By: Karl Schellscheidt
I want to talk to for a couple of minutes about the sentence completion questions in the critical reading section. Sentence completion is when they give you a sentence and they leave one or two
I want to talk to for a couple of minutes about the sentence completion questions in the critical reading section. Sentence completion is when they give you a sentence and they leave one or two blanks and you're then asked to fill in the blank or blanks with the answer choices.
My advice is this, if you can read the sentence and fill in the blank on your own on what word you think would go in there and then look through the answer choices and either find that word or one that would means the same thing that's ideal you pick and you move on.
Let's say your vocabulary is not great. You think you know what word would go in and you look through the list and you don't see that word anywhere. But you do see two answer choices that you do know the definition of and you know that those two don't work; they don't fit into the sentence. So cross out those two eliminate them you then have three left and even if you don't know what the three words mean statically speaking it's to your advantage to guess at this point. If you can eliminate two or more answers go for it and guess. But ultimately you might be right before the SAT's you might not be able to improve your vocabulary in the next week.
For the younger students, if you get started freshman, sophomore even at the beginning of junior year working on your vocabulary you can make a huge huge difference in your critical reading score. I have a pretty good vocabulary. I go through the sentence completion questions a lot with students and their easy for me not because I've seen them before but because I know what all the words mean.
So ultimately if you know what the words mean you have a great vocabulary it's going to be easy for you. If you don't your running out of time don't panic. Again, try to pick a word that would fit in your own mind. See if you can find it or one that means the same thing. And if you can't and you only know two words out of the five and you know they don't work cross them out and guess; that's the way you maximize your score
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Karl Schellscheidt is a master teacher, private tutor, and proven SAT expert. Karl is a Princeton University graduate with a masters’ degree in education who has spent over 15 years tutoring students of all ages on standardized tests, including the SAT, ACT, and SSAT. Karl began his education career as a private teacher at The Hun School in Princeton, NJ. He has since helped students throughout New Jersey gain admissions to the region’s most prestigious universities and private schools. In 2006, Karl launched ePrep.com (www.eprep.com) as free online resource for SAT test prep and college planning with other industry experts.
