The GRE Literature in English Test was a

standardized test A standardized test is a test that is administered and scored in a consistent, or "standard", manner. Standardized tests are designed in such a way that the questions and interpretations are consistent and are administered and scored in a predete ...

administered by the

Educational Testing Service Educational Testing Service (ETS), founded in 1947, is the world's largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization. It is headquartered in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, but has a Princeton address. ETS develops v ...

. It was intended to evaluate applicants seeking admission to a

graduate program Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate (bachelor's) degree. The organization and s ...

English Studies English studies (usually called simply English) is an academic discipline taught in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education in English-speaking countries; it is not to be confused with English taught as a foreign language, which ...

. The test surveyed a wide range of topics related to literature in English, but the focus was mainly on works long accepted as part of the

canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western can ...

. Scores were scaled and then reported as a number between 200 and 800; however, in recent versions of the test, the maximum and minimum reported scores had been 760 (corresponding to the 99 percentile) and 320 (1 percentile) respectively. The mean score for all test takers from July, 2009, to July, 2012, was 549 with a standard deviation of 99.http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/gre_guide_table2.pdf ETS took the decision to discontinue the test after April 2021.

Content specification

The test contained 230 questions, grouped in four broad categories. Since many students who apply to graduate programs in English do so during the first half of their fourth year, the scope of most questions was largely that of the first three years of a standard American undergraduate English curriculum. A sampling of test item content is given below:

Literary analysis (40-55%)

* Conventions and genres * Allusions and references * Meaning and tone * Grammar and

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate par ...

* Literary techniques

Identification (15-20%)

This section tested the ability of examinees to perform recognition of date, author or work by style and/or content. The literary-historical scope of the test is as follows: * Continental, classical and comparative literature through 1925 (5-10%) * British literature through 1660 (including

John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem ''Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and polit ...

) (25-30%) * British literature from 1660 to 1925 (25-30%) * American literature through 1925 (15-25%) * Literature in English after 1925 (20-30%)

Cultural and historical contexts (20-25%)

* Literary history * Cultural history * Identification of details in a work

Literary criticism (10-15%)

Identification and analysis of the characteristics and methods of various critical and theoretical approaches.

References