Sentence Equivalence Questions: Because finding ONE word for the blank just wasn’t tedious enough! If you’re studying for the GRE, sentence equivalence questions can be a bit tricky, and maybe you have some questions about the second Verbal section of PowerPrep test 1. Don’t worry! PrepScholar is here to help walk you through it.

First, let’s search our sentence for clues as to how our blank should relate to the rest of the sentence. We should note on importance structural word in our sentence: because. This indicates that the second part of our sentence will supply a reason for the relationship between “international financial issues” and “the U.S. media” that is missing in our blank. Therefore, we should look in the part of the sentence after “because” to look for clues.

Apparently, “they,” these international financial issues, don’t make good headlines and are “inaccessible” to audiences. If this is the case, we might expect that the “U.S. media” probably doesn’t really pay a lot of attention to them. We might predict, then, that our blank should say something like “ignored,” to convey that due to the fact that they are not very exciting to audiences who can’t relate, the U.S. media ignores these issues.

Predicting an answer to a sentence equivalence question can sometimes be a little bit more difficult because the test makers don’t have to give us quite as many clues. In other words, since we have to have two answers that complete the sentence in the same way, the test makers can leave our blank open to a little more interpretation. Still, we should do our best to make some sort of prediction. Let’s see if anything matches or at least is related to our prediction “ignored.”

neglected

“Neglected” is pretty similar to our prediction “ignored” since to “neglect” something is to fail to give it proper attention or care. Let’s keep A, but we’ll have to see if there’s a synonym that affects the sentence in the same way.

slighted

 

We might think of a “slight” as an offense as to “slight” someone usually means to treat them with disdain or indifference. However, “slight” can also have a somewhat similar meaning: to treat (something) as slight or unimportant. This answer matches both our prediction and A, so it looks like A and B could be a good pair. We should still quickly check the rest of our answers just to be confident that what we have is correct.

overrated

 

This answer makes it sound as though the media pays undue attention to these issues, which is not what our sentence suggests—why would the media give an unfair amount of attention to something that audiences aren’t interested in and can’t connect with? We can eliminate C.

hidden

 

This answer may seem sort of similar to our prediction, but “hidden” implies that the media deliberately attempts to keep these issues from being explored, which is a little bit more extreme than what is suggested by our sentence. We can eliminate D.

criticized

 

While the media may criticize, or express judgment about, many things, they usually only do it if it makes “snappy headlines.” We can eliminate D because it also doesn’t have support in our sentence.

repudiated

 

To “repudiate” something is to refuse to acknowledge or disown it. Like D, this may seem somewhat related, but it’s a bit too extreme. Also, we should note that D and F are not synonymous and do not pair well with any of our other answers, so we know that both of these answers must be incorrect.

Let’s triple-check by plugging A and B into our sentence to make sure they create sentences with similar meanings.

International financial issues are typically neglected / slighted by the United States media because they are too technical to make snappy headlines and too inaccessible to people who lack a background in economics.

Yes, these answers create two sentences that are alike in meaning and are logically consistent with the reasoning provided in the sentence. A and B are correct.

 

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