<p>yeah, i found on tha march 2009 test, tha passages werent too bad, but i got tripped up on vocab. on the may 2009 test, it was tha opposite. is it true that if passage questions are harder, then CB will lighten up a little on tha SC, or vice versa? thanks, man</p>
<p>Difficulty is subjective.</p>
<p>This is not always true because vocabulary can be extremely subjective because one list may contain the word while another doesn’t. This means that one person will know that word and another won’t, meaning that the difficulty is indeed relative to each individual’s current knowledge. And to your previous question, if the passages are harder or easier, then the sentence completions are not necessarily easier or harder respectively.</p>
<p>uggghh, if difficulty is so “subjective” then i guess i better start asking it this way: “IN UR OPINION, wud my original q be correct/ relevant?”</p>
<p>thank you.</p>
<p>The fact that difficulty is subjective makes it so that a reasonable answer is rendered impossible.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine ETS thinks, “Hmm. Let’s make this long passage section really hard this time.” If the majority really finds a section harder than usual, I doubt it’s the result of a conscious decision by the test writers. And because it’s not a conscious decision, it would not be consciously countered by making another section easier.</p>
<p>rishmeister has got a point though. They may not consciously make a section harder but they need to balance out the difficulty somehow. Yes, I know there are curves to adjust but you can’t make the difficulty vary too wildly. You can’t have insane curves where a 700 becomes an 800 on the next.</p>