The Top Seven Steps for Answering Sentence Completion Questions

When you break up sentences using punctuation as a guide, you end up with more or less manageable chunks of words. Nevertheless, when you have a 25-word sentence, which is not that uncommon on the GRE, and you break it into two units, you can still easily have a 12-to-15-word unit. On the real GRE, there have even been 20-to-30-word sentences with no punctuation except for the period at the end. 

These long sentences are further complicated by the fact that they often include difficult vocabulary. Seeing words you don t know may send your anxiety level soaring, and nobody does his or her best work when anxious. With practice, though, you can learn to take those long sentences and unknown words in stride. Try following these seven steps  

You can also use trial and error to find islands of meaning in a sentence. Find a word or a phrase you understand and start adding a word or two on either side. As you discover several such islands and gradually enlarge each one, you will eventually see how they fit together, and then you will understand the dynamics of the whole sentence. 

If the vocabulary in a sentence is a problem, look at the words around it. Usually, you can figure out what function a word is serving in the sentence. Ask yourself whether it s an action word. If so, it s a verb. Is it describing something Then it s an adjective or adverb. Is it the subject—the person, place, 

Once you think you know what idea the answer word needs to express, look at the answers. If you see an answer choice that seems to match your idea, try plugging the answer into the sentence to see if it is internally consistent. That means, check to see if it fits into the sentence without introducing any new idea. If it seems to fit, but brings in an idea you can t find anywhere else in the sentence, it s the wrong answer. 

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The Top Seven Steps for Answering Sentence Completion Questions... 

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