Week 2, Day 2: Chapter 4 - Text Completions
About
Text Completion:
· About 30% of each Verbal
section
· About 6 questions
for passages of one to five sentences with one to three blanks
· Read the whole
passage
· Each sentence
should make sense as a whole
· Relies on context
· Identify
significant words
· Look for clues and
structural indicators
· Try to generate
your OWN word to fill the blank before choosing an answer
· Ask:
o
Who
or what does the blank describe?
o
What
else provides insight into that person or thing?
· Don’t assume the
first blank is the easiest – the second or third might be instead
· Triage answer
choices:
o
A
checkmark for answers that at least kind of match
o
A
cross mark for answers that definitely do not match
o
A
question mark for answers that are unknown words
o
When
all else fails and you have a choice between a known bad match and an unknown
word, choose the unknown
o
If
there are two unknowns? Look at the roots and affixes to narrow it down
· Structural
indicators
o
Same
direction
o
Opposite
direction
· Pay attention to
transition words!
· POE strategies:
o
Focus
on words you know to check or cross them decisively
o
DO
NOT choose words you have eliminated
o
DO
NOT eliminate unknown words
o
DO
NOT trust your “ears” (the necessary word may “sound” wrong, may have an
archaic meaning, etc.)
o
Remember
to mark and move on!
o
Look
for positive versus negative tone – if the sentence has a positive tone,
eliminate negative sounding words and keep the positive or neutral ones, for
example.
· Double-check your
answers
· Advanced
difficulty:
o
More
blanks
o
More
sentences
o
More
complex sentences
o
Difficult
or hidden transitions
o
Difficult
or archaic vocabulary
o
Strategy:
§ Start with the
easiest blank
§ Then do the other
blanks
§ Reread the
finished sentence to check that it makes sense
§ Sometimes related
words will have same direction indicators, but watch out for unexpected
reversals
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