To many test takers, the Sentence Completion questions on the SAT look deceptively easy. It's just one word - how hard can it be? As it turns out, it can be pretty darn hard!
Sentence Completions aren't necessarily easy just because they're short, and knowing their ins and outs in advance will help you avoid the nasty shock of figuring out too late that they're trickier than you thought. So in this lesson, you'll walk through three one-blank Sentence Completion questions to get a feel for how you'll tackle them.
On the one-blank Sentence Completions, you'll solve each question in two steps:
- Step 1: define the blank. Use context clues in the sentence to figure out what kind of word will go in the blank.
- Step 2: match the answer. Look the list of answer choices and pick the one that best matches your word for the blank. Then be sure to read the answer choice back into the sentence to be sure it makes sense.
To understand, take one example question.
Example Question 1
'Thanks to her sunny demeanor and _______ attitude, Gertrude was always a welcome guest.'
Start with Step 1: what clue can you identify to help you fill in the blank? Good clues in this sentence include 'sunny demeanor' and 'welcome guest.' These clues tell you that the word in the blank will be something positive. What word do you think would make a good guess?
There is no right answer here, but if you filled in anything like 'cheerful,' 'good,' or 'positive,' you're on the right track. Now let's look at the answer choices. Which of these best matches the word you came up with for the blank?
- Fatigued
- Redundant
- Ambitious
- Contradictory
- Lighthearted
Here, the correct answer is (E).
In this sentence, we're looking for a word that has something to do with being cheerful. Fatigued means 'tired,' which doesn't fit. Redundant means 'saying the same thing twice,' which also doesn't work. Ambitious means 'striving for success,' which is positive, but doesn't match the clue, and contradictory also doesn't fit. Lighthearted means 'happy' or 'cheerful.' If you read it back into the sentence, you get:
'Thanks to her sunny demeanor and lighthearted attitude, Gertrude was always a welcome guest.' This makes sense, so (E) is your answer!