Study guide
The Verbal Reasoning section of the GMAT contains 23 questions in 45 minutes, drawn entirely from two question families: Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension. Sentence Correction, a grammar-editing question type on the legacy GMAT, was removed when the redesigned exam (launched in 2023 as the GMAT Focus Edition, renamed simply the GMAT Exam in July 2024) debuted, so this section now tests reasoning about arguments and written passages rather than grammar rules. This chapter builds the argument-analysis and passage-reading skills that both question families share.
Assumption Questions
Every Critical Reasoning argument consists of a conclusion, the claim the author wants you to accept, and premises, the stated reasons offered in its support. Almost no argument's premises fully guarantee its conclusion; there is nearly always a gap, an unstated idea the argument needs in order to hold together, and that unstated idea is the assumption. Consider this argument: a bakery should switch to a new flour supplier because the new supplier's flour costs 10 percent less per pound. The stated premise is only about cost, but the conclusion recommends a full switch, so the argument assumes that the new flour is comparable in quality and that no other cost or disruption from switching suppliers would offset the savings. Assumption questions ask you to identify a statement the argument requires. The most reliable check is the negation test: negate a candidate answer choice and ask whether the argument's conclusion still follows from its premises. If negating the choice makes the argument fall apart, that choice is a necessary assumption. If the argument survives the negation largely intact, the choice was never actually required, even if it sounds supportive or true in the real world. Wrong answers on assumption questions often restate a premise, address a topic the argument never raises, or state something far stronger than the argument actually needs; the correct answer is typically the minimum claim required to keep the stated reasoning intact.
Strengthen, Weaken, and Evaluate Questions
Strengthen and weaken questions ask you to make an argument's conclusion more or less believable, not to prove or disprove it outright, so correct answers work in degrees. The most effective strengthen and weaken answers attack the specific gap between premises and conclusion, typically by ruling in or ruling out an alternative explanation for the stated evidence. In the bakery example, a strengthen answer might state that the new supplier's flour has passed the same quality tests as the current flour, closing the quality-comparability gap directly. A weaken answer might state that the new supplier has frequently missed delivery deadlines, introducing a cost the argument's premises never accounted for. Evaluate questions are a close cousin: rather than giving you a strengthener or weakener directly, they ask which question, if answered, would be most useful for judging whether the argument's conclusion is well supported. A good evaluate answer, once you supply the answer to it in both directions, should meaningfully strengthen the argument in one direction and weaken it in the other; if a candidate question would produce the same effect on the argument no matter how it were answered, it is not a useful evaluate answer. A common distractor pattern on all three question types is the scope shift, where an answer choice discusses a related but distinct population, timeframe, or measurement than the one the conclusion actually addresses, making it feel relevant without truly bearing on the argument's logic.
Inference and Boldface Questions
Inference questions in Critical Reasoning ask what must be true, or what is most strongly supported, given only the statements provided, without adding outside assumptions or real-world plausibility. Because inference answers must follow strictly from the given statements, correct answers are often modest and narrowly scoped, while wrong answers frequently overreach by adding a comparison, a causal claim, or a value judgment the passage never actually supports. If a passage states that every member of a chess club owns a chess set, and that Devi is a member of the chess club, a valid inference is that Devi owns a chess set; an answer claiming Devi is the club's best player would be unsupported, since ownership of equipment says nothing about skill. Boldface and plan-of-action questions present an argument with one or two sentences marked in boldface and ask you to describe the role each bolded portion plays in the overall argument, such as identifying a bolded sentence as the main conclusion, a counter-consideration the author acknowledges and then dismisses, or evidence offered in support of the conclusion. These questions reward mapping out the full argument structure first, labeling every sentence as premise, counterpoint, or conclusion, before checking which structural role matches each bolded portion. Plan-of-action arguments follow the same basic structure as other arguments but propose a specific action as the conclusion, so assumption, strengthen, and weaken techniques all still apply, just aimed at a recommended course of action rather than a factual claim.
Reading Comprehension: Main Idea and Structure
Reading Comprehension passages on the GMAT are typically dense, several-paragraph excerpts on business, science, or social-science topics, followed by multiple questions per passage. The most valuable first step is identifying the main idea, the central point the passage as a whole is making, which is usually distinct from any single supporting detail. A passage might spend two paragraphs describing competing scientific theories about a phenomenon and a third paragraph explaining why the author favors one theory over the other; the main idea is closest to the author's overall evaluative point, not merely a summary of the theories described. Structure and function questions ask why the author included a particular sentence, paragraph, or example, such as whether a cited study is offered as support for the author's own view or as an example of a view the author goes on to challenge. Answering these accurately requires tracking the passage's organization as you read: noting where the author introduces a claim, where a contrasting viewpoint appears (often signaled by words like however or although), and where the author's own conclusion or evaluation is stated. Reading with an eye toward this organizational skeleton, rather than trying to memorize every factual detail, makes both main-idea and structure questions considerably faster to answer.
Reading Comprehension: Detail and Inference Questions
Supporting-detail questions ask about a specific fact or claim stated in the passage, and the correct answer is normally a close paraphrase of language found in a specific location in the text; the surest method is to locate the relevant sentence or two before selecting an answer, rather than relying on memory of the passage as a whole. Detail questions are often paired with line or paragraph references, and the most common wrong answers either reverse a relationship stated in the passage, such as swapping cause and effect, or attach a qualifier the passage never used, such as changing most to all. Inference questions in Reading Comprehension, like their Critical Reasoning counterparts, ask what must be true or is most strongly supported by the passage, not what seems plausible or is true in general. Because passages often present multiple viewpoints, a frequent trap is attributing a claim to the author when the passage actually presents it as someone else's position, possibly one the author later disputes. Careful attribution, keeping straight which claims belong to the author and which belong to a cited researcher, industry group, or historical figure the passage describes, is essential for both detail and inference accuracy. As with Critical Reasoning, the discipline of sticking strictly to what the text supports, and resisting answers that sound reasonable but require outside knowledge or an unstated leap, is what separates strong Reading Comprehension performance from guessing based on general impressions.
Key terms
- Conclusion
- — The main claim an argument is trying to establish; the point its premises are offered to support.
- Premise
- — A stated reason or piece of evidence offered in support of an argument's conclusion.
- Assumption
- — An unstated idea an argument relies on to connect its premises to its conclusion.
- Negation test
- — A check for assumption answers: negate the candidate choice and see whether the argument's support for its conclusion collapses.
- Scope shift
- — A distractor pattern in which an answer choice addresses a related but different population, timeframe, or measurement than the argument or passage actually concerns.
- Evaluate question
- — A Critical Reasoning question asking which question, if answered, would most help judge whether the argument's conclusion is well supported.
- Boldface question
- — A Critical Reasoning question asking what role one or more bolded sentences play in an argument's structure, such as conclusion, premise, or dismissed counterpoint.
- Plan-of-action argument
- — An argument whose conclusion recommends a specific course of action rather than asserting a factual claim.
- Main idea
- — The central point a Reading Comprehension passage as a whole is making, distinct from any single supporting detail.
- Structure and function question
- — A Reading Comprehension question asking why the author included a particular sentence, example, or paragraph.
- Attribution
- — Correctly identifying which claims in a passage belong to the author versus to a cited source or viewpoint the passage describes.
Exam tips
- State the argument's conclusion and its logical gap in your own words before reading the answer choices on any Critical Reasoning question.
- Apply the negation test to check assumption answers, but remember it is not a reliable test for strengthen, weaken, or inference questions.
- On Reading Comprehension, sketch the passage's organizational skeleton (claim, contrasting view, author's evaluation) as you read rather than after finishing.
- For inference questions in either question family, favor the most modest answer that must be true over a stronger answer that merely sounds plausible.
- Remember that Sentence Correction is not tested on the current GMAT (it was dropped with the 2023 Focus Edition redesign); all Verbal points come from reasoning about arguments and passages, not grammar editing.