Physiology Project to recognize senior members who have made (i)___________ contributions during their career to the (ii)___________of the discipline and profession of physiology. Each Eminent Physiologist will be interviewed for (iii)___________, and the video tape will be available from the American Physiological Society Headquarters.

Question 1 Explanation

Question 2

Endothelial cell dysfunction is emerging as an ultimate (i)___________ for cardiovascular disease, yet the definition of this new syndrome, its physiology, and therapy remain (ii)___________ by a majority of physicians across the globe.

Question 2 Explanation

Question 3

Filmography, like discography, is an ___________ science, requiring considerable research and verification of suggested facts; results will always be variable.

(A) exacting
(B) imperceptible
(C) autonomous
(D) enterprising
(E) imprecise

Question 3 Explanation

GRE Text Completions Set 2

Question 1

What readers most commonly remember about John Stuart Mill's classic exploration of the liberty of thought and discussion concerns the danger of (i) _____________: in the absence of challenge, one's opinions, even when they are correct, grow weak and flabby. Yet Mill had another reason for encouraging the liberty of thought and discussion: the danger of partiality and incompleteness. Since one's opinions, even under the best circumstances, tend to (ii) _____________, and because opinions opposed to one's own rarely turn out to be completely (iii) _____________, it is crucial to supplement one's opinions with alternative points of view.

Question 1 Explanation

Question 2

Ironically, the writer so wary of (i) _____________ was (ii) _____________ with ink and paper; his novel running to 2,500 shagreen-bound folio pages was a fortune in stationery at the time.

Question 2 Explanation

Question 3

Just as the author's book on eels is often a key text for courses in marine vertebrate zoology, their ideas on animal development and phylogeny _____________ teaching in this area.

(A) prevent
(B) defy
(C) Replicate
(D) inform
(E) use

Question 3 Explanation

Question 4

Mechanisms develop whereby every successful species can _____________ its innate capacity for population growth with the constraints that arise through its interactions with the natural environment.

(A) enhance
(B) replace
(C) produce
(D) surpass
(E) reconcile

Question 4 Explanation

Question 5

Wills argues that certain malarial parasites are especially (i) _____________ because they have more recently entered humans than other species and therefore have had (ii) _____________ time to evolve toward (iii) _____________. Yet there is no reliable evidence that the most harmful Plasmodium species has been in humans for a shorter time than less harmful species.

Question 5 Explanation

Want More GRE Text Completion Examples?

ETS offers a few sample GRE text completion questions on their website, and of course, they are succinct with easily understood explanations. 

Good luck!