GRE Text Completion Sample Questions

---

---

1. Humour has great importance in life and it makes a person’s life interesting and enjoyable. Humour is the (1) _______ of particular cognitive incidents to provide amusement and provoke laughter. Humour is the (2) __________ to make something laughable. If you get (3) ______________ and amusement by something then you must accept thefact that this thing really exists.

Blank 1:

propensity, extension, utilization

Blank 2:

quality, art, ability

Blank 3:

pleasure, happiness, hilarity

Correct Answer: propensity, quality, pleasure

Explanation:

The given paragraph discusses what humor is and how it is important in a person’s life. In the sentence containing the first blank, the author defines humor. We have to infer what the author is trying to bring forward through his statement. Humor is something that exists in itself and we cannot create it. This is the sense that the author conveys in the last sentence. Thus, for the first blank, we select the word ‘propensity’. Humor is the innate tendency of an incident to provide amusement. The other two options are not suitable since they go against the idea explained. On the basis of a similar argument, we can contest that the best answer option for the second blank is ‘quality’. Humor is the intrinsic quality to make something laughable. For the last blank, the option ‘pleasure’ is the most suitable. The author uses light words to insist on his point. He says that if you get amusement and ‘pleasure’ by something then the existence of that this is certain. He does not use strong words and consequently we do not select the options ‘happiness’ and ‘hilarity’. The correctanswer is ‘pleasure’.

2. Motivational posters are one of the (1) _________ ways of finding back your cheerful spirit, without the need of investing few thousand dollars every week into a session with a psychiatrist, and definitely work more effectively! What is more, you will not need to fit in your valuable hours in between a hectic day schedule for the psychiatric session; instead, it will take a few minutes every day for you to go through the motivational posters around you. There is substantial evidence gathered from lot of research which proves that motivational posters affect both our subconscious and the conscious mind (2) _________. The subconscious mind takes in the message from motivational posters and as a result you find yourself in good spirits (3) _________ as you pass by the motivationalposters.

Blank 1:

simplest, cheapest, quickest

Blank 2:

positively, instantly, silently

Blank 3:

automatically, immediately, unsuspectingly

Correct Answer: simplest, positively, automatically

Explanation:

The option ‘cheapest’ is misleading for the first blank. The author mentions that you do not have to spend much money on motivational posters. Hence, the cheapness of this source is trivially mentioned; we do not need to reiterate it. We, thus, reject the option ‘cheapest’. In the second sentence, the idea of saving time in through this method is put forth. The author says that you do not have to make time to attend a psychiatric session and a motivational poster requires only a few minutes of attention every day. However, in the last two sentences, the author explains how a motivational poster works for us. He says that our subconscious and conscious minds take in the message from the posters and our spirits become high. These two sentences are devoted to bring out how this method of motivation is simple and hence we select ‘simplest’ for the first blank. Following the same argument, we can say that the author is showing how the technique works and hence we select the options ‘positively’ and ‘automatically’ for the last two blanks.

GRE Text Completion Sample Questions

---

---