Up Your Score by Larry Berger & Michael Colton, Michael Colton, Manek Mistry, Paul Rossi, Workman Publishing Read Free Book Online

over them some more if you have any time left at the end.
S ENTENCE C OMPLETIONS
Definition:
Fill in the blank.
Priority:
Do them first.
Comment:
Not that bad once you get the hang of them.
    For each sentence completion question, the ETS presents you with a nice, logical sentence. The trouble is that one or two words are missing from it. Your job is to pick the correct missing word(s) from among five choices. All of the possible answers make sense grammatically, but only one will make sense logically.
    Some students consider sentence completions to be the hardest part of the verbal section because they test your sense of “sentence logic” in addition to testing your vocabulary. We think they are the easiest part because you have a context to help you figure out the answer. For example:
    The man was smelly so I plugged my ________.
    (A) ear
    (B) toe
    (C) eye
    (D) socket
    (E) nose
    Each of these choices is okay grammatically, but why would you plug your eye, toe, ear, or socket if the man was smelly? You would plug your nose. Usually, the SAT questions are more sophisticated, but the logic is the same.
    If you approach them properly, the sentence completion questions can be extremely gratifying. When you choose the right words to go in the blanks, the sentence will have a certain flow, a sort of magical aura that will suffuse your body with a warm, rapturous glow.
The Basic Pattern
    You should follow a basic thought pattern whenever you attack a sentence completion question:
    1. Read the sentence first, skipping over the blanks, just to get a feel for how the sentence is set up.
    2. Read the sentence again, and this time when you get to the blanks, guess
on your own
what the missing words should be. You may not be able to come up with a specific word, but all you really need to determine is the answer’s generic category—whether the word is a “negative” or a “positive” one. In the blank write a “+” or “–” to remind yourself what type of word you’re looking for. When there are two blanks, you should at least decide whether the two missing words are synonyms or antonyms, “good” or “bad.”
    3. Compare your guesses with the answer choices provided and see if any of them fit your general idea of what the answer should be.
    4. Plug in the answer that looks best and see if it makes sense.
    5. If it clearly makes sense, then go with it. Otherwise, try all the other choices and pick the one that works best. If the question contains double blanks, make sure that you carefully read
both
words for every answer choice, and pick the
pair
that best fits the blanks. As you’re trying choices, cross out the ones that you’re sure don’t fit. Then, if you get stuck and decide to come back to the question, you won’t have to waste time reading all of the choices again.
    After some practice, these rules should become second nature, so you won’t have to go through a three-minute process on each problem.
    Okay, enough rules. Here is an example.
    She insulted Irving’s appearance by saying, “Your face is _______.”
    (A) cheerful
    (B) beautiful
    (C) handsome
    (D) charming
    (E) a wart-ridden, misshapen mass of snotty goo
    That wasn’t too tough. And did you notice that magical feeling when you chose (E)?
    Let’s try some from real SATs.
    Until Florence Nightingale made nursing ________, it was considered a ________ profession.
    (A) scientific . . . painstaking
    (B) essential . . . dangerous
    (C) noble . . . lofty
    (D) patriotic . . . worthy
    (E) respectable . . . degrading

    You should read this question, “Until Florence Nightingale made nursing
something good,
it was considered a
something bad that’s the opposite of whatever’s in the first blank
profession.” You can eliminate (C) and (D) because
lofty
and
worthy
are both words that mean something good. You can eliminate (A) and (B) because they aren’t opposites. Now you know the answer is (E). Check it, and it makes sense. Yippee!
    Although they