In SAT reading sections, they have 6~10 sentence completion questions. Although these questions depend on the vocabulary, there are some ways to improve one’s performance in this sections significantly.
For one blank sentence completion quiz, you need to fill out the blank in your own words. For example,
My physics professor gets off topic very easily. She spent most of today’s lesson on a completely unrelated ______ about her favourite TV show.
In this context, you can easily figure out that the blank should mean topic, or subject. Then, you should look at multiple choices you have.
A. monologue
B. tangent
C. diatribe
D. discussion
E. lecture
These are the multiple choices of the blank. The important skill you need to apply in this case is process of elimination. If you don’t know what one of the multiple choice word means, you should skip it. You should cross out only the words you know that you are sure that the word is not the answer.
In this case, monologue, discussion, and lecture are not right words.
Now you have tangent and diatribe left. If you don’t know what these two words mean you have to GUESS the answer. The answer for this question was B. tangent.
Mathematically, if you can eliminate at least one answer choice, you have more chances of getting more score.
If you can eliminate one answer, and randomly solve 4 questions, the expected number of answers you will get is 1. You will get 1 point and lose 0.75 points, which means you will more likely to earn more score if you can eliminate at least one answer and guess.
If you have two blank sentence completion questions, you need to find out what the relationship between two blanks is.
For example,
So-called snake oil salesmen earned reputations as ______ of ______ merchandise, unnecessary wares, and tonics advertised as panegyrics that actually did nothing for those who consumed them.
In this case, you need to figure out if the words should mean positive and negative. In this context, there are words ‘unnecessary wares… did nothing for…’ The blanks should mean something negative by the context. Also, the relationship between two blanks should go along with each other.
Now, let’s look at the multiple choices.
A. distributors … medicinal
B. hucksters … shoddy
C. catalogers … sufficient
D. misers … dilapidated
E. educators … innovative
A. medicinal, C sufficient, E. innovative are all positive words, so you can eliminate A C and E.
Now, again, you have B and D left as possible answers. Now, you should randomly guess.
The answer was B.
I suggested some ways that you can improve your sentence completion mark without memorizing any vocabulary. However, the best way to get good marks on sentence completion is to memorize the vocabulary lists!
This article was written for you by Edmond, one of the tutors with Test Prep Academy.