GMAT · Guides · October 30, 2026 · 8 min read

GMAT Verbal Reasoning: format, Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension, pacing and how to improve

GMAT Verbal Reasoning is a 45-minute section of 23 multiple-choice questions, each with five answer choices. Since the current GMAT replaced the old format, Verbal has only two question types: Critical Reasoning (a short argument and one question) and Reading Comprehension (a longer passage with a set of questions). Sentence Correction, the grammar question type, is gone. Verbal is therefore a test of reading precisely and reasoning about what a text does and does not say, not of grammar rules. Below is the format, what each question type tests, a pacing plan, a short worked example of each and a practical way to improve.

Verbal at a glance

As of October 2026, per mba.com:

You choose the order of the three sections and can take one optional 10-minute break after the first or second section. For how Verbal fits with Quant and Data Insights, see the GMAT syllabus and exam pattern.

How many of each type? GMAC does not publish the split. Test takers commonly report about four reading passages with three or four questions each, and the rest Critical Reasoning, but plan for some variation from test to test.

Critical Reasoning: what it tests

According to mba.com, Critical Reasoning measures your ability to make arguments, evaluate arguments, and formulate or evaluate a plan of action. Each question is built on a short passage, usually under 100 words, followed by one question.

The passage is usually an argument: evidence, a conclusion and an unstated gap between them. The question then asks you to do something with that gap:

• strengthen or weaken the conclusion;
• identify an assumption the argument needs;
• find what would help evaluate the argument;
• name the flaw in the reasoning;
• explain an apparent paradox;
• draw an inference that the facts support;
• describe the role of a statement (often shown in bold);
• judge whether a plan will achieve its goal.

No specialist knowledge is needed. Treat the facts in the passage as true and focus on whether they really support the conclusion. Our guide to GMAT Critical Reasoning covers each question type with its own method and four more worked examples.

Reading Comprehension: what it tests

Reading Comprehension passages run up to about 350 words (per mba.com) on science, social science and business topics (per GMAC). Each passage comes with a set of questions, and you need no prior knowledge of the subject.

mba.com lists the reading skills tested as main idea, supporting idea, inference, application, logical structure and style. In practice that means questions such as:

• What is the primary purpose of the passage?
• According to the passage, why did X happen?
• What can be inferred about Y?
• Which situation is most similar to the one the author describes?
• Why does the author mention Z in the second paragraph?
• What is the author’s attitude towards the theory?

Some questions are answered by one sentence; others need you to understand how the paragraphs fit together. The passages are written to be dense rather than difficult, and the wrong answers rely on familiar patterns: words copied from the passage that answer a different question, claims stronger than the text supports, and ideas that sound reasonable but are not in the passage. Our full guide to GMAT Reading Comprehension has the question types, a reading method and a worked passage with three questions.

A short worked example of each

Both are original questions written for this guide, not official GMAT questions.

Critical Reasoning: weaken

Over the past year, the city of Harlow added 40 kilometres of protected bike lanes. During the same year, the number of cyclists counted crossing Harlow’s main bridge rose by 30 percent. The city’s transport office concludes that the new bike lanes caused more people to cycle.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the transport office’s conclusion?

(A) Building the new bike lanes cost more than the city had originally budgeted.

(B) Many cyclists in Harlow say they feel safer riding in protected lanes than in traffic.

(C) For most of the year, the main bridge was closed to cars for repairs, and many people who used to drive across it began crossing by bicycle.

(D) Several nearby cities plan to build protected bike lanes next year.

(E) In Harlow, more people cycle in summer than in winter.

Conclusion: the lanes caused more cycling. Evidence: more cyclists on the bridge in the same year. Gap: something else may have changed that year.

Answer: C. Closing the bridge to cars gives a different reason for the rise in bridge cyclists. B is the opposite trap: it supports the office. A and D are out of scope (cost, other cities). E compares seasons, but the comparison in the argument is between two whole years, so it explains nothing.

Reading Comprehension: function of a detail

Mangrove forests along tropical coasts store large amounts of carbon, most of it in waterlogged soils where dead plant material decomposes slowly. For this reason, conservation groups often promote mangrove restoration as a climate measure. Yet restoration projects have a mixed record. Seedlings planted on mudflats lower than the mangroves’ natural range are frequently drowned by the tides, and projects judged by the number of seedlings planted, rather than the number that survive, can report success while the young trees die. Some ecologists argue that restoration which first repairs the flow of water to former mangrove sites tends to produce forests that last.

The author mentions projects “judged by the number of seedlings planted” most likely in order to

(A) explain how some restoration projects can appear successful even when they fail

(B) argue that conservation groups exaggerate the climate benefits of mangroves

(C) show that planting seedlings costs less than repairing water flow

(D) suggest that mangroves store less carbon than is commonly believed

(E) describe the method of restoration that most ecologists recommend

Answer: A. The phrase sits in the part of the passage about the “mixed record”: counting seedlings planted instead of survivors lets a failing project look successful. B and D contradict the first sentence, which the author presents as fact. C is never discussed. E describes the last sentence, and the passage attributes that view to “some ecologists”, not most.

Pacing: about two minutes per question

Verbal gives 45 minutes for 23 questions, an average of 1 minute 57 seconds. The two question types spend time differently.

A practical routine:

• Check the clock twice. Aim to have about 22–23 minutes left when you are around question 12. This allows for the fact that a passage’s reading time lands on whichever question opens it.
• Cap any single question at about 3 minutes. Eliminate, guess, bookmark and move on. You can still return to it on the Review & Edit screen if time remains.
• Do not reread the whole passage for each question. Read it once for structure, then go back only to the lines a question points to.
• Answer everything. mba.com states that unanswered questions are penalised, so a guess on the last question always beats a blank.

How to improve your Verbal score

1. Diagnose by question type, not by section. A Verbal score alone does not tell you what to fix. After a practice test, sort your misses into Critical Reasoning (by question type) and Reading Comprehension (by question type and passage topic). Most people find one or two types cause most of the damage.

2. Prephrase before reading the choices. In Critical Reasoning, state the gap in the argument in your own words. In Reading Comprehension, predict what a main-idea answer should say. The answer choices are written to sound plausible; arriving with your own answer protects you from them.

3. Learn the traps by name. Out of scope, too extreme, opposite, true but irrelevant, half right. When you review a question, write down which trap the wrong answer you picked was. Patterns appear quickly.

4. Read for structure. For every paragraph you read, ask what it does: introduces a view, gives evidence, raises an objection, concludes. This habit pays off in both question types, and it is the core of boldface and function questions.

5. Read dense English outside practice. If English is not your first language, the bottleneck is often reading speed and comfort with long sentences. Twenty minutes a day of serious science, economics or business writing, read with the same “what is this paragraph doing?” question, builds both.

6. Review slowly, practise under time. Untimed review of each question (why the right answer is right, why each wrong one is wrong) is where you learn. Timed mixed sets, and later full 23-question sections, are where you check that the learning holds at test pace.

7. Use official material for the final check. GMAC’s free official practice exams on mba.com are the best way to see how your Verbal work translates into a section score. Our GMAT score calculator shows how a change in Verbal affects your total.

Common questions

Is Sentence Correction still on the GMAT? No. It was removed with the current version of the exam, so grammar is no longer tested directly.

Do I need outside knowledge for Verbal? No. mba.com notes that no specialised knowledge of the subject matter is needed; everything required is in the passage.

What is a good Verbal score? It depends on your target schools, and Verbal section scores spread differently from Quant and Data Insights. See what a good GMAT score is for the current percentile tables.

Is Verbal harder for non-native speakers? It usually takes longer to improve, because reading speed builds slowly. The question types themselves are logic tasks, so method and practice close much of the gap.

To see Verbal questions next to every other format on the test, look at our GMAT sample questions. The logical side of Data Sufficiency uses many of the same skills as Critical Reasoning; see GMAT Data Sufficiency.

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