GMAT Focus Verbal strategy: Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension

Updated 25 September 2026 · 8 min read

The GMAT Focus Verbal section is a reasoning test that happens to use words. Grammar is no longer tested: Sentence Correction was removed with the Focus Edition. What is left are two question types, Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension, and both reward the same core skill: separating what a text actually says from what it merely suggests.

This guide explains the section's format, a pacing plan, and one method for each question type, with an original argument and an original short passage to practise on.

The Verbal section at a glance

According to GMAC, the Verbal Reasoning section has 23 questions in 45 minutes, a mix of Critical Reasoning (CR) and Reading Comprehension (RC). Every question is multiple choice with five options. GMAC describes the section as measuring your ability to read and comprehend written material and to reason and evaluate arguments.

• Critical Reasoning gives you a short argument, which GMAC says is usually fewer than 100 words, and one question about it: weaken, strengthen, find the assumption, evaluate, resolve a paradox, identify a flaw and so on.
• Reading Comprehension gives you a longer passage and several questions about it. GMAC lists the skills tested as main idea, supporting ideas, inference, application, logical structure and style. Passages typically cover science, social science and business topics.

The section is adaptive and scored from 60 to 90, and it counts as much toward your Total Score as Quant and Data Insights. There is no Sentence Correction, so skip any grammar chapters in older prep books.

A realistic Verbal pace

Forty-five minutes for 23 questions is an average of about 1 minute 57 seconds per question. That average is misleading, because RC and CR spend time differently:

• A CR question includes its own reading. Plan for roughly 2 minutes each, including the argument.
• An RC passage is a fixed cost followed by cheap questions. Reading a passage well might take 2½–3½ minutes; each question after that should take about 1 minute to 1½ minutes.

A simple way to stay on track is to check the clock after every passage and at the halfway mark: after 12 questions you want to have used about 23 minutes. If you are more than three minutes behind, choose the next hard CR question as your strategic guess.

You can bookmark questions as you go. Once every question in the section is answered, the Question Review & Edit screen lets you revisit any question and change up to three answers, within the section's 45 minutes. That is useful for a CR question where you were torn between two choices, but it is not a reason to rush. Change an answer only when you find a specific reason the original was wrong.

Critical Reasoning: one method for every argument

The Critical Reasoning guide covers every CR question type in detail. Here is the method that underlies all of them.

1. Read the question stem first. It tells you whether you are looking for a gap to attack (weaken), to close (strengthen, assumption) or to describe (flaw, method).
2. Find the conclusion. Look for the claim the rest of the argument supports. Words like "therefore", "so" and "clearly" often introduce it, but not always.
3. Name the gap. Ask what the author takes for granted in moving from evidence to conclusion. Most gaps are a change of group, of time, of measure, or a jump from correlation to cause.
4. Predict, then eliminate. Say in your own words what the right answer must do, then remove choices that are out of scope, too extreme, or merely on topic.

Worked example: Critical Reasoning

Since the regional airline began offering free checked bags on its morning flights, those flights have been, on average, 12 percent fuller. The airline's managers concluded that free checked bags attract passengers and plan to extend the offer to evening flights.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the managers' reasoning?

• (A) Most passengers on the airline's evening flights travel for business.
• (B) Checked bags add slightly to the fuel cost of each flight.
• (C) At the same time as the bag offer began, a competing airline cancelled its morning flights on the same routes.
• (D) Some passengers on morning flights did not check any bags.
• (E) The airline's evening flights are, on average, already fuller than its morning flights.

Solution. The conclusion is causal: free bags caused the rise in bookings. The gap is an alternative cause. Choice (C) supplies one: passengers from the cancelled competitor had to go somewhere, which would explain fuller morning flights without the bag offer. (A) and (E) are about evening flights and might affect whether the plan works there, but they do not attack the evidence. (B) is about cost, not demand. (D) is compatible with the offer attracting passengers; not everyone needs to use it.

For timed sets by question type, see Critical Reasoning practice, weaken and strengthen and assumption questions.

Reading Comprehension: read for structure

RC does not reward memorising details. The passage stays on screen while you answer, so you can always look back. What it rewards is knowing why each paragraph is there and what the author thinks.

Use this routine:

1. Read the first paragraph carefully. It usually sets up the topic and often the view the passage will challenge or support.
2. Write a five-word note per paragraph. For example: "P1: old theory", "P2: new evidence against", "P3: author's cautious view". This is your map.
3. Mark the author's attitude. Words like "however", "surprisingly", "plausibly" and "fails to" show where the author stands. Main idea and tone questions depend on them.
4. For each question, go back to the text. Detail and inference answers must be supported by a specific sentence. If you cannot point to it, the choice is probably wrong.

Worked example: Reading Comprehension

For decades, economists assumed that small firms create most new jobs, because the share of employment growth recorded at small firms was consistently higher than their share of total employment. More recent studies complicate this view. When firms are grouped by age rather than size, the pattern changes: young firms, which are nearly all small, account for most net job creation, while older small firms add jobs no faster than large ones.

The distinction matters for policy. Programmes that support all small businesses equally spend much of their budget on long-established firms with little prospect of growth. If the aim is employment, the evidence suggests that support should be directed at new firms in their first years, though the studies do not show which forms of support work best.

Question 1. The primary purpose of the passage is to

• (A) argue that small firms create few jobs
• (B) explain how a revised analysis of job creation changes a policy implication
• (C) compare the growth of young and old firms in several countries
• (D) criticise economists for relying on employment data
• (E) recommend specific programmes for new firms

Answer: (B). Paragraph 1 revises the old view by grouping firms by age; paragraph 2 draws the policy consequence. (A) is too extreme: young small firms create many jobs. (C) invents "several countries". (D) overstates the author's tone. (E) is contradicted by the last clause, which says the studies do not show which support works best.

Question 2. It can be inferred from the passage that an old small firm

• (A) is likely to be acquired by a large firm
• (B) adds jobs at roughly the same rate as a large firm
• (C) creates more jobs than a young firm of the same size
• (D) receives more support than a young firm under current programmes
• (E) is not counted in studies that group firms by size

Answer: (B). The first paragraph says older small firms "add jobs no faster than large ones". (C) contradicts the passage. (D) goes beyond it: the passage says programmes spend much of their budget on established firms, not that each old firm receives more than a young one. That kind of near-miss, a statement that sounds like the passage but claims slightly more, is the most common wrong answer in RC inference questions.

For a longer passage with a full set of questions, try our Reading Comprehension practice.

Common Verbal traps and how to avoid them

How to improve your Verbal score

• Review wrong answers more than right ones. For every miss, write why the right answer is right and why your choice was wrong. In Verbal, the second part is where the learning is.
• Drill by question type. Twenty weaken questions in a row teach the pattern far faster than twenty mixed questions. Then mix types to practise recognising them.
• Read dense prose outside prep. Science and economics articles build the stamina and vocabulary RC passages demand.
• Keep a log of trap types. If most misses are "too extreme" answers, you have a specific fix. The error log guide shows how.

Deciding where Verbal goes in your exam? The section order guide weighs the options, and the score calculator shows how a Verbal gain moves your Total.