Sentence completions are one of the two parts on the Critical Reading section of the SAT. The other is passage-based reading.
These are designed to test whether or not you know the meanings of words, which is where your knowledge of Greek and Latin roots come in, and how parts of a sentence should fit together logically.
Try following these steps without skipping ahead. If you get stuck, my solution is at the bottom of this exercise.
Step #1
Cover the multiple-choice answers. No peeking! You’re going to be doing some educated guesswork with just the question, which will lead to a higher score. So physically cover up the answers before you do anything else.
Step #2
Decide if each part of the sentence holding the blanks has a negative feel or a positive feel to it. Put a plus sign or negative sign in the blank to remind yourself of what you chose.
- Negative vibe phrase example: Amy didn’t just ------- peas; she despised them.
- Positive vibe phrase example: Amy ------- peas; in fact, she wished she could eat them every day.
Make sense?
You try it:
Hoping to ------- the dispute, negotiators proposed a compromise that they felt would be ------- to both labor and management
In relation to the rest of the sentence, does the phrase “Hoping to ------- the dispute” feel positive or negative?
What about “negotiators proposed a compromise that they felt would be ------- to both labor and management”?
Step #3
Still keeping the multiple-choice answers covered, read the sentence in your head and fill in the blanks with words you know that might logically fit. I mean it – physically write those words down into the blanks.
- Example #1: Amy didn’t just -----(dislike, hate, loathe) peas; she despised them.
- Example #2: Amy ------- (loved, enjoyed) peas; in fact, she wished she could eat them every day.
Get it?
You try it:
Hoping to ------- the dispute, negotiators proposed a compromise that they felt would be ------- to both labor and management
What word from your own vocabulary might work for the first blank?
What about the second blank?
Write them down in the blanks (or on scratch paper next to your computer).
Step #4
Now it’s time to uncover the choices. If you’re lucky, you may have come up with synonyms for one of the answer choices. Remember, both words have to fit, so physically cross out any answer where the first word is wrong.
Hoping to ------- the dispute, negotiators proposed a compromise that they felt would be ------- to both labor and management
A. enforce…useful
B. end…divisive
C. overcome…unattractive
D. extend…satisfactory
E. resolve…acceptable
