Why Sentence Completion?

Sentence Completion Questions

This Sentence Completion Questions are designed to help you prepare for the verbal and reading sections of many assessment and entrance exams. By completing the sample

items offered here and by studying their answer explanations, you will

develop the skills necessary to tackle each type of sentence completion

question. You will also improve your vocabulary and your process of

elimination skills.

Sentence  completions  test  your  ability  to  use  the  information

found  in  complex,  but  incomplete,  sentences  in  order  to  correctly

complete  the  sentences.  Sentence  completions  test  two  separate

aspects of your verbal skills: your vocabulary and your ability to fol-

low the internal logic of sentences. These sentences are often quite

complex.  Fortunately,  there  are  some  strategies  that  will  has

one blank (or, on some tests, two blanks) within a single sentence.

Often the sentences are long and difficult to follow, but with practice

you can learn to master them.

Many   standardized   tests—including   high   school   and   college

entrance  exams  and  civil  service  exams—use  sentence  completion

questions to test vocabulary and logic. Some of the "alphabet soup"

of exams that contain sentence completions are the:

•      SAT I exam
•     PSAT/NMSQT exam
•     GRE General test
•     TOEFL/TONIC exams
•     ISE
•     GRT

You might wonder what kinds of strategies you can use to master

sentence completions. When it comes to sentence completions, the

word that does not appear is the key to the meaning of the sentence.

The words that do appear offer clues to the missing word. If you can

find out how the words that appear are connected, you can find the

correct answer. This means that you must know more than just the

meaning of the words involved. You must also understand the logic

of the sentence. Here is a sampling of strategies:

• ·         Read the entire sentence saying "blank" for the blank(s).
• ·         This gives you an overall sense of the meaning of the sentence and helps you figure out how the parts of the sentence relate to each other. If an answer occurs to you before you even look at the choices, you may have a synonym for the answer or the answer itself.
• ·         Pay special attention to introductory and transitional words—but, although, however, yet, even though—because they are key to forming the logical structure of the sentence.
• ·         Be sure your choice is both logical and grammatically correct.
• ·         If you don't know some words, use elimination and educated guessing, which means you are able to eliminate one or more of the choices as definitely wrong; or guessing from context when you know a related word.

There are several types of sentence completions:

•  restatement
• comparison
• contrast
• cause and effect

Here  is  an  example  of  a  cause-and-effect  sentence  completion

question: After a brief and violent ______ that ousted the president, General

Monsanto declared himself the dictator of the country.

a.   nuance

b.   coup

c.   solicitation

d.   upbraiding

e.   lament

The answer is choice b. A coup (n.) is a sudden and decisive change

of leadership illegally or by force, a takeover. What (the cause) led the

general to declare himself dictator (the result)? Something brief and

violent, that ousted the president, a coup.

Here is an example of a restatement question:

The city council formed a committee to simplify several dozen

______ city ordinances that were unnecessarily complicated and

out-of-date.

a.   feckless

b.   empirical

c.   byzantine

d.   slovenly

e.   pedantic

The answer is choice c, byzantine, an adjective that means "highly

complicated and intricate." Here, you are looking for a restatement

of the clue words complicated and out-of-date, and for something that

needs simplifying.

As you practice sentence completions, you may discover signal words

and phrases—clues that help you choose the correct answer. Here are

common signal words and an example for each kind of question:

Restatement: namely, in other words, in fact, that is

Example: The pickpocket was a trickster, in other words, a ______.

(The answer, which restates "trickster," might be knave or

scoundrel.)

Comparison: likewise, similarly, and, just as, as ______ as, for exam-

ple, as shown, as illustrated by

Example: Anna was cleared of all charges; similarly, Sam was

______.

(The answer compares to being "cleared of all charges," so perhaps

Sam was vindicated.)

Contrast: though, although, however, despite, but, yet; on the other

hand, but, however, despite, or on the contrary

Example: Although the tiger is a solitary beast, its cousin the lion is

a ______ animal.

(The answer is something that contrasts with "solitary," such as

gregarious or sociable.)

Cause and effect: thus, therefore, consequently, and because and

phrases such as due to, as a result, leads to

Example: A truck stole her parking spot; consequently, Sally's ______

look showed her displeasure.

(The answer would be a look caused by someone stealing Sally's parking spot, maybe scowling or sullen.)

The sentence completion question sets in this book increase in dif-

ficulty as you practice your way through them—from easy to inter-

mediate  to  advanced.  These  divisions  may  re?ect  how  challenging

the vocabulary is or how complex the sentence structure is or how

challenging the logic of the sentence is.

The 500+ Skill Builder in Focus exercises will help you prepare for

an  exam  in  several  ways.  First,  you  will  become  familiar  with  the

question format. You will get used to identifying the relationships of

words  within  a  sentence.  The  more  comfortable  you  are  with  the

question format and the more familiar you are with the range of sen-

tence completion types, the easier the verbal or reading section of

your test will be.

Second, your performance on these questions will help you assess

your  vocabulary  strengths  and  weaknesses.  For  example,  you  may

find that you do very well with words that are cognates (words from

a common original form, such as asteroid and astronomy), but not so

well on foreign words, such as ennui or angst.

Third,  you  will  learn,  through  practice,  to  spot  and  disregard

wrong answer choices. You may also discover a pattern to your wrong

answers. (Are you weak on cause-and-effect questions?)

In  addition  to  this  book,  look  for  other  sources  of  vocabulary

growth: software, audio and online courses, and books. One helpful

resource  is  LearningExpress's  Vocabulary  and  Spelling  Success  in  20

Minutes a Day, which helps boost your vocabulary and your verbal

test scores.

You have already taken an important step toward improving your

score. You have shown your commitment by purchasing this book.

Now  what  you  need  to  do  is  complete  each  exercise,  study  the

answers,   and   watch   your   ability   to   solve   sentence   completions

increase.

Good luck!