Teach Yourself the GRE -- Practice Test Questions, Reading Comprehension

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Mini Test — Reading Comprehension
(9 questions, 18 minutes)

This Mini-Test consists of 9 GRE-style Reading Comprehension questions (3 reading passages, 3 questions per passage). Select your responses by clicking on the buttons. Limit your time to 18 minutes. NOTE: This page contains everything you need for this Mini-Test (including explanations). So you can save the file if you wish, then test yourself offline.

Before attempting this Mini-Test, be sure you've read the following:

DIRECTIONS: Each passage is followed by questions about its content. After reading a passage, select the best answer to each question among the five choices. Answer all questions following a passage on the basis of what the passage states or implies.

-GRE Reading Comprehension

Questions 1-3

Question 1
Question 2
Question 3

Next Set

The arrival in a new location of a non-indigenous plant or animal species may be either intentional or unintentional. Rates of species movement driven by human transformations of natural environments as well as by human mobility—through commerce, tourism, and travel—dwarf natural rates by comparison. While geographic distributions of species naturally expand or contract over historical time intervals (tens to hundreds of years), species' ranges rarely expand thousands of miles or across physical barriers such as oceans or mountains.
A number of factors confound quantitative evaluation of the relative importance of various entry pathways. Time lags often occur between establishment of non-indigenous species and their detection, and tracing the pathway for a long-established species is difficult. Experts estimate that non-indigenous weeds are usually detected only after having been in the country for thirty years or having spread to at least ten thousand acres. In addition, federal port inspection, although a major source of information on non-indigenous species pathways, especially for agricultural pests, provides data only when such species enter via scrutinized routes. Finally, some comparisons between pathways defy quantitative analysis. For example, which is more "important": the entry pathway of one very harmful species or one by which many but less harmful species enter the country?
1. Which of the following statements about species movement is best supported by the information in the passage?
.
(A) Species movement is affected more by habitat modifications than by human mobility.
(B) Human-driven factors affect the rate at which species move more than they affect the long-term amount of such movements.
(C) Natural expansions in the geographic distribution of species account for less species movement than natural contractions do.
(D) Natural environments created by commerce, tourism, and travel contribute significantly tospecies movement.
(E) Movement of a species within a continent depends largely upon the geographic extent of human mobility within the continent.
Answer · Passage
2. Which of the following best expresses the author's primary concern in the second paragraph?
.
(A) to describe the events usually leading to the detection of a non-indigenous species
(B) to identify the problems in assessing the
relative significance of various entry pathways for non-indigenous species
(C) to discuss the role that time lags and geographic expansion of non-indigenous species play in species detection
(D) to point out the inadequacy of the federal port inspection system in detecting the entry of non-indigenous species
(E) to explain why it is difficult to trace the entry pathways for long-established non-indigenous species
Answer · Passage
3. Based upon the information in the passage, whether the entry pathway for a particular non-indigenous species can be determined is LEAST likely to depend upon which of the following?
.
(A) whether the species is considered to be a pest
(B) whether the species gains entry through a scrutinized route
(C) the rate at which the species expands geographically
(D) how long the species has been established
(E) the size of the average member of the species
Answer · Passage

-GRE Reading Comprehension

Questions 4-6

Question 4
Question 5
Question 6
Previous Set

Next Set

Those who criticize the United States government today for not providing health care to all citizens equate health care provision with medical insurance coverage. By this standard, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America lacked any significant conception of public health law. However, despite the general paucity of bureaucratic organization in pre-industrial America, the vast extent of health regulation and provision stands out as remarkable.
Of course the public role in the protection and regulation of eighteenth-century health was carried out in ways quite different from those today. Organizations responsible for health regulation were less stable than modern bureaucracies, tending to appear in crises and wither away in periods of calm. The focus was on epidemics which were seen as unnatural and warranting a response, not to the many endemic and chronic conditions which were accepted as part and parcel of daily life. Additionally, religious influence was significant, especially in the seventeenth century. Finally, in an era which lacked sharp demarcations between private and governmental bodies, many public responsibilities were carried out by what we would now consider private associations. Nevertheless, the extent of public health regulation long before the dawn of the welfare state is remarkable and suggests that the founding generation's assumptions about the relationship between government and health were more complex than is commonly assumed.
4. Among the following statements about the United States government's role in the provision of health care, which finds the LEAST support in the passage?
.
(A) The government today addresses health concerns that formerly were not considered serious enough to warrant government involvement.
(B) What were once public health-care functions are now served by the private sector.
(C) Philosophical considerations play a less significant role today in the formulation of public health-care policies than in previous centuries.
(D) Public health care today is guided largely by
secular rather than religious values.
(E) Modern public health-care agencies are typically established not as temporary measures but rather as permanent establishments.
Answer · Passage
5. Which of the following best expresses the author's point of contention with "those who criticize the United States government for not providing health care to all citizens" (lines 1-2)?
.
(A) Their standard for measuring such provision is too narrow.
(B) They underestimate the role that insurance plays in the provision of health care today.
(C) They fail to recognize that government plays a more significant role today in health care than in previous eras.
(D) They misunderstand the intent of the founding generation with respect to the proper role of the government in the area of health care.
(E) They lack any significant conception of public health law.
Answer · Passage
6. Which of the following best expresses the main point of the passage?
.
(A) The government's role in health care has not expanded over time to the extent that many critics have asserted.
(B) The government should limit its involvement in health care to epidemiological problems.
(C) Health problems plaguing pre-industrial America resulted largely from inadequate public health care.
(D) History suggests that the United States government has properly played a significant role in provision of health care.
(E) Private insurance is an inadequate solution to the problem of health care.
Answer · Passage

-GRE Reading Comprehension Questions 7-9

Question 7
Question 8
Question 9
Previous Set

When Ralph Waldo Emerson pronounced America's declaration of cultural independence from Europe in his "American Scholar" address, he was actually articulating the transcendental assumptions of Jefferson's political independence. In the ideal new world envisioned by Emerson, America's becoming a perfect democracy of free and self-reliant individuals was within reach. Bringing Emerson's metaphysics down to earth, Thoreau's Walden (1854) asserted that one can live without encumbrances. Emerson wanted to visualize Thoreau as the ideal scholar in action that he had called for in the "American Scholar," but in the end Emerson regretted Thoreau's too-private individualism which failed to signal the vibrant revolution in national consciousness that Emerson had prophesied. For Emerson, what Thoreau lacked, Whitman embodied in full. On reading Leaves of Grass (1855), Emerson saw in Whitman the "prophet of democracy" whom he had sought. Other American Renaissance writers were less sanguine than Emerson and Whitman about the fulfillment of the democratic ideal. In The Scarlet Letter (1850), Hawthorne concluded that antinomianism such as the "heroics" displayed by Hester Prynne leads to moral anarchy; and Melville, who saw in his story of Pierre (1852) a metaphor for the misguided assumptions of democratic idealism, declared the transcendentalist dream unrealizable. Ironically, the literary vigor with which both Hawthorne and Melville explored the ideal showed their deep sympathy with it even as they dramatized its delusions.
7. The author of the passage seeks primarily to
.
(A) explore the impact of the American Renaissance writers on the literature of the late eighteenth century
(B) illustrate how American literature of the mid- eighteenth century differed in form from European literature of the same time period
(C) identify two schools of thought among American Renaissance writers regarding the democratic ideal
(D) point out how Emerson's democratic idealism was mirrored by the works of the American Renaissance writers
(E) explain why the writers of the American Renaissance believed that an ideal world was forming in America
Answer · Passage
8. Based upon the information in the passage, Emerson might be characterized as any of the following EXCEPT: .
(A) a transcendentalist
(B) an American Renaissance writer
(C) a public speaker
(D) a political prophet
(E) a literary critic
Answer · Passage
9. With which of the following statements about Melville and Hawthorne would the author most likely agree? .
(A) Both men were disillusioned transcendentalists.
(B) Hawthorne sympathized with the transcendental dream more so than Melville.
(C) They agreed as to what the transcendentalist dream would ultimately lead to.
(D) Both men believed the idealists to be misguided.
(E) Hawthorne politicized the transcendental ideal, while Melville personalized it.
Answer · Passage

Question 1—Analysis
(Return to Question 1) . (Return to Passage)

The correct response to Question 1 is (E). Statement (E) restates the author's point in the first paragraph that rates of species movement driven by human transformation of the natural environment and by human mobility dwarf natural rates by comparison (lines 3-6).
(A) is unsupported by the passage. Although the author compares natural species movement to human-driven movement, no such comparison is made as between human modification of habitats and human mobility.
(B) is unsupported by the passage. The author makes no attempt to compare rate (interpreted either as frequency or speed) of species movement to total amounts of movement (distance).
(C) is unsupported by the passage. The author makes no attempt to compare natural expansions to natural contractions.
(D) is nonsensical. Human mobility (commerce, tourism, and travel) does not create "natural" environments. It is human mobility itself, not the "natural environment" created by it, that contributes significantly to species movement.

Question 2—Analysis
(Return to Question 2) . (Return to Passage)

The correct response to Question 2 is (B). In the first sentence of the second paragraph, the author claims that "[a] number of factors confound quantitative evaluation of the relative importance of various entry pathways." In the remainder of the paragraph, the author identifies three such problems: (1) the difficulty of early detection, (2) the inadequacy of port inspection, and (3) the inherent subjectivity in determining the "importance" of a pathway.
(A) is off focus and is too narrow. Although the author does mention that a species is usually not detected until it spreads to at least ten-thousand acres, the author mentions this single "event" leading to detection as part of the broader point that the unlikelihood of early detection contributes to the problem of quantifying the relative importance of entry pathways.
(C) is off focus. Although the author mentions these factors, they are not "discussed" in any detail, as Response (C) suggests. Also, the primary concern of the second paragraph is not with identifying the factors affecting species detection but rather with identifying the problems in quantifying the relative importance of various entry pathways.
(D) is too narrow. The author is concerned with identifying other problems as well as involved in determining the relative importance of various entry pathways.
(E) is off focus. Although the author asserts that it is difficult to trace an entry pathway once a species is well established, the author does not explain why this is so.

Question 3—Analysis
(Return to Question 3) . (Return to Passage)

The correct response to Question 3 is (E). Nowhere in the passage does the author either state or imply that the physical size of a species' members affects whether the entry pathway for the species can be determined.
(A) is the second-best response. Unlike Responses (B), (C) and (D), Response (A) is not supported explicitly by the passage. However, the author mentions in lines 20-22 that federal port inspection is "a major source of information on non-indigenous species pathways, especially for agricultural pests." Accordingly, whether a species is an agricultural pest might have some bearing upon whether or not its entry is detected (by port inspectors).
(B), (C), and (D) are all mentioned explicitly in the second paragraph as factors affecting how precisely the entry pathway(s) of a species can be determined.

Question 4—Analysis
(Return to Question 4) . (Return to Passage)

The correct response to Question 4 is (C). Statement (C) is unsupported; nowhere does the author suggest that the government polices today regarding health care are guided less by philosophical considerations than in previous eras. The term "philosophical" should not be equated with the term "religious" [otherwise, (C) and (D) would be essentially the same response].
(A) is the second-best response. Support for (A) is less explicit than for any other incorrect answer choice. Nevertheless, (A) finds support from the author's point in lines 15-19 that many non-epidemic diseases were not formerly addressed by the government because they were considered part and parcel of daily life. It can be reasonably inferred from this excerpt that epidemic diseases were considered a greater threat (i.e., more serious), thereby warranting government's attention.
(B) restates the author's assertion in lines 22-24 that "many public responsibilities were carried out by what we would now consider private associations."
(D) is readily inferable. The author asserts that the public role in health care is carried out in different ways today than in prior centuries. The author then points out in lines 19-20 that "religious influence was significant, especially in the seventeenth century." It is reasonably inferable, then, that religion does not play a significant role today in public health care decisions.
(E) restates the author's point in lines 12-14 that government health-care organizations in previous eras were less stable than modern bureaucracies.

Question 5—Analysis
(Return to Question 5) . (Return to Passage)

The correct response to Question 5 is (A). According to the author, the critics equate the degree (extent) of health-care provision with insurance coverage. The author contends that by this standard of measurement, public health care during the eighteenth century was practically non-existent. In fact, however, the government played a significant role in health care during that century in ways other than providing insurance to its citizens. Thus, the critics' standard for measuring the extent of the government's role in health care is far too narrow in that it ignores all of the other possible ways in which government can play a role in health care.
(B) is unsupported. Nowhere does the author state or imply that insurance plays a larger role in health care than the critics contend; also, statement (B) makes no distinction between private and public insurance.
(C) is not well supported. Based upon the information in the last paragraph, it appears that the United States government has played a significant role in health care throughout history; the author does not contend that the government's role in health care is greater today than in previous eras. (Implicitly, some of the evidence in the last paragraph supports this contention, while other evidence undermines it.) Moreover, even if (C) were strongly supported by the passage, (C) is nevertheless not the author's point of contention with the critics.
(D) is unsupported and does not respond to the question. The author makes no attempt to evaluate the critics' understanding of the founding generation's intent. Even if Statement (D) were supported by the passage, the statement is nevertheless not the author's point of contention with the critics.
(E) confuses the details in the second paragraph. It was America that, by the critics' standards, "lacked any significant conception of public health law." Statement (E) asserts, however, that the critics were the ones that lacked such a conception.

Question 6—Analysis
(Return to Question 6) . (Return to Passage)

The correct response to Question 6 is (D). In the passage, the author rebuts the critics' argument that government is not providing health care to all citizens and implies, at the close of the passage, that the founding generation probably intended that government play a significant ("complex") role in health care.
(A) is unsupported and runs contrary to the passage. The evidence in the passage is conflicting as to whether the government's role has in fact expanded over time, and the author does not really address this issue. Also, according to the passage, the critics assert that the government plays too small a role in health care; thus, (A) actually tends to run contrary to the critics' contention.
(B) is unsupported, calling for an unwarranted inference. Although acknowledging that the government in fact has expanded its health concerns from epidemics to chronic and endemic disorders, the author does not take a position on whether such expansion is desirable or proper.
(C) is wholly unsupported. The author makes no attempt in the passage to identify the health problems of pre-industrial America or their causes.
(E) distorts the main idea of the passsage (as expressed above). Although (E) is consistent with the author's implicit argument that the government should play a significant role in health care, it fails to express the broader point which the author seeks to make.

Question 7—Analysis
(Return to Question 7) . (Return to Passage)

The correct response to Question 7 is (C). The passage describes an imaginary debate over the American democratic ideal among the writers of the American Renaissance, in which Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman are grouped together in one school of thought while Hawthorne and Melville are paired in another.
(A) is unsupported. The passage does not "explore" the impact of the American Renaissance writers to any extent.
(B) is unsupported. The author makes no attempt to distinguish American forms from European forms.
(D) is the second-best response. Admittedly, Emerson's idealism was reflected in the works of Thoreau and Whitman insofar as they too shared the transcendentalists' dream. However, Response (D) distorts the information in the passage. The author actually points out that Thoreau's "too-private individualism" (line 13) was not in accord with what Emerson hoped for. In this sense, the author is pointing out how Thoreau's Walden failed to accurately mirror Emerson's idealism. In addition, although the passage does strongly suggest that, through his works, Whitman fully reflected Emerson's ideal American scholar, the passage does not discuss how Whitman's works serve this end. Thus, Response (D) is not as well supported by the passage as Response (C).
(E) distorts the information in the passage. The only event mentioned in the passage that may have contributed to the idealist mind-set of the times was Jefferson's declaration of political independence. However, the author does not actually claim that it was because of Jefferson (in whole or in part) that the writers of the American Renaissance believed that an ideal world was forming in America. Moreover, there is no discussion in the passage of any other reasons why the American Renaissance writers might have believed as they did.

Question 8—Analysis
(Return to Question 8) . (Return to Passage)

The correct response to Question 8 is (E). Although in criticizing Thoreau's Walden (a literary work), Emerson could be viewed as playing the role of literary critic, this suggestion is a bit attenuated. Moreover, all other answer choices are more strongly supported in the passage.
(A) is implied by the assertion that Emerson "was actually articulating the transcendental assumptions of Jefferson's political independence" (lines 3-5).
(B) is implied by the statement: "The other writers of the American Renaissance were less sanguine than Emerson and Whitman about the fulfillment of the democratic ideal" (lines 19-21).
(C) is implied by the very first sentence of the passage, which refers to Emerson's "American Scholar" address. The word "address" suggests a public speech, and it was Emerson himself that was the speaker (he "pronounced").
(D) is supported. The author asserts that Thoreau "failed to signal the vibrant revolution in national consciousness that Emerson had prophesied" (lines 13-15). Also, the passage supports the idea that Emerson anticipated and predicted that America would become "a perfect democracy of free and self-reliant individuals" (lines 6-7).

Question 9—Analysis
(Return to Question 9) . (Return to Passage)

The correct response to Question 9 is (D). According to the passage, Melville, through his story of Pierre, conveyed the notion that democratic idealism was based upon "misguided assumptions" (lines 25-27). Although the author is not so explicit that Hawthorne also believed idealists to be misguided, Hawthorne's conclusion that transcendental freedom leads to moral anarchy can reasonably be interpreted as such.
(A) is the second-best response. According to the passage, both men sympathized with the democratic ideal (lines 29-30), which was part of the transcendental dream. In this respect, it could be argued that both men were transcendentalists at heart. Also, Hawthorne concluded that transcendental freedom would lead to moral anarchy, while Melville declared the dream unrealizable. In this sense, then, both men were disillusioned with the transcendental dream. However, in lines 6-7, the author states that for the Emerson—a transcendentalist—the democratic ideal seemed "within reach," while for Hawthorne and Melville, the ideal was clearly not within reach. Accordingly, to categorize them as transcendentalists would contradict the author's description of the transcendental viewpoint.
(B) is unsupported by the passage. The passage states that both men sympathized with the transcendental dream (line 29). However, the author neither states nor implies that one of these two men sympathized with the transcendental dream more than the other.
(C) is unsupported by the passage. According to the passage, Hawthorne believed that personal "heroics" lead to moral anarchy (lines 23-24), while Melville believed that the transcendental dream was unrealizable (lines 26-27). This information suggests neither agreement nor disagreement between the two men as to what the transcendental dream would ultimately lead to.
(E) confuses the information in the passage. The passage suggests just the opposite. It can be argued that Melville politicized transcendentalism in that, through his metaphorical story of Pierre, he revealed the problems of democratic idealism. At the same time, Hawthorne personalized transcendentalism through the actions of an individual character (Hester Prynne) in The Scarlet Letter.