If you have only one blank, you'll have five answer choices. Otherwise, you'll get three answer choices per blank. Your job is to pick the correct word or words for the blank or blanks. If you get a question with more than one blank, the only way to get credit is to get all of the blanks correct. There's no partial credit if you have a multi-blank and get one of them right. If you remember Vocabulary in Context questions from the SAT, these are basically the same idea, but with the difficulty bumped up a notch because you have to choose the blanks separately.
Example Question
To show you how this works, let's work through an example question. We'll use one with two blanks, but the basic concept is the same no matter how many blanks you have. Here's the question:
'Good interior design requires not only ____ value but also functionality. Design elements that look good in preliminary drawings are not appropriate if they do not ____the needs of actual users.'
You might be tempted to immediately start plugging every combination of words into the blanks to see what fits, but this isn't the most efficient way to get an answer. A better strategy for approaching these questions is to work blank-by-blank. For each blank…
- Identify context cues in the sentences that give you some idea of what the word should be.
- Cross out inappropriate choices.
- Choose from your remaining options.
- Check your answer by plugging it in.
For example, let's look at the first blank. We can tell from the use of 'not only…but also' that the blank is something that isn't the same thing as 'functionality.' That lets us cross off choice B because 'pragmatic value' and 'functionality' are basically the same thing, but we're looking for a contrast. We can also cross off C because 'archival value' has nothing to do with interior design - again, the context clues are helping us eliminate.
That leaves us with only choice A for Blank one. 'Aesthetic value' and 'functionality' might contrast because 'aesthetics' is about looking good. And aesthetics are also conceptually related to design. So we'll keep that as our best possibility and look at Blank two.
Blank two is another contrast: looking good in preliminary drawings is being contrasted with '____the needs of actual users.' So we know we want a word like 'meet' or 'answer.' D doesn't work because you can 'propitiate' a person by meeting their needs, but you can't 'propitiate' a need. E doesn't work because 'exacerbate' is too negative. So, we're left with only choice F for Blank two.
At this point, if we had multiple potential options for each blank, we could plug them all in to compare them and see which choices work well together. Since we don't have that, we'll just plug both of our choices into the original sentence and see whether it makes sense: 'Good interior design requires not only aesthetic value but also functionality. Design elements that look good in preliminary drawings are not appropriate if they do not address the needs of actual users.' That makes sense, so A and F are the answers for the first and the second blank, respectively.