SAT test structure
Sentence completion questions will account for about 28%
of the questions you face in the critical reading (verbal) section of the SAT.
You will have to answer 19 of them on the exam. You can expect to encounter 10 of them in one section and 9
in the other. Each group of questions will be arranged in order of difficulty.
What
they are testing
The
SAT test writers are testing the expansiveness of your vocabulary and your
ability to understand the logic of formal English sentences. You will not see
any slang or colloquialisms in these test questions.
Memorize the
directions in advance
The directions for the
sentence completion questions are always the same. Read them now and you will save
valuable time during the exam. Fortunately, these directions are less complex
than those for the
quantitative comparisons.
Directions:
Each sentence below has one or two blanks, each blank indicating that something
has been omitted. Beneath the sentence are five words or sets of words labeled A
through E. Choose the word or set of words that, when inserted in the sentence,
best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.
Study your vocabulary
This section, more so
than the others, will cause you fits if your vocabulary is weak. The good news
is that the SAT test writers really focus only on a rather small number of words
to test over and over again on the exam. This means that, even if your
vocabulary is extensive, you should still study these key words -- just in case
the millions of words in your vocabulary do not include one
or two of them.
Depending
on who you choose to believe (and how much time you want to devote to SAT prep) the
number of key words to
know for the SAT range from 500 to 3,000. We believe that our friend, Process of
Elimination, will help you tremendously if you study the 500 vocabulary words
that appear most frequently on SAT tests. You can buy a vocabulary book through us at
our SAT Books and Study Aids web page.
Where to
go from here:
SAT
sentence completion tips and advice
SAT
sentence completion practice questions
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