sp; (B)indecisive (C)solicitous (D)overzealous (E)steadfast (C) and (E) are gone because they're positive words. You can't eliminate (A)if you don't know what contentious means.(B)doesn't work because the clueis "refused to dispute." That doesn't work with indecisive. For the samereason, (D) doens't work either. SO the best answer is (A). Even though you might not know contentious,you can still get to the right answer.
ACCURACY, NOT SPEED Let's use this knowlegde about order of difficulty to find out why less ismore.
Here's how a typical test take approaches a given sction-we'll call this typicaltest taker "Joe Bloggs." Joe starts the section with the easy questions.
How does he do? ( keep in mind that Joe's primary goal is to finish.) Joegets most of the easy questions right. He gets most of the right because afterall, they're easy. However, he also misses some because he's rushing to finishthe section- and that causes Joe to make careless mistakes.
Joe gets to the medium questions. How does he do here?(Again, keep in mindthat Joe's desire is to finish.) So-so, Joe's not stupid, so he gets about halfof the questions right. Why does Joe miss the other half? Because the questions are getting harder and, more important, because he's still rushing, which causehim to make careless mistakes.
Joe moves on to the hard questions. On a typical hard question, only 15 percentof the people answering the question get it right. SO how do you think Joe does?He tanks;he bombs. Joe spends the majority of his time trying to answer thehard questions, and he gets them all wrong.
To review:Joe misses easy questions , he misses medium questions, and he misseshard questions. What's wrong with this picture?
Does Joe get more points for answering hard questions than he does for answeringeasy questions? No. Remember, every correct answer is worth one raw score point.Then why should Joe spend all of his time on the hard questions when he's goingto miss them anyway? Why should you spend all of your time on the hard questionswhen you're going to miss them anyway?
Joe and you need to focus on what he and you can do, not what he and you can't.
By slowing down and concentrating on the easy and medium questions, your scoreis going to improve. Ignore the hard questions. Don't even look at them. Beating the GRE is all about pacing yourelf correctly. Accuracy is more importantthan speed.
Sentence Completion The Goal: Fill In the Blank Your job on any given sentence completion is to pick the answer choice thatbest completes the sentence by filling in the blank or blanks. Not too hard,right? Well, not too hard if you know what not to do.
What not to do is "pllug and chug," which (unfortunately) is probablythe most common thing people do when they hit a sentence completion.
Here's a typical question: In celestial mechanics, scientists are required to make------calculations becausethe astronomical bodies are moving------and many differrent forces are actingat once. A. precise...obdurately B. detailed...auspiciously C. comprehensible...excessively D. complicated...concurrently E. facile...nominally
When you plug and chug, you just take an answer choice and pop it back intothe blank or blanks. How effective is this ? Not very. People tend to plug andchug because they think it's the fastest way to answer a senten
