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:
- Having a strong vocabulary
- 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 for SAT Sentence Completion Tutorial Part 2 and we’ll see how it works when the sentence has 2 blanks.
Can you send some notes on how to deal with positive- negative strategies on the sentence completions questions.
Hi Sujan,
I’m not 100% sure what you mean.
Do you mean how do we know in the first example sentence in this post (the sentence about garlic) that the word in the blank has to be positive?
We know because of context clues in the sentence. The sentence says that using garlic soaked bandages saved lives. That means that in this sentence, garlic has positive, or good, properties, because saving lives is good.
Or, do you mean those rare sentence with 2 blanks where there’s something in the sentence you don’t understand, the meaning of the words that have to go in the blanks isn’t clear, and you have to rely almost entirely on the fact that one blank will be a positive word and the other will be a negative word?
Here’s an example from the SAT given in October of 2011. It’s question 7 of 8 questions in the section, so it’s a harder one:
While the movie employs stock characterizations, admirers argue that it is ——– even if its depictions are——-.
You can start by noticing that the word “admirers” means that the word in the first blank has to be positive. Admirers would only argue that the movie is good, not that the movie is bad.
Then you can notice the phrase “even if”, which indicates that the word in the second blank has to be the opposite of the word in the first blank. In this case, since we know that the word in the first blank has to be positive, the word in the second blank has to be negative.
Here are the answer choices:
(A) maladroit. . proficient
(B) stimulating. . controversial
(C) soporific. . abstruse
(D) compelling.. formulaic
(E) dismal.. maudlin
You have to know what at least some of these words mean, or at least have a sense of whether they’re positive or negative. In this example, the only choices where the first word is positive are B and D.
Looking at the second words in B and D, some people would think that “controversial” is negative and think that B might be the correct answer. In fact, sometimes controversial is negative, depending on the context. However, we’re starting with the assumption that we don’t really understand the sentence, so we don’t know the context. Controversial actually describes something that people have disagreements about. And we need a word that describes something negative. So controversial doesn’t work.
Now you’re left with D and the only remaining answer choice, which is the correct answer.
Of course, if you know what “stock” means in the phrase “stock characterizations”, then you know that one meaning of the word “stock” when it’s used as an adjective something like “trite” or “hackneyed”, and if you know that “formulaic” has a similar meaning, then you’d be strongly drawn to choice D from the beginning.
Anyway, I hope that helps.
-Jeff
I have a lot of problems in verbal. Although I do well on my own, when an actual test comes I go all blank and time always stuck on my head. I couldn’t answer correct and can’t finish any of the sections on time. What should I do, please do help me?
Hi Anu,
Time is an issue for a lot of people, so you’re definitely not alone.
First of all, see if you can think about what makes you go blank.
Many of the questions are easy, and I’d guess that you don’t go blank on the questions that are easy for you. Does a hard question make you go blank? If it does, you want to realize it as soon as possible and skip that question. Are some questions harder than most of the others, or do do some questions take you longer than others? If so, you should always skip those questions and go back to them at the end, if you have time left over after you’ve finished all of the other questions. This alone might be enough to help you.
Another possibility is that something in a reading passage makes you go blank. Don’t feel badly if it does, everybody spaces out from time to time and loses their place. I do it plenty when I read stuff. Again, you want to realize it as soon as possible, and then just gently place your attention on the last thing you remember reading. If you don’t understand something that you’re reading, don’t worry about it. You don’t have to understand all of the details of a passage, you just have to know the main idea, or the author’s main point that he’s trying to make. A lot of times people get stuck re-reading a sentence or even a paragraph over and over again trying to understand it in detail, only to find that there weren’t even any questions that asked about it. That can make people go blank. So if this is what’s happening for you, these suggestions might help you get over it.
The last thing that I can think of that makes people go blank is just getting nervous when they know they’re being timed for real. The only way out of this is practice. You have to practice timing yourself, and when you feel that nervous feeling, or that feeling like you’re about to go blank, or that you just went blank, you have to remind yourself that you do well on your own and that you don’t have to listen to those feelings. You might be feeling that way, but it doesn’t mean anything bad. The technical term for that is desensitization. You want to desensitize yourself to those feelings. You can do that by practicing any activity faster than you usually do it. You want to practice doing it faster without the feeling of rushing or nervousness.
Let me know if this helps. And good luck. Know in your heart that if you can do well at home on your own, you’re still just as smart when you take the test for real.
Thanks a lot. I’m Indian and my vocabulary is not good. Find these pretty difficult. But i guess you made it a bit clear for me now. Can you please help me out with the essays too? I find it difficult too.
I’m glad it helped, Febin. This method can help you make the most of the vocabulary you have, but at a certain point, your vocabulary level will keep you from answering some questions. If you can take the SAT again in the fall, get a set of SAT vocabulary flashcards and make it a point to learn 15 – 25 new words each week. That will help.
Here are the links to some posts about the essay:
http://www.satsuccesssecrets.com/mastering-the-sat-essay-part-1/
http://www.satsuccesssecrets.com/mastering-the-sat-essay-part-2/
Hi, I liked tutorial but i have a question.
What can I do if u don’t know it it’s positive or negative? of the answers choices they gave u? is there a better way of doing this?
This is the better way. It’s how you make the most of the vocabulary you know. If you don’t know many of the words and can’t make an educated guess about what they mean, you have no other choice but to study vocabulary. My recommendation is to use flashcards.
Hi, in sentence completion and the passages I get my answers down to two choice but I always choose the wrong one. What can I do to improve this?
Hey Mustafa, that’s a great question. The first thing is that you have to trust your gut. If you keep going back and forth between those 2 remaining choices, trying to find some way to make each choice correct, you’re going to cause yourself a lot of frustration and get a lower score. Instead, ask yourself which one you think is better. In the sentence completions, sometimes you might not know either word (though I assume in those cases you know the other 3 are wrong). In that case, just pick one and move on to the next question. In the reading passage questions, when you get down to those 2 remaining choices, the correct answer for most questions is the one that is most in line with the main idea of the passage. There are a few question types where that doesn’t apply, but those should be obvious.
The most important thing is not to spend too much time on these situations. Use your gut, pick one, and move on. You can circle the question in your test booklet and come back to it later if you have time at the end of the section.
Very rarely, I have a student whose gut is almost always wrong. If that’s really true for you (and it’s probably not), ask yourself what’s your gut answer, and then pick the opposite.
I hope that helps. Good luck!
Thnx for such a wonderful explanation … it was so easy to understand
thnx a ton 
what possible score can I get on the sat without doing any of the sentence completion questions. I have a hard time doing any one of those correctly.
You could get about a 600, even a little higher, if you didn’t answer any sentence completions but answered all of the passage questions correctly. However, it would be extremely unlikely for someone to be able to do that. If you’re able to answer all of the passage questions correctly, you’re certainly able to to answer many of the sentence completions. So if that describes you, don’t give up on them.
I have the Duke SAT tomorrow! This helped a lot! Thanks
Thank’s for the help this was really useful 😀
You’re welcome, Diego. Thanks for the comment. Good luck!
Amazing Feel much better, I am taking them tomorrow and just wanted a few tricks. I have been studying vocabulary words but I would also suggest for students to print out Latin prefixes, these will also give you some guide to a word you may not know.
I love you so much. Critical reading is the bane of my existance!
Thank you!
Thank you, these were helpful.
Glad it helped! Let me know how it goes when you get your score.
thanx soooooooooooooooooo much for helping me prepare for the sat.xoxoxoxo
Hey, thanks for the tutorial. It is really helpful.. Thank you.
Wow! I’ve been an educator for years and I found this to be such a clear, straightforward and helpful description of the process of answering these questions. Also, it was a lot of fun to play along and try to answer the questions step-by-step along with the directions and then see if I could find the answer.