route66

Even terribly written journal articles have headlines. Why can't they at least give us headlines?

I think they'll just check if your scores pass the cut-off scores, and look at other factors. In the case of your 2nd score, since the quant is ok and presumably verbal is also ok, that should be an overall ok (ie, this should not serve as a cause to reject you).

I completely agree with Prasun. Here’s a line from the paper, “An Introduction to the Analytical Writing Section of the GRE revised General Test” “What matters is……….the cogency of your ideas about the issue and the clarity and skill with which you communicate those ideas.” (my emphasis) http://www.ets.org/M...pdf/awintro.pdf (Page 8) It's obviously not just about correct language but communication of ideas, though apparently ONLY for the test-takers and not for the GRE passages. A clear case of double standards.

ETS's attitude is daft and as the author says, it is a crystal-clear case of the emperor's new clothes. Any non-fiction writing, and that includes the test passages, should communicate clearly (including headlines etc), so that the reader can concentrate on understanding the actual content. Imagine getting a gift, and spending all your time fighting the packaging. You lose time and energy just fighting the packaging, when the real aim should be to get you to the gift (ie the passage's main ideas/thoughts) as quickly as possible. The point may have been made before, but we all know that any fool can make something appear difficult by writing without headlines, long sentences, little or no punctuation etc. We've all had teachers like this, who make things needlessly complicated and difficult because they are terrible at communication. I think ETS is just making a big fool out of everybody taking the test.,

At the very least, why can't the passages have headlines?

The voices are a bit robotic in the video. Is it like that with the content too?

What a great idea ....though I'm too cowardly to try it out myself, I must admit.