SAT Sentence Completion Tutorial – Part 1

Today I’m going to share with you the most powerful methods I know for getting a higher score on the Sentence Completion questions in the Critical Reading section of the SAT.

There are 19 Sentence Completion questions on the SAT, and they count for almost 30% of your Critical Reading score. If you’re aiming to break 700 on Critical Reading, you have to ace these questions. But no matter what your score goal, making the most of the Sentence Completions is key to reaching it.

OK. Now this may seem like stating the obvious, but doing well on the sentence completions has two main components:

1. Having a strong vocabulary
2. Making the most of the vocabulary you have

You don’t need me to tell you how to improve your vocabulary, but I’m going to do it anyway. Read more, and use flashcards.

If you get a set of vocabulary flashcards and learn 20 new words each week, in a couple of months you’ll be way ahead of the game.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest…

I’m about to show you how to do the best you can with the vocabulary you have. First I’ll give you some of the basic steps, then we’ll walk through some sample questions together.

Sentence Completion sentences can have either 1 or 2 blanks. Here’s what to do when the sentence has 1 blank.

• Read the sentence. Don’t look at the answers yet.
• Choose a word or phrase on your own that more or less fits in the blank. There’s often a word or a phrase in the sentence that does the trick.
• If you can’t think of a word or phrase, decide whether it’s positive or negative, good or bad.
• Now look at the answers. Use the process of elimination. Cross off any answer choices that don’t work. If you don’t know the word, leave it in.
• At this point you may know the answer. If you don’t, and you crossed out at least 2 choices, ask yourself if you have an educated guess.

If that’s a little confusing, don’t worry. It will make a lot more sense when we look at the examples.

Here’s an easy sentence with one blank. On a difficulty scale of 1 – 5, where 1 is easiest and 5 is hardest, this is a level 1.

Ordinary garlic has ——- properties; during the First World War
medics saved countless lives by wrapping wounds with garlic-soaked bandages.

Can you think of a word or phrase that might go in the blank?

It’s a positive word, and we know from the sentence that it means something like “life saving”.

Now let’s look at the answer choices.

(A) curative
(B) flavoring
(C) inferior
(D) questionable
(E) infamous

It’s an easy question, so you might know the answer right away.

If you don’t, you probably know that choices C, D, and E are negative, so cross them out.

(A) curative
(B) flavoring
(C) inferior
(D) questionable
(E) infamous

Even if you don’t know the “curative”, you probably know that “flavoring” doesn’t mean anything like “life saving”.

The answer is A, curative.

Here’s an moderately difficult sentence with one blank. On a scale of 1 – 5, this is a level 3, right in the middle.

Because certain tropical birds rarely come out of the trees
in their arboreal habitat, the continued well-being of the rain forest
is ——- to their survival.

Can you think of a word or phrase that might go in the blank?

Hint: Don’t be fooled by the word “arboreal”. You might not know it, but it’s not important in the sentence.

You could cross it out, and look at the sentence like this:

Because certain tropical birds rarely come out of the trees
in their arboreal habitat, the continued well-being of the rain forest
is ——- to their survival.

It’s easier, right? Now can you think of something that might go in the blank?

Even though the definition is not in the sentence, like it was in the previous example, we can tell that it’s positive, and it means something like “necessary” or “important”.

Now let’s look at the answer choices.

(A) inadequate
(B) tangential
(C) indispensable
(D) baneful
(E) expeditious

You might know it right away. If not, let’s cross off the negative words. Now we’re left with this.

(A) inadequate
(B) tangential
(C) indispensable
(D) baneful
(E) expeditious

That can still be tricky, because if you don’t know the word “indispensable”, it looks like it might be negative.

Now can you tell which of the remaining choices means closest to “necessary” or “important”?

The answer is C, indispensable.

Now let’s look at a one blank sentence that’s a level 5. It’s a hard one.

“Lowering taxes” is ——- of this political party,
a belief shared by most party members.

On first glance, it doesn’t look hard. It seems pretty obvious that the word in the blank has to mean something like “a belief”.

Let’s look at the answer choices.

(A)  an acronym
(B) a retraction
(C) a tenet
(D) a plight
(E) a prospectus

Now we know why it’s hard! Those are difficult vocabulary words.

All you can do is do down the list and ask yourself, do I think this means something like “belief”?

If not, cross it out. If you can definitely cross out at least 2 answers and you think you have an educated guess, then by all means choose it. If not, leave it blank.

The answer is C, tenet. It means principle, or belief, particularly an important one.

Are you getting the hang of it? Good.

Come back tomorrow and we’ll see how it works when the sentence has 2 blanks.