Taking the HSPT? Not sure what to expect on the Verbal section? After walking through each of the section’s question types and finding out about some great free resources you can use to study each one, you should feel a lot more prepared to conquer it.

The first question type that the HSPT Verbal section features is Antonyms. These questions present a word and then prompt you to select the answer choice that is the given word’s antonym, or opposite. Similar to this question type is the test’s Synonym questions, which present a word and ask you to pick out the answer choice that is its closest synonym—that is, closest in meaning to it. You can study for both of these question types by expanding your vocabulary. Varsity Tutors’ free HSPT Verbal Practice Tests can help you do this by asking you practice problems similar to the Synonym and Antonym questions you’ll encounter on the HSPT. Each Practice Test consists of about a dozen question, and you get to see detailed performance results each time you finish one. If you miss a question, check out the full explanation included with each question; it includes definitions of the word in question as well as answer choice words. Given this, reading over the explanations for each question, even for those that you answered correctly, can help you learn new words in preparation for the HSPT’s Verbal section.

The HSPT Verbal section isn’t just made up of Synonym questions and Antonym questions, however; it also features three other types of questions that test your verbal logic: Analogies; Logic Questions; and Verbal Classifications. Analogy questions present two words that are somehow related and either provide you with a third word and ask you to pick out a fourth word from the given answer choices that is related to the third word in the same way that the second word is related to the first, or, it asks you to pick out a pair of words that also have the same relationship as the first and second words. Let’s look at an example problem: say that you were prompted with the question “Note is to music as word is to __________.” The correct answer would be something like “sentence,” as just as notes are the component parts of music, words are the component parts of sentences. The question might also have been formatted as “Note is to music as __________”; in this case, the correct answer choice would have been something like “word is to sentence.” If the phrasing of analogies strikes you as somewhat strange, you’re not alone; it can be difficult to focus on finding the correct answer to Analogy questions if you’ve never answered any before, so it’s important to familiarize with the conventions of this kind of problem before test day. Varsity Tutors’ HSPT Verbal Practice Problems are organized by concept, so you can choose to focus on practicing a single type of problem, like Analogies. This will ensure that you are used to the question type before you encounter it on the HSPT, which can give you a definite advantage over students who have never answered analogy questions before.

Like Analogy questions, Verbal Classification questions also test your ability to think about the ways in which words relate to one another. Whereas Analogy questions ask you to pick out the single answer choice which completes a relationship given between the words in the question prompt, Verbal Classifications present you with answer choices and ask you to figure out the relationship that exists between all of them but one. Your job is to pick out the answer choice that does not belong to the category represented by all of the other answer choices. So, for example, if your answer choices were “rose,” “pine,” “aspen,” “maple,” and “oak,” “rose” would be the correct answer, because while a rose is a kind of flower, pines, aspens, maples, and oaks are all kinds of trees, not flowers. Verbal logic of the kind that Verbal Classification questions test can be a difficult thing to practice without the right resources, but Varsity Tutors’ Practice Tests will let you improve your ability to spot these associations between words and answer these questions without wasting too much time on the HSPT’s Verbal section.

The final kind of question that is featured on the HSPT’s Verbal section is Logic questions. Logic questions test your ability to understand logical statements, and to some, may appear to be the most straightforward of the five question types on the Verbal section of the HSPT. Here’s an example Logic problem so that you can get an idea of what you’re up against:

Some professors are interesting people. All interesting people are good conversationalists. Peter is a good conversationalist. Which of the following is true?

Peter is an interesting person.

Peter might be a professor.

Peter cannot be a professor.

None of the other answers.

The correct answer to this question is “Peter might be a professor.” It may help you to develop a strategy of drawing out the relationships between the different groups, people, and things involved in a logic problem, and you can establish a method of answering these questions by practicing them using Varsity Tutors’ free HSPT Verbal Practice Tests.

You have the ability to increase the efficacy of your study sessions by taking a Full-Length HSPT Verbal Practice Test. These free online tests will ask a wide range of questions that use all of the concepts you’ll need to know on the real exam. The extended testing format offers you the chance to evaluate your speed and practice using your skills under pressure. Just like the results pages for the concept-specific practice tests, each of the results pages for the full-length practice tests gives you helpful information, like links to in-depth concept review and detailed explanations of each answer. These free online HSPT practice tests can also guide you in assembling a personalized study plan by informing you of the topics in which you might need more review. The other convenient resources available through Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools can help you as you study, too. When you’re ready, you can take another free Full-Length HSPT Verbal Practice Test to measure your progress.

While facing five different types of questions on a single section of the HSPT may appear intimidating, using Varsity Tutors’ free HSPT resources to methodically practice each one until you are both familiar with its conventions and comfortable answering questions of that type will greatly benefit you on the day of the exam.