GRE Sentence Equivalence

This is how a typical sentence equivalence question looks like –

His ___________ should not be confused with his command; as long as I have known him, he has always been willing to speak whenever it is required.

1. loudness
2. vocal
3. Quietness
4. Silence
5. intolerance
6. economy

You will be presented with an incomplete sentence wherein an important word will be omitted. Your task is to find two words among the answer choices given, that are similar in meaning and that complete the sentence in a meaningful and coherent manner. 

The question consists of just one blank with two answer choices that are correct. You need to find those two words among the answer choices to form a sentence that is coherent and similar in meaning when both the answer choices are plugged-in the sentence.

To get a credit on sentence equivalence questions you should get both the correct answers as there are no partial credits for one wrong and one right answer choice.

Sentence equivalence questions test your ability to form a complete, meaningful sentence by using the partial information presented. You must work on developing your vocabulary as it will help you to solve this question type.

Below are the steps that you can follow to answer sentence equivalence questions:

Step 1: Read out the sentence. Before you start the process of answering the question, read the entire sentence completely, till the end. Do not look at the answer choices at this stage just stay with the sentence and try to grasp the meaning of it.

Step 2: Once you have gone through the sentence try identifying the target. The target of a sentence is the subject that the sentence is talking about. Every sentence has a target that the sentence revolves around. Ask yourself – What is the sentence talking about, who is the subject of this sentence? What/who is the target of this sentence?

Step 3: The next thing to look out for is the clue of the sentence. Clue is a word that gives you a hint as to what the answer could be. The clue helps you to predict an answer.

Step 4: The Pivot is what tells you the relationship between the blank and the clue. Pivot can be words or it can be punctuations.

Step 5: Now that you have all these pointers you must predict a word for the blank by keeping the above pointers in mind.

Step 6: Lastly match the word that you predict with the answer choices that are presented.

Let’s solve a sentence equivalence question by applying the steps given above:

Step 1: Read the entire sentence completely, till the end. Do not look at the answer choices at this stage just stay with the sentence and try to grasp the meaning of it.

Question:

His ___________ should not be confused with his command; as long as I have known him, he has always been willing to speak whenever it is required.

A. loudness

B. vocal

C. Quietness

D. Silence

E. intolerance

F. economy

Step 2: Once you have gone through the sentence try identifying the target. The target of a sentence is the subject that the sentence is talking about. Every sentence has a target that the sentence revolves around. Ask yourself – What is the sentence talking about, who is the subject of this sentence? What/who is the target of this sentence?

The sentence is talking about ‘he’. We have a pronoun as the subject of the sentence. He, his and him are used in the text as a reference to the subject.

Step 3: Look out for the clue of the sentence. Clue is a word that gives you a hint as to what the answer could be. Use the clue to predict an answer.

What do you’ll think is the clue in this sentence? The last few words of the sentence; ‘willing to speak whenever it is required’ is the clue to this sentence.

Step 4: Find the pivot word that hints at the relationship between the blank and the clue. They can be words or punctuations.

The semi-colon is the pivot in this text, it tells us that the blank is a word whose description is given in the second part of the sentence. The first part before the semi-colon and the part after it are in the same direction.

Step 5: Predict a word for the blank.

The sentence explains that the he only speaks whenever required. But in the normal circumstances he is silent or quiet. We need two words that suggest that the subject of the sentence ‘he’ is quiet under normal circumstances and speaks only when required.

Step 6: Match the word silent with the answer choices that are given:

A. loudness is the opposite of what we are looking for.

B. vocal does not form a coherent sentence when used in this text.

C. Quietness is a perfect match to our predicted answer and is the correct answer.

D. Silence is also a good match with quiet and both are similar in meaning. It is the correct answer choice.

E. intolerance is out of context for this text.

F. economy is also irrelevant for this text.

Now read the sentence with the answer plugged in.

His silence should not be confused with his command; as long as I have known him, he has always been willing to speak whenever it is required.

His quietness should not be confused with his command; as long as I have known him, he has always been willing to speak whenever it is required.

Both the answer choices are forming a sentence which is coherent and is similar in meaning.