GRE Verbal Practice Test 20 (with Answers)

Text Completion

Questions 1–5.

1 Satyajit Ray's first film was made on a budget so that production stopped several times while he searched for more money.

2 The documentary's claim to objectivity was by its selective editing, which omitted every interview that contradicted the director's view.

3 Early critics dismissed television as a (i) medium, fit only for light entertainment, yet within a generation it had become the (ii) source of news for most households.

4 The film's ending is deliberately , leaving audiences to decide for themselves whether the hero survives.

5 Far from being a passive audience, social media users actively content, editing, remixing and sharing it with others.

Sentence Equivalence

Questions 6–10. Select the TWO correct answer choices.

Reading Comprehension — Passage 1

Questions 11–15 are based on the passage below.

In the 1920s, Soviet filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein developed a theory of montage that would influence cinema worldwide. Eisenstein argued that the meaning of a film arises not from individual shots but from the collision between them. A shot of a face followed by a shot of food might suggest hunger; the same face followed by a coffin might suggest grief. The viewer, in this account, actively constructs meaning from the juxtaposition.

This approach contrasted sharply with a style that later critics associated with long, uninterrupted takes and deep focus, in which the camera allows the viewer to explore a scene without the director dictating where to look. The critic André Bazin championed this second approach as more faithful to reality. Most filmmakers today combine both methods, using rapid editing for action and longer takes for moments of reflection.

📚 Glossary · কঠিন শব্দের অর্থ

Word	বাংলা অর্থ	English meaning
montage	মন্তাজ	the joining of separate shots to create meaning
juxtaposition	পাশাপাশি স্থাপন	placing things side by side for contrast
championed	সমর্থন করেছিলেন	strongly supported

Reading Comprehension — Passage 2

Questions 16–20 are based on the passage below.

The "agenda-setting" theory of the media, first tested in a study of the 1968 United States presidential election, holds that the news media may not tell people what to think, but they are remarkably successful in telling people what to think about. The researchers found a strong correspondence between the issues that local newspapers and television emphasised and the issues voters considered most important.

The rise of social media has complicated the theory. With audiences fragmented across countless sources, no single outlet can set the agenda for an entire society, and algorithms that recommend content based on users' past behaviour may give each person a different set of priorities. Some researchers argue that agenda-setting power has not disappeared but shifted, from editors to the designers of recommendation systems and to influential users who can make a topic trend within hours.

📚 Glossary · কঠিন শব্দের অর্থ

Word	বাংলা অর্থ	English meaning
correspondence	সাদৃশ্য	a close similarity or match
fragmented	বিভক্ত	broken into many separate parts
algorithms	অ্যালগরিদম	sets of rules computers follow