Week 8, Day 1: Review for Final Exam

 About Text Completion:

·       No partial credit – all parts of the answer must be correct

·       Read the whole passage

·       Identify significant words that indicate changes in direction (i.e., however, but)

·       Identify clues to who or what the blank discusses

·       Generate your own word to fill in the blank

·       If there are 2 or 3 blanks, figure out whichever blank is easiest for you – it isn’t always the first blank! Then go back and try the other blank.

·       Double-check your answers by re-reading the passage with the blank(s) filled in with your choice(s)

·       Check to see whether the sentence has a positive or negative meaning; the answer choice should also correspond to that meaning, whether positive (happy) or negative (depressed)

·       If a sentence is complicated, try to re-write it as something simpler

·       Triage answer choices:

o   Eliminate words you know that do not fit in the sentence well (use a X on your scratch paper next to the letter of the answer choice)

o   Keep answers that you know that do fit well (use a  on your scratch paper next to the letter of the answer choice)

o   Keep unknown words (use a ? on your scratch paper next to the letter of the answer choice)

o   BE HONEST with yourself – if you don’t know the word, you cannot use ESP and stare at the choices until it suddenly reveals itself. Just mark it with a ? and move forward!

o   Use word roots to help you guess the meaning of unknown words, and keep or eliminate according to whether those roots fit the sentence

·       When all else fails, choose a word you do not know

 

 

About Sentence Equivalence:

·       No partial credit – all parts of the answer must be correct

·       Read the whole passage

·       Identify significant words that indicate changes in direction (i.e., however, but)

·       Identify clues to who or what the blank discusses

·       Generate your own word to fill in the blank

·       Choose TWO answers that both give the sentence as a whole the same meaning

·       The correct answers are NOT always synonyms; further, in many questions, there are multiple pairs of synonyms for choices

·       Double-check your answers by re-reading the passage with the blank filled in with your choices

·       Very similar strategy to text completion: use triage, clues to meaning, reversals of direction (however, but), etc.

·       ALWAYS check ALL answers before making a final choice of TWO and only two answers for these!

·       As a last resort, choose the best or closest pair of synonyms

Reading Comprehension:

Take notes: main idea, structure, tone: problem or change? 

Go back to the passage for proof - find and paraphrase the answer

Know the question & answer formats: fetch, reasoning, 

Read all answer choices

Process of Elimination 

Avoid extreme statements, recycled language, bad comparisons, half-right answers, beyond scope, wrong tone,  or given information

Basic Strategies

·       Easy test first

·       Leave no question blank

·       At least guess

·       Use scratch paper/note boards/whiteboard

·       Memorization

·       Process of elimination

·       Read all answer choices, also notice formats

·       Check that you answer the question asked!

·       Check your answers

·       Take notes

Final Exam Structure: 

* 1 essay (Issue Essay) 

Part 1: Princeton questions

5 text completion

3 sentence equivalence

8 reading comprehension

8 Advanced Word Power vocabulary

(Total 24)

Part 2: ETS Questions

8 text completion

4 sentence equivalence

12 reading comprehension

(Total 25)