An original GRE Verbal practice test on urbanization and sociology — 5 Text Completion, 5 Sentence Equivalence, and 10 Reading Comprehension questions, 20 questions in 30 minutes.

নগরায়ণ ও সমাজবিজ্ঞান বিষয়ক একটি মৌলিক GRE ভার্বাল প্র্যাকটিস টেস্ট।

30min
Timeসময়
20
Questionsপ্রশ্ন
130–170
Scaled Scoreস্কোর

How to use it: Start the timer, complete all sections, then check your answers.

ব্যবহারের নিয়ম: টাইমার শুরু করে সব সেকশন শেষ করুন।

30:00
Text Completion

Questions 1–5.

1 The neighborhood's rapid gentrification displaced many long-time residents, a process critics describe as far from .

2 Urban planners once considered high-rise public housing a for overcrowding, only to see many such projects demolished decades later amid social problems.

3 The city's growth has been (i) , producing a (ii) metropolitan area with little coordination between adjacent districts.

4 Far from being a modern phenomenon, urban inequality has across centuries of city-building, in forms that merely change their outward appearance.

5 The census data revealed a population shift that was , surprising demographers who had projected continued urban growth.

Sentence Equivalence

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

6 The sociologist's fieldwork was ______, spanning fifteen years of continuous observation in the same three neighborhoods.

7 The proposed zoning reform faced ______ opposition from homeowners, who packed every public hearing to voice their objections.

8 The new district was designed to be entirely ______, allowing residents to walk to work, school, and shops without needing a car.

9 Despite decades of urban renewal spending, the district remained visibly ______, its infrastructure crumbling and its storefronts empty.

10 The city council's decision-making process was criticized as ______, with major contracts awarded without any public disclosure of the bidding process.

Reading Comprehension — Passage 1

Questions 11–15 are based on the passage below.

Sociologists have long debated whether living in a large, dense city fundamentally alters social behavior, a question first given systematic treatment in an influential early-twentieth-century essay that argued urban life produces a distinctive psychological orientation: a blasé attitude, an emotional reserve adopted as protection against the sensory overload of constant, superficial contact with strangers. This "urban alienation" thesis dominated sociological thinking on cities for decades, portraying urbanites as isolated individuals surrounded by people yet fundamentally disconnected from them. More recent research complicates this picture considerably. Detailed ethnographic studies of dense urban neighborhoods have documented extensive networks of mutual aid, informal surveillance ("eyes on the street," in one influential formulation), and community ties that rival or exceed those found in smaller towns, suggesting that apparent anonymity in public spaces coexists with rich private and semi-private social networks largely invisible to a casual observer. The apparent contradiction may be resolved by distinguishing between weak ties, the superficial interactions with strangers on a crowded street that gave rise to the original alienation thesis, and strong ties, the family, friend, and neighbor relationships that continue to flourish within urban density; a city dweller may be simultaneously blasé toward the former and richly embedded within the latter, meaning both classical descriptions of urban life capture something real without contradicting each other.

📚 Glossary · কঠিন শব্দের অর্থ
Wordবাংলা অর্থEnglish meaning
blaséউদাসীনunimpressed or indifferent due to overexposure
ethnographicনৃতাত্ত্বিকbased on direct observation of communities
weak tiesদুর্বল সম্পর্কsuperficial, casual social connections

11 The primary purpose of the passage is to

12 According to the passage, the "blasé attitude" was originally explained as

13 The distinction between "weak ties" and "strong ties" is introduced in order to

14 Select all statements the passage would support. (Select all that apply.)

15 The passage suggests that the two classical descriptions of urban life ultimately

Reading Comprehension — Passage 2

Questions 16–20 are based on the passage below.

Gentrification, the process by which an influx of wealthier residents transforms a historically lower-income neighborhood, is frequently framed in public discourse as an unambiguous story of displacement and loss, and there is substantial evidence supporting this framing: rising rents can force long-time residents to relocate, often to areas with fewer amenities and weaker social networks built over decades. Some housing researchers, however, caution against treating displacement as gentrification's only or even primary demographic effect. Longitudinal studies tracking specific households over time have found that outright displacement rates in gentrifying neighborhoods are, in many cases, no higher than in comparable non-gentrifying poor neighborhoods, where residents also move frequently due to eviction, housing quality, or economic hardship unrelated to neighborhood change. This finding does not mean gentrification is harmless; researchers taking this view generally still document real costs, including rising costs of living for those who remain, loss of neighborhood-specific cultural institutions, and psychological effects of watching one's community change around oneself even without being forced to leave physically. The disagreement, then, is less about whether gentrification causes harm than about which harms are most significant and how public policy resources should be allocated in response — a debate with direct consequences for whether municipal intervention should prioritize preventing displacement specifically or address a broader set of harms experienced by residents who remain in place.

📚 Glossary · কঠিন শব্দের অর্থ
Wordবাংলা অর্থEnglish meaning
influxআগমন/প্রবাহan arrival of a large number of people
displacementউচ্ছেদ/স্থানচ্যুতিbeing forced to leave one's home or area
longitudinalদীর্ঘমেয়াদী (গবেষণা)studying the same subjects over a long period

16 The primary purpose of the passage is to

17 According to longitudinal studies mentioned in the passage, displacement rates in gentrifying neighborhoods

18 The passage indicates that researchers who question the displacement-centered framing nonetheless acknowledge

19 The passage characterizes the core disagreement among researchers as being about

20 The overall tone of the passage toward the common "displacement" framing of gentrification is best described as