Practice Test 12 - GRE Verbal Reasoning

20 questions. Answer them in any order, then submit to see your score and every explanation.

Complete the sentence: Though the memoir recounts years of hardship, its tone is never _____; the author recalls even her worst setbacks with gentle humor.
Passage: Some education researchers argue that frequent testing improves learning because it increases "time on task." On this view, quizzes work mainly by compelling students to spend more minutes thinking about course material. But studies that hold study time constant often still find a testing advantage, suggesting that something besides duration is at work. One proposed mechanism is retrieval practice: attempting to recall information strengthens later access to it more than rereading does, even when both activities take the same amount of time. In experiments, students who repeatedly try to reconstruct concepts from memory tend to retain them longer and to apply them more flexibly on novel problems. Skeptics note that not all tests are equal; poorly designed quizzes can encourage rote memorization. That objection is important, yet it does not undermine the central point that the act of retrieval can be a distinct contributor to learning gains. The sentence beginning with "Skeptics note that not all tests are equal…" primarily functions to:
Read the passage and answer the question. A pharmacology trial compared two dosing schedules for the same antihypertensive medication. The trial enrolled 320 adults with stage 1 hypertension and assigned 160 to Schedule M (one 20 mg dose each morning) and 160 to Schedule E (one 20 mg dose each evening). Blood pressure was measured at baseline and again after 12 weeks, using the same automated cuff model at all sites. The paper reported that mean systolic blood pressure decreased by 9.4 mmHg in Schedule M and by 10.1 mmHg in Schedule E. The authors also reported that 14 participants in Schedule M and 17 in Schedule E discontinued due to adverse effects. The paper stated that participants were instructed not to change their diet during the study, but dietary intake was not monitored. The passage states that…
Passage: In debates about scientific replication, one side interprets failed replications as evidence that original studies were careless or even fraudulent. The passage argues for a more cautious interpretation. A replication attempt may differ subtly from the original—using a different population, measurement instrument, or laboratory context—and such differences can matter when effects are sensitive to conditions. Moreover, the passage notes that even genuine effects can appear inconsistent because estimates vary with sample size and random noise; a single study rarely pins down an exact magnitude. The author maintains that replication is essential, but primarily as a means of mapping when and where an effect occurs, not as a simplistic pass–fail test of a study's legitimacy. The passage concludes that the most productive replication culture emphasizes transparency, shared data, and cumulative evidence. Question: The primary purpose of the passage is to…
A museum tested a "pay-what-you-wish" admission policy on weekday afternoons for three months. Attendance during those periods increased by 28%, and gift-shop revenue rose by 10%, while total admission revenue for those afternoons decreased only slightly. Visitor surveys indicated that many attendees who paid less than the usual ticket price were first-time visitors. Because the museum's strategic plan prioritizes increasing community access without materially reducing operating funds, the director argues that the museum should continue the policy on weekday afternoons. The author concludes that…
A neuroscience methods section describes an fMRI study of working memory in healthy adults. The study recruited 48 participants aged 20 to 35 years; the authors explicitly report that 26 participants identified as female and 22 as male. Scanning was performed on a 3-tesla MRI system using a gradient-echo echo-planar imaging sequence with repetition time (TR) of 2,000 milliseconds and echo time (TE) of 30 milliseconds. Functional images were acquired with 36 axial slices and a voxel size of 3×3×3 millimeters. As a procedural detail, the authors state that participants completed a practice session outside the scanner lasting 10 minutes. The paper also reports that head-motion exclusion was defined as more than 2 millimeters of translation in any direction. Which of the following is mentioned in the passage?
Select the answer choice that best completes the sentence. After months of debate, the agency adopted a ____ policy that allowed local offices to adjust procedures while still meeting the same national standards.
Passage: When cities consider planting more trees to address summer heat, advocates sometimes imply that tree canopy is a universal remedy. The passage agrees that shade and evapotranspiration can lower local temperatures, but it emphasizes that the effect depends on placement, species, and surrounding infrastructure. For example, dense canopy over asphalt parking lots may reduce surface temperatures substantially, whereas scattered trees along wide, windy corridors may yield only modest cooling. The author also notes potential trade-offs: some species emit compounds that can contribute to ozone formation under certain conditions, and increased pollen can worsen allergies. Rather than treating tree planting as a symbolic gesture, the passage argues for integrating it with broader heat-mitigation strategies such as reflective materials and building design, and for evaluating outcomes with neighborhood-specific data. Question: Which of the following best describes the main idea of the passage?
Select the answer choice that best completes the sentence. The city's recycling campaign initially seemed successful, but participation rates soon _____, suggesting that short-term publicity could not sustain long-term habits.
Select the answer choice that best completes the sentence. While the author claims to offer an unbiased history, her selective use of sources is _____, since she cites only documents that support her preferred narrative.
Select the answer choice that best completes the sentence. Because the survey sample excluded rural respondents, the report's conclusions about national preferences were necessarily ____ and could not be generalized with confidence.
The committee's initial proposal addressed only the specific complaint filed by one tenant, but the revised policy was ______ enough to cover grievances from all residents of the building, present and future.
Read the passage and answer the question. Organizations sometimes treat innovation as the product of sudden inspiration, emphasizing individual creativity while downplaying routine processes. The passage argues that this emphasis can obscure the extent to which innovation depends on systems that make experimentation affordable. When teams can prototype quickly, share partial results, and learn from small failures, they generate more usable ideas than when they wait for fully formed breakthroughs. In this account, innovation is less a rare event than a managed pipeline of trials, feedback, and revision. The passage acknowledges that not all experimentation is valuable: without clear criteria, organizations can produce activity without progress. But it contends that the solution is not to abandon experimentation in favor of "genius-led" innovation; rather, leaders should define goals, track learning, and allocate resources to the most promising directions. The passage concludes that treating innovation as a process helps organizations build repeatable capabilities instead of relying on unpredictable moments of inspiration. The passage is primarily concerned with which of the following?
For each blank, choose the word or phrase that best contributes to a clear, logical sentence. Choose one answer for each blank: the choices for the first blank are labeled A–C; the choices for the second blank are labeled D–F. Because the two negotiators had a history of mutual (i) ______, dating back to a bitter dispute years earlier, their eventual agreement on the trade terms struck colleagues as nothing short of (ii) ______.
Read the passage and answer the question. Because machine-learning models can detect patterns in massive datasets, some hospitals have begun using them to predict which patients are at high risk of readmission. Early reports touted impressive accuracy, but subsequent audits found that some models achieved those results by relying on proxies for socioeconomic status, such as zip code or insurance type. When those proxies are embedded in predictions, clinicians may inadvertently allocate extra attention to patients already advantaged by easier access to follow-up care. One proposed remedy is to constrain models so that predictions are statistically independent of certain sensitive attributes. Yet independence constraints can be misleading in medicine: if a disease genuinely has different prevalence across populations due to environmental exposure, forcing identical prediction rates can hide real risk. A more promising approach, some researchers argue, is to pair predictive tools with "impact evaluations" that measure how the tool changes clinical decisions and outcomes across groups. The primary function of the second paragraph is to:
Select the best completion. Rather than taking sides, the article's main purpose is to _____ both arguments so readers can weigh them fairly.
A nutrition researcher reports that in a study of adults who voluntarily tracked their meals using a mobile app for eight weeks, average daily sugar intake declined by 15%. The researcher concludes that promoting the app to the general public will lead to a similar reduction in sugar consumption. The conclusion assumes that the app itself produced the reduction and that typical users will respond as the study participants did. Which of the following, if true, most weakens the argument?
A regional hospital system introduced a standardized discharge checklist for patients with congestive heart failure. In the following six months, 30-day readmissions for those patients declined from 18% to 13%, while readmissions for other conditions stayed roughly constant. Audits showed that the checklist increased the rate at which patients received follow-up appointments before leaving the hospital. Because avoidable readmissions are costly and the checklist requires no new equipment, the system's administrators argue that the checklist should be adopted in all hospitals in the region. Which statement is the author primarily trying to establish?
A company shifted to a four-day workweek, expecting employee productivity to remain stable while job satisfaction improved. Six months later, employee surveys did show higher satisfaction and lower self-reported burnout. Yet the company's total output, measured in completed client projects, fell by 10%. The company also instituted a new policy requiring additional documentation for each project to improve compliance, and it reassigned some experienced staff to train new hires. Which of the following helps explain the seeming contradiction?
For each blank, choose the word or phrase that best contributes to a clear, logical sentence. Choose one answer for each blank: the choices for the first blank are labeled A–C; the choices for the second blank are labeled D–F. The mediator's approach was (i) ______ enough to keep both sides talking, yet never so (ii) ______ that either party felt its core demands had been sacrificed for the sake of compromise.

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