Sentence Completion Questions

Sentence completion questions measure your ability to use a variety of cues provided by syntax and grammar to recognize the overall meaning of a sentence. In deciding which of five words or sets of words can best be substituted for blank spaces in an incomplete sentence, you must analyze the relationships among the component parts of the sentence. Consider each answer choice carefully and decide which completes the sentence in a way that gives the sentence a logically satisfying meaning and allows it to be read as a stylistically integrated whole.
Sentence completion questions provide a context within which to analyze how words relate to and combine with one another to form a meaningful unit of discourse.

Here are some approaches that may be helpful in answering sentence completion questions:

• Read the entire incomplete sentence carefully before you consider the answer choices. Be sure that you understand the ideas expressed and examine the sentence for possible indications of tone (irony, humor, and the like).
• Before reading the answer choices, you may find it helpful to fill in the blanks with a word or words of your own that complete the meaning of the sentence. Then examine the answer choices to see if one of them parallels your own completion of the sentence.
• Pay attention to structural clues in the sentence. For example, words like although and nevertheless indicate that some qualification or opposition is taking place in the sentence, whereas moreover implies an intensification or support of some idea.
• If a sentence has two blanks, be sure that both parts of your answer choice fit logically and stylistically into the sentence.
• When you have chosen an answer, read the complete sentence through to check that it has acquired a logically and stylistically satisfying meaning.