bigant

If these books were badly written, you would presumably not want to re-read them. We re-read books (out of choice) only because we think they're well written, and therefore enjoy them.

The issue is not poor grammar or completeness of information. The issue is clarity. You’ll agree that the use of punctuation is a part of good grammar. However if we look at a sentence from the example passage, punctuation is hardly in evidence: The increase in the numbers of married women employed outside the home in the twentieth century had less to do with the mechanization of housework and an increase in leisure time for these women than it did with their own economic necessity and with high marriage rates that shrank the available pool of single women workers, previously, in many cases, the only women employers would hire. As the author of the article says, would this sentence be of acceptable standard on the written portion of the GRE? Besides, the mark of a real test is that if all the elements of good writing were present and a candidate still got poor scores, only then could the candidate’s reading comprehension skills be considered truly poor.

One site I suggest is http://longform.org/ As the name indicates they have many long, non-fiction articles on a wide variety of subjects. You could come across words for which you may have to look up the meaning, so that would help with vocabulary preparation. The articles require concentration and that always helps with test preparation.

You seem to be agreeing that the GRE passages are written badly. This means that however badly the GRE passages are written, the reader should be blamed for not comprehending. We might as well get rid of all the English writing teachers in school. Besides, what's wrong if everybody understands first time?

Rule from a book on writing ("What not to write") that I recently read: "A reader should never have to read a sentence twice to understand its meaning". GRE passages flout this rule all the time.

You can go through wordlists and suchlike, and they are helpful, but more from the perspective of knowing the kinds of words that show up in the test. My suggestion is to read non-stop and check the dictionary for meanings of words you don't know. This way is better because you will also see the context in which the words are used.

Well said! Any fool can write convoluted sentences. Clear and crisp writing requires clarity of thought and a willingness to work hard to make the writing clear and engaging. Several commenters have said they haven't fully read the article because it is too long. If you take the time to read the whole article, the author has given the example of the financial crisis, caused by "complex" language that created ` FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). Nobody understood anything and the economy went over a cliff. It sounds like the ETS wants to create the same FUD in GRE candidates. As the author said, the real question is what the aim of any piece of writing is, ie is it to communicate, or create FUD?

Just came across an article in Forbes magazine, underlining the point the author of the original article is making. Why Trying to Learn Clear Writing in College is Like Trying to Learn Sobriety in a Bar http://blogs.forbes....riety-in-a-bar/ The focus on clear writing has to start early, and the GRE testing process should re-enforce the point, rather than add to the problem.

Most of the comments seem to agree that the GRE passages aim should be to filter out candidates through the perecentile system, and therefore that the passages should be difficult. But I agree with the author of the article that the aim of a writer must be to communicate well so that the readers easily understand the points being made. The points being made can be complex, but the language must not be. Otherwise we spend our time arguing about and interpreting what the author is trying to say, when instead we should be debating the points being made (which we are clear about, because they have been communicated clearly)..

All schools say that they look at a variety of factors....seems to me that if you are strong in other areas (recommendations, work experience etc), then 750 looks like a pretty good score...put it another way, it's definitely not a poor score.

Anyone planning to do 'green' engineering? Which are the best programmes?

I've had friends who say that it just increases your first salary, and after a couple of years, a lot of other stuff comes into play. It depends on the functional role you have; if someone has only a regular degree and is in sales, she can make a lot of money in commissions compared to someone with a PhD. I'm going to grad school to specialize further, in a relatively new and (I hope) upcoming field.

Someone I know who did the test told me that Barron's was easier than the real exam. But that could be because the real test is quite draining, from what I've heard.