Text Completion (Verbal Reasoning)

Text Completion questions are those of fill-in-the-blank questions. This type of question is also referred as the mix and match question. In these questions, you have to choose the best way to complete a sohort passagae from which one, two, or three words have been omitted. These questions test a combination of reading comprehension and vocabulary skills. You must be able to recognize the logic, style, and tone of the sentence so that you will be able to choose the answer that makes sense in context. You must also be able to recognize differences in usage. The sentences cover a wide variety of topics from a number of academic fields. They do not, however, test specific academic knowledge. You may feel more comfortable if you are familiar with the topic the sentence is discussing, but you should be able to handle any of the sentences using your knowledge of the English language.

In these questions, you will be presented with a sentence or group of sentences containing one to three blanks. Instead of seeing of seeing a ingle list of answer choices, you will see one, two, or three independent columns of choices; for each blank in the sentence, you must select one correct answer choice from the appropriate column, mixing and matching your choices until you come up with a combination that makes sense.

Each question consists of:

• 1 to 5 sentence
• 1 to 3 blank
• 3 choices per blank (5 answer choices in the case of a single blank)

The answer choices for different blanks function independently; i.e., selecting one answer choice for one blank does not affect what answer choices you can select for another blank.

Single correct answer, consisting of one choice for each blank; no credit for partially correct answers

Instruction

For the following questions, select one entry for each blank from the corresponding column of choices. Fill all blanks in the way that best completes the text.

To answer this type of short answer question correctly, you must come up with the right word for each and every blank in the sentence or group of sentences. As in Cloze procedure, you have to insert words in a text, monitoring for meaning as you read. Your goal is closure: the completion of a partly finished semantic pattern.

There is no partial credit for text completion questions: to get any credit, you must fill in every blank in the text correctly.

A Text Completion question looks like this:

Think about the structure of the sentence. It begins with three parallel absolute phrases, each telling about some aspect of Hurston's literary position at a particular time in her career. All three phrases are positive in tone. The concluding independent clause ("Hurston clearly was at the ________ of her career") should be positive as well.

Solved Examples