Practice Test 9 - GRE Verbal Reasoning

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

A technology columnist claims that the only reason people worry about data privacy is that they do not understand how encryption works. Therefore, the columnist concludes, public concern about data privacy would disappear if schools required a basic course on encryption. The argument relies on which questionable reasoning pattern?
A professor argues that because students who attend office hours usually earn higher grades than those who do not, the professor's office hours are the primary reason those students succeed. Therefore, the professor concludes, the department should require all students to attend office hours weekly to raise overall grades. The argument is most vulnerable to which criticism?
Because the new manager listened carefully to every employee's concerns, staff described her as truly ______.
A coastal town proposes building a seawall to prevent future flood damage. Town officials argue that because a smaller seawall built near the harbor five years ago has not been overtopped during storms since its construction, a larger seawall along the entire coastline will protect residential areas as well. They conclude that investing in the seawall is the most effective way to reduce flood-related repair costs over the next decade. Which of the following, if true, most weakens the argument?
In "Her confidence, unchecked by failure, had hardened into arrogance," how does "arrogance" relate to "confidence"?
The diplomat's ______ remarks, calibrated to offend no one, gave reporters nothing substantive to report.
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. Despite the meteorologist's (i)______ warnings about the storm's potential to cause widespread flooding and power outages, most residents remained (ii)______, assuming, as in past years, that the forecast was needlessly exaggerated.
Read the passage and answer the question. A literary journal article compared two annotated editions of a 17th-century play. Edition R, published in 1998, included 214 footnotes and a 36-page introduction. Edition S, published in 2016, included 287 footnotes and a 22-page introduction. The article stated that both editions modernized spelling in the main text but retained original punctuation in stage directions. It also noted that Edition S added a glossary of 140 terms, while Edition R did not include a glossary. The author of the article observed that Edition R's notes more frequently cited contemporary pamphlets, but the article did not provide counts of those citations. Which of the following is mentioned in the passage?
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 startup's founders were (i)_____ about projected revenues, publicly forecasting profits within a year, yet privately they remained (ii)_____ enough to keep six months of payroll in reserve, just in case the optimistic timeline proved wrong.
Read the passage and answer the question. An economics paper examined the effect of eliminating late fees at a municipal library system with 9 branches. The policy change took effect on January 1, 2020. The authors compared circulation in 2019 and 2020 and reported that total checkouts rose from 1.82 million in 2019 to 1.95 million in 2020. The paper also reported that the number of active cardholders increased from 112,000 to 119,000 over the same period. However, the authors stated that in-person visits declined in 2020 and attributed part of the decline to temporary branch closures between March 20 and June 15, 2020. The paper explicitly noted that it did not separate the effect of the late-fee policy from the effect of the closures. It also stated that the library's maximum loan period for books remained 21 days in both years. The passage states that…
Select the answer choice that best completes the sentence. The policy memo was intentionally ____: it avoided endorsing any single strategy so that multiple departments could interpret it in ways that suited their needs.
Select the answer choice that best completes the sentence. Although the dataset is large, it is ______ for testing the hypothesis, because it contains no measures of the variable the theory treats as decisive.
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. Although the committee had praised the intern's (i) work throughout the summer, her final report was riddled with errors, a lapse so uncharacteristic that her supervisor wondered whether exhaustion had made her uncharacteristically (ii).
An economics article examines the introduction of a congestion charge in the city of Mariton. The charge began on January 1, 2016, and applied on weekdays from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. within a defined central zone. The article states that the fee was $8 per entry in 2016 and was increased to $10 per entry on January 1, 2018. Exemptions were explicitly listed: buses, emergency vehicles, and bicycles were exempt, while taxis were not exempt. The article's dataset covers traffic counts from 2014 through 2019 and includes both zone-entry counts and average travel speed on three arterial roads. As a detail not treated as a main conclusion, the authors note that the city installed 42 automatic license-plate recognition cameras to enforce the charge. According to the passage, which of the following is true?
In "The critic's praise was so fulsome that the author suspected mockery," "fulsome" most nearly means
Passage: Archaeologists once treated the presence of obsidian artifacts at inland sites as straightforward evidence of long-distance trade: because obsidian sources are geographically limited, the material seemed to imply exchange networks spanning hundreds of kilometers. More recent geochemical sourcing has refined this view. In one region, obsidian at several inland villages matched a nearby secondary deposit created by ancient volcanic floods, not the distant primary source previously assumed. This meant that what looked like evidence of extensive trade could, in some cases, reflect local procurement. Yet the same sourcing techniques also revealed genuine long-range movement in other contexts. Coastal sites in the same region contained obsidian chemically traceable to multiple distant volcanoes, and the proportions of those sources shifted over time. Ethnographic analogies suggest that such shifting mixes can result when exchange routes are reoriented by political alliances or by the rise of intermediary communities. Additionally, settlement surveys found that inland villages with locally sourced obsidian still possessed marine shell ornaments not available in their immediate environment. These ornaments were concentrated in a few households and were often associated with feasting debris, implying that access to nonlocal goods could be socially differentiated. Question: Which statement is best supported by synthesizing information throughout the passage?
Read the passage and answer the question. When policymakers consider regulating a new technology, they often face a dilemma: acting early can prevent harms from becoming entrenched, but acting too early can freeze innovation around premature assumptions. One response is to delay until evidence accumulates; yet delay can itself shape the market, allowing dominant designs and business models to set norms that later regulation struggles to change. Another response is to regulate principles rather than mechanisms—for example, focusing on transparency, accountability, and consumer choice—so that rules remain relevant as technical details evolve. Still, principle-based regulation can be criticized as vague, leaving firms uncertain about compliance. The most promising strategies therefore combine adaptive mechanisms, such as periodic review and sunset clauses, with targeted requirements in high-risk contexts. The goal is not to find a timeless rule but to create institutions that can learn, revise, and respond as both benefits and harms become clearer. The primary purpose of the passage is to:
Passage: Astronomers searching for exoplanets often use the transit method, which detects small dips in a star's brightness when a planet crosses in front of it. A survey team reported that their pipeline detected many short-period candidates, in part because frequent transits generate repeated signals that are easier to distinguish from noise. A different group emphasized that stellar activity can mimic or obscure transits. In stars with prominent starspots, quasi-periodic brightness variations can create false positives, and aggressive filtering to remove stellar variability can also reduce sensitivity to shallow, long-period transits. Finally, a follow-up program using radial-velocity measurements confirmed a higher fraction of short-period candidates than long-period ones. The program noted that long-period planets not only transit less often but also require longer monitoring baselines for confirmation. Question: The passage as a whole suggests which of the following?
In its official report, the board described itself as ______ by the unexpected budget surplus, noting that it would allow for expanded research grants throughout the next fiscal year.
Passage: In the study of financial crises, some models emphasize bank runs driven by panic: depositors withdraw because they fear others will withdraw first. Other models stress fundamentals, such as deteriorating asset values. Policymakers often prefer panic-based accounts because they suggest that credible guarantees can halt crises quickly. Yet the dichotomy between panic and fundamentals can be misleading. A bank with weak assets is more vulnerable to rumor, and a rumor can accelerate losses by forcing asset sales at depressed prices. By presenting panic and fundamentals as mutually reinforcing, analysts can explain why the same policy tool stabilizes one episode but fails in another. Question: The primary function of the highlighted sentence is to

Practice tests