The Verbal section containes 3 or 4 Reading Comprehension passages, each approximately has 200-300 words and followed by 3 to 4 questions. The passages are written in difficult prose, often of technical nature, and are adopted from books and journals in the broad areas of business, the social sciences, the natural sciences, and humanities. Reading Comprehension questions are designed to see whether you can get the gist of the prose--its underlying purpose and principal ideas--quickly and accurately.

You will see about 14 Sentence Corrections on a GMAT verbal section, so these questions will account for about a third of your verbal score. Sentence Corrections test your knowledge of "standard written English," i.e formal language used in textbooks and scholarly periodicals. In addition, these questions check whether you can produce simplicity and clarity or redundancy and ambiguity in a sentence.

Critical Reasoning tests your ability to evaluate the merits of an argument or opinion. You'll see approximately 14 Critical Reasoning questions in your Verbal section, each based on a short argument. Most commonly, you'll be tested on your ability to strengthen or weaken a given argument or to identify an author's major assumption. Success in Critical Reasoning hinges on developing a systematic approach to analyzing the logic of arguments.