Text Completion and Sentence Equivalence
Text Completion questions present a passage of 1-5 sentences with 1-3 blanks. For single-blank questions, five answer choices are provided. For questions with two or three blanks, three choices are provided for each blank and all blanks must be answered correctly to receive credit — there is no partial credit. The fundamental strategy for text completions is to predict the answer before looking at the choices. Read the sentence structure for direction clues (contrast words like 'although,' 'despite,' 'however' signal that the blank will contrast with other ideas; continuation words like 'similarly,' 'furthermore' signal continuation). Then predict what meaning the blank should have, and find the choice that matches your prediction. For multi-blank questions, identify which blank has the clearest context clues and fill that one first — this sometimes restricts the other blanks significantly. Sentence Equivalence questions present a single sentence with one blank and six answer choices. You must select two answers that both (1) create a complete, coherent sentence and (2) produce sentences with equivalent meaning. The two correct answers will be near synonyms in context — but not necessarily synonyms out of context. The trap is selecting two words that are general synonyms but produce different sentence meanings with the specific sentence context. Always test both selected words in the sentence before committing.