GRE Verbal Practice Test: Practice Test 9

A team of ecologists investigated why a particular invasive plant spread rapidly along a river corridor but remained sparse in adjacent upland areas. They found that seeds of the plant were frequently present in river sediment samples after seasonal floods, and germination rates were high in moist, nutrient-rich soils typical of floodplains. In upland soils, germination was lower, and seedlings that did emerge showed higher mortality during dry periods. The ecologists also observed that most mature plants in the corridor were clustered near points where floodwaters deposited debris, suggesting repeated seed delivery. They propose that managing floodplain disturbances could limit the invasion’s expansion.

Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

Select the answer choice that best completes the sentence. Because the study’s sample was drawn only from volunteers at a single clinic, the authors cautioned that the findings might not be   to the broader population.

A retail chain is deciding whether to replace paper receipts with digital receipts by default. In a pilot, stores that offered digital receipts as the default used 60% less receipt paper, and customer-service calls about lost receipts did not increase because receipts were accessible via email. Since paper costs and printer maintenance are significant expenses, the chain should adopt digital receipts by default across all stores. The main point of the argument is that…

Passage:

Energy analysts evaluating electric vehicles (EVs) often compare their lifetime greenhouse gas emissions to those of gasoline cars. A common finding is that EVs have higher emissions during manufacturing—especially from battery production—but lower emissions during use, depending on how electricity is generated.

Studies that incorporate regional electricity mixes show large variation. In regions where coal remains dominant, the use-phase advantage of EVs shrinks, though it may not disappear entirely. In regions with substantial renewables or nuclear power, EVs can outperform gasoline vehicles by a wide margin.

Meanwhile, battery technology is changing. Some newer chemistries reduce reliance on scarce metals and can lower manufacturing emissions, but they may initially have lower energy density, affecting vehicle range. Recycling infrastructure can also reduce the need for new mining, yet it requires collection systems and energy inputs of its own.

Finally, transportation planners note that emissions comparisons can miss system-level effects. If EV adoption is paired with policies that increase total vehicle miles traveled—such as cheap electricity and expanded road capacity—some of the emissions benefits can be offset by increased driving.

Question: The passage as a whole suggests which of the following?

Read the passage and answer the question.

A geology seminar report described a field survey of a basalt flow on the island of Norell. Researchers collected 24 rock samples along a single transect that ran 3.2 kilometers from the coast toward the island’s central ridge. Each sample location was recorded with GPS, and the report listed the elevation range of the transect as 15 meters to 410 meters above sea level. The team performed potassium-argon dating on 10 of the 24 samples and reported ages between 0.84 and 0.92 million years. The remaining 14 samples were analyzed only for major-element chemistry, including silica and magnesium oxide percentages. The report explicitly stated that no thin-section petrography was conducted due to time constraints.

Which of the following is mentioned in the passage?

Select the answer choice that best completes the sentence.

Because the professor required every claim to be backed by data, students learned to avoid   and instead make only statements they could justify with evidence.

Passage:

Some climate modelers argue that the most policy-relevant metric is the “carbon budget,” an estimate of cumulative emissions compatible with a given temperature target. Because the relationship between cumulative emissions and warming is approximately linear, the budget framework offers an intuitive way to translate abstract goals into quantities that can be monitored.

Nevertheless, critics caution that the apparent clarity of budgets can conceal uncertainties that matter for decision-making. Different models treat aerosol cooling, ocean heat uptake, and carbon-cycle feedbacks differently, yielding budgets that vary substantially. In addition, budgets are often presented as if they were fixed accounts, even though they depend on choices about how to treat non-$\text{CO}_2$ gases and about whether to allow temporary “overshoot” above the target.

A more defensible use of carbon budgets would therefore emphasize ranges and conditional assumptions. Rather than presenting a single number as a definitive limit, analysts could show how the budget changes under alternative scenarios for methane control or for negative-emissions technologies. In this way, the framework retains its communicative power while making explicit the judgments that underwrite it.

Question: The author includes the discussion of aerosols, ocean heat uptake, and carbon-cycle feedbacks primarily to

Passage:

Some archaeologists have argued that the spread of agriculture can be explained primarily as a rational response to population pressure: as groups grew, hunting and gathering could no longer supply enough food, so cultivation became necessary. The model is attractive because it offers a clear causal engine and seems consistent with the long-term trend toward more intensive food production.

Yet the archaeological record complicates this tidy story. In several regions, early cultivation appears alongside abundant wild resources, and some groups adopted farming only to abandon it later. Moreover, the transition often entailed increased labor and new vulnerabilities, such as crop failure, suggesting that “necessity” alone may not account for why communities accepted the change.

An alternative perspective emphasizes social and symbolic factors. Cultivation may have been tied to feasting, territorial claims, or new forms of status competition, making it desirable even when not strictly required for survival. This view does not deny material constraints, but it suggests that agriculture spread through a mix of ecological opportunity and cultural incentives.

Question: The passage is structured primarily to…

A city parks department planted 500 new trees in a downtown area. Two years later, measurements show that average summer afternoon temperatures on streets with the new trees are 1.2°C lower than on comparable streets without new trees. The department concludes that planting additional trees throughout the city will substantially reduce the city’s overall summer heat and recommends reallocating funds from other beautification projects to tree planting. Which statement provides the strongest support for the conclusion?

Passage:

Many organizations now claim to be “data-driven,” implying that decisions should follow directly from quantitative indicators. In principle, this posture promises discipline: numbers can counteract the biases of intuition and the inertia of tradition. Managers, eager to appear rigorous, may therefore treat dashboards as neutral arbiters of what should be done.

However, metrics are not simply discovered; they are designed. Choosing what to measure, how to measure it, and what counts as improvement inevitably reflects values and incentives. When a hospital emphasizes average length of stay, for instance, it may unintentionally reward premature discharges; when a school focuses on test scores, it may devalue untested skills. The problem is not that measurement is futile, but that measurement reshapes behavior.

A more defensible approach treats metrics as hypotheses rather than verdicts. Indicators can be used to prompt investigation, to test whether a change is working, and to reveal trade-offs that require deliberation. This approach still relies on data, but it insists that judgment is necessary to interpret what the data mean and to revise the metrics when they produce perverse outcomes.

Question: The author introduces the examples of hospitals and schools in order to…

A university library reports that in the two years after it extended weekend hours, total weekend foot traffic rose by 35%, while weekday traffic remained essentially unchanged. A survey of students who visited on weekends found that 62% came specifically because the library was open later. Since staffing costs for the added hours were covered by reallocating existing student-worker shifts rather than increasing the budget, the library director argues that the university should make the extended weekend schedule permanent.

The author concludes that…

Read the passage and answer the question.

In climate policy, carbon pricing is often presented as a single instrument that can replace most other interventions. By putting a cost on emissions, the argument goes, markets will find the cheapest reductions. Pricing can indeed encourage efficiency and innovation, but it does not automatically address every barrier to decarbonization. Some sectors face coordination problems—such as building charging networks—that require collective investment. Others involve long-lived infrastructure, where decisions made today lock in emissions for decades and where price signals may be too weak or too uncertain to shift behavior quickly. Additionally, political constraints can lead to prices that are lower than what models recommend, limiting impact. For these reasons, many analysts favor policy packages: carbon pricing combined with standards, public investment, and research support. The question is not whether pricing “works,” but what complementary measures are needed for it to work at the scale and speed required.

Which of the following best describes the main idea of the passage?

Passage:

Some philosophers of mind claim that consciousness is best explained by identifying the neural correlates of experience: find the brain activity reliably associated with pain, color perception, or attention, and the mystery will dissolve. The approach has yielded impressive maps linking cognitive tasks to networks and has encouraged a productive alliance between philosophy and neuroscience.

Other philosophers object that correlation is not explanation. Even a perfect catalog of neural signatures, they argue, would leave unanswered why those signatures should feel like anything from the inside. The objection is not meant to disparage neuroscience but to insist that subjective experience poses a different kind of question than functional description.

Recently, several theorists have proposed that the dispute partly stems from an equivocation about what counts as “explaining.” For empirical scientists, explanation often means predicting and manipulating phenomena; for some philosophers, it means providing an account that makes the existence of experience intelligible in principle. By clarifying these standards, the theorists hope to transform a stalemated argument into a more precise set of research and conceptual problems.

Question: The author introduces the distinction between two senses of “explaining” primarily to…

A pharmaceutical company reported that a new drug lowered patients’ cholesterol levels more than an older drug in a controlled clinical trial. Yet, in a subsequent analysis of insurance claims data, patients prescribed the new drug experienced no lower rate of heart attacks than patients prescribed the older drug. The claims analysis noted that patients on the new drug were more likely to discontinue treatment within six months because of side effects, and they were also more likely to have been diagnosed with diabetes at baseline. Which explanation best accounts for the situation described?

Passage:

In the study of medieval literature, some scholars argue that anonymous texts should be treated primarily as products of collective tradition rather than as the work of an absent “author.” Because scribes frequently revised, condensed, or expanded what they copied, the notion of a stable, original version can be misleading. On this view, interpretation should focus on how stories circulated and mutated across communities.

Others respond that abandoning authorship entirely risks flattening meaningful distinctions among texts. Even in manuscript cultures, particular stylistic habits and thematic preoccupations can cluster in ways that suggest deliberate composition. Moreover, patrons and institutions sometimes commissioned works for specific purposes, implying that intent—if not modern individual genius—still mattered.

A productive compromise treats authorship as a variable rather than a premise. Instead of asking whether a text is “really” authored, researchers can ask which features are best explained by individual design and which by transmission dynamics. The point is not to rescue the modern author, but to avoid replacing one simplification with another.

Question: The passage is structured primarily to​

A public library replaced most of its reference section with collaborative workspaces, predicting that fewer physical books would reduce in-library noise and crowding. After the renovation, headcounts showed that the library was less crowded on weekday mornings but more crowded in the evenings. At the same time, staff reported more noise complaints than before. The library also began hosting evening workshops on job searching and digital literacy, many of which require group activities. Which of the following helps explain the seeming contradiction?

A regional hospital found that when it standardized discharge instructions into plain language, 30-day readmissions for heart-failure patients dropped from 18% to 14%. The hospital’s quality team notes that producing the standardized instructions required a one-time investment but now saves nurses time on repeated explanations. Thus, the hospital should standardize discharge instructions for other chronic conditions as a cost-effective way to reduce readmissions. The author concludes that…

Select the answer choice that best completes the sentence. Although the committee praised the proposal’s ambition, it rejected the timeline as  , since the required permits typically take longer than the plan allows.

Select the answer choice that best completes the sentence.

Even critics who disliked the novel’s plot conceded that its language was remarkably  , with each sentence polished to achieve maximum clarity.

Read the passage and answer the question.

Some proposals for improving democracy focus on increasing voter information, assuming that better-informed citizens will choose better leaders. While information matters, the assumption overlooks how political choices are made under time constraints and cognitive limits. Citizens often use shortcuts—party labels, endorsements, or perceived competence—because evaluating every policy claim is infeasible. These heuristics can be rational, but they can also be manipulated when signals are distorted by misinformation or by strategically ambiguous messaging. Therefore, reforms that merely provide more information may have limited effects if the information is not trusted, comprehensible, or connected to decision-making cues citizens actually use. Complementary reforms might include improving the reliability of signals (for example, through transparency about funding) and designing institutions that reduce the payoff to deception. Strengthening democracy, then, involves not only educating voters but also improving the informational environment and the incentives that shape political communication.

Which of the following best describes the main idea of the passage?

For each blank select one entry from the corresponding column of choices. Fill all blanks in the way that best completes the text.. The answer choices are grouped by blank: choices A–C are candidates for Blank (i); choices D–F are candidates for Blank (ii); and if there is a third blank, choices G–I are candidates for Blank (iii).

The historian’s prose is (i)  rather than florid, and this restraint makes her argument (ii) : readers are persuaded less by rhetorical flourish than by the steady accumulation of carefully qualified evidence.

Passage:

Some conservation biologists maintain that rewilding—reintroducing large herbivores and predators—can restore degraded ecosystems by reviving “trophic cascades.” In this view, predators suppress overabundant grazers, vegetation rebounds, and a suite of dependent species returns. The argument is attractive because it promises a self-sustaining mechanism rather than perpetual human management.

However, skeptics note that many celebrated cascades are inferred from short time series and from landscapes already altered by roads, fencing, and invasive plants. Predators may avoid human-dominated areas, and herbivores may shift their foraging rather than decline. In addition, ecosystems can exhibit multiple stable states: once a grassland has converted to shrubland, merely adding predators may not reverse soil changes or fire regimes that now maintain the new state.

A more cautious position does not reject rewilding but reframes it as an experiment with explicit benchmarks. Instead of assuming that predator reintroduction will “restore” an ecosystem, managers could specify which functions are sought—reduced browsing pressure, increased riparian cover, or altered fire frequency—and monitor whether those functions change under different levels of human intervention. Such an approach treats trophic cascades as one possible pathway among several, rather than as a guaranteed sequence.

Question: The primary function of the second paragraph is to​

A financial adviser states that among her clients, those who check their investment accounts daily tend to have lower long-term returns than those who check monthly. She concludes that checking accounts daily causes poor investment performance and advises all investors to avoid frequent monitoring. Which of the following identifies a flaw in the argument's reasoning?

Passage:

Archaeologists once treated ancient trash deposits as mere byproducts of habitation, useful primarily for dating a site. More recently, scholars have argued that refuse can reveal social organization, because disposal practices reflect who had access to space and who controlled labor. A midden placed at the edge of a settlement may indicate exclusion, while one maintained near a central plaza may suggest coordinated cleaning.

At a coastal site excavated over the last decade, researchers mapped the distribution of fish bones, pottery fragments, and ash layers across several residential clusters. They found that high-status houses had relatively little ash nearby but large concentrations of broken serving vessels in a shared courtyard, consistent with periodic feasting followed by collective cleanup. In contrast, lower-status clusters showed scattered ash and food remains near doorways, implying that disposal was more household-specific.

Because these patterns are unlikely to arise from environmental processes alone, the investigators conclude that trash management was an arena in which hierarchy was enacted, not merely a practical necessity.

The second paragraph serves primarily to:

A school district administrator argues that the district should adopt a later start time for high school students. In the past two years, first-period tardiness has been highest among students who ride the earliest bus routes, and a district survey found that students reporting fewer than seven hours of sleep were significantly more likely to miss morning classes. In a pilot at one high school that shifted the start time by 45 minutes, average attendance increased and nurse visits for fatigue-related complaints decreased, even though the curriculum and grading policies stayed the same. Therefore, the district should move all high schools to a later start time. Which of the following is offered as evidence in support of the argument's conclusion?