Official GRE Sentence Equivalence Sample Questions

The correct answer pair is (B) and (D).

Some of the most challenging questions on the GRE are not the ones where you’ll actually feel like you’re stuck. They’re questions that give you a false sense of security and trick you into confidently giving the wrong answer. This question, featuring fairly straightforward vocabulary and seemingly simple logic, has that effect on a lot of students.

There are two answers in the list that can easily be ruled out: (C) and (E).

• (C) suggests an opposition between the two parts of the sentence, which clearly makes little sense.
• (E) suggests the success of the two mediums is unrelated, which again doesn’t fit the logic of the sentence.

Not only that, but neither of these options has a synonym in the list. Because sentence equivalence questions always want you to pick a pair of words or phrases that would convey the same meaning, this is another way to rule out wrong answers: If it can’t be paired with another option in the list, it can’t be correct.

Eliminating these options leaves us with what we can quickly identify as two potential answer pairs: (A) and (F), or (B) and (D). Each of these pairs would be a valid answer in that the phrases are synonymous. But only one of these pairs is the right answer.

This is where you can easily go wrong. It’s easy to read the sentence as following a typical cause-and-effect structure: Manga gains popularity, which causes anime to gain popularity. If you think that’s what the sentence is saying, you’ll pick (A) and (F). But that’s incorrect.

What tells us this is the wrong answer? The key phrases are “beginning to win fans” and “enormous success.”

• “Beginning to win fans” describes manga as, not a well-established, booming medium, but one that’s just now starting to excite interest.
• “Enormous success” describes anime as something that’s already extremely successful.

Would it make more sense for a small increase in the popularity of manga to lead to an explosion in the popularity of anime? Or does it make more sense to say that the established success of anime has had the knock-on effect of beginning to stir up interest in manga?

Looked at in this way, it should be clear that the latter sequence of cause and effect makes more sense. But you might miss it if you quickly seize on (A) and (F) as a pair that is indeed synonymous, doesn’t seem completely illogical, and follows an intuitive “cause-and-effect” order of information.

Eliminating obviously wrong options like (C) and (E) puts you in a powerful position. You’re left with two clear answer pairs. Once you’re in that position, though, make sure to take the extra moment to really evaluate both options, figuring out which of them is actually supported by the specific wording of the sentence (and not just by your own intuitions about the subject matter).

In this way, you should avoid the trap and arrive at the correct answer pair, (B) and (D).

The correct answer pair is (E) and (F).

When approaching any sentence equivalence question, it’s important to keep in mind the two characteristics our correct answer pair needs to have. The two words or phrases should be:

• Supported by the context of the sentence
• Synonymous in the context of the sentence

Test takers often get hung up on the second point, seeking out pairs that are synonymous before even figuring out which words actually fit the logic of the sentence. In fact, it’s usually most efficient to start with a clear focus on what kinds of answers are supported by the sentence itself. This question, featuring some potentially challenging vocabulary, will show us why.

Looking at our sentence, we see a description of some conditions that mean identity theft is a crime with … some particular characteristic we need to pick out of the list. Those conditions are described with the adjectives “hodgepodge,” “changing,” and “inadequate.”

Now, many people get tripped up already by “hodgepodge,” which means “jumbled, confused, disorderly, randomly mixed.” Of course it’s essential to work on your vocabulary so that you don’t run into such obstacles often, but it’s also important not to give up when you do; very often, there are multiple clues along the same lines.

Here, look at the context: We’re talking about two different forms of law enforcement and then about regulations that are “changing” and “inadequate.” We should be able to gather an impression of confusion and inefficiency without knowing what “hodgepodge” means.

What answers make sense in this context, then?

• We might be superficially tempted by (C): “Dubious” is a word we’d associate with something that’s wrong or sneaky, like a crime. But nothing in the sentence suggests we’re talking about the moral wrongness of identity theft; rather, we’re concerned with how to respond to it. We might also notice that “dubious” has no synonym in the list—the other condition we need to pay attention to.
• Option (B) is a little more plausible. The fact that responses to this crime are inadequate might indeed make the crime viable—having a good chance of success. But again, no other option in the list is synonymous with “viable,” so we can rule this out.

Now we’re left with four options, which are in fact, once again, two pairs of synonyms. But the difficulty of two of these words—”innocuous” and “intractable”—may prevent you from recognizing that right away. If that’s the case for you, start from the words you can understand, and assess whether they’re supported by the sentence.

• Option (A), “unobjectionable,” describes something you would not make an objection to (as you can probably figure out even if the word is unfamiliar). An unobjectionable crime is a crime that the author of the sentence thinks is acceptable. Specifically, it’s acceptable because laws against it are not very effective. It’s clear this argument would make no sense.
• Option (E), “uncontrollable,” is a word you almost certainly know, and that you should quickly see is one of our correct answers. If responses to the crime are disorganized and inadequate, then the crime will be uncontrollable. We have clear cause-and-effect logic here.

But now, of course, we need to find which of our remaining answers fills the same role. And again, we should not give up, or guess randomly, just because the words are unfamiliar. Instead, look at the different parts the words are made up of, and think of related words that can give you clues:

• “In-” is used to mean “not.” It’s not much help to know that the word means “not nocuous,” but try to think of similar words that come from the same root: “obnoxious” is one example, meaning … “objectionable.” Even more straightforwardly, look at “innoc-” and you’ll very likely think of “innocent.” It’s not too difficult, then, to see that “innocuous” is synonymous with “unobjectionable” (and therefore also wrong).
• In “intractable,” we again have “in-,” now combined with “-able.” So we’re dealing with something that is “not able to be … tracted?” Again, think about other places you’ve seen “-tract”: “contract,” “tractor,” “digestive tract,” “distract,” “traction.” Think about it for a moment, and you’ll see that what all these words have in common is the concept of pulling or dragging something in some direction. Something that is not able to be pulled in a particular direction is … uncontrollable.

Notice that you would only need to figure out the meaning of one of these words to arrive at the right answer, either by process of elimination or by identifying it positively.

This strategy not only helps you work around vocabulary gaps that would otherwise prevent you from answering correctly; it also, of course, teaches you new vocabulary going forward.