In this article I’ll show you a simple three-step method for analyzing sentence completions. As you’ll learn, you can often solve the hardest sentence completions even without knowing what the answer means. What Is a Sentence Completion? Each question consists of a sentence from which a word has been omitted and replaced by a blank (indicated by a dashed line). Half the questions replace two words with blanks. Your job is to find the word or set of words that completes the main idea of each sentence—what the sentence is “getting at.” Each sentence below has one or two blanks. Each blank indicates that something has been omitted from the sentence. Choose the word or set of words that best completes the meaning of the sentence as a whole. Example: Trends are difficult to spot until they are well established because they usually begin as minor, seemingly ——- events. Here are the directions. These directions will not change on the actual test, so do not waste time reading them in the exam room. Solving Sentence Completions in Three (or Four) Simple Steps Although there are innumerable types of sentences in the English language, sentence completions can be solved applying a simple, three-step method:

Step 1: Find the main idea of the sentence. Step 2: Anticipate what word or type of word will fit in the blank or blanks. Step 3: Apply process of elimination to the choices until you find the answer.

Step 4: If you haven’t found the answer by Step 3, guess.

Let’s begin with the first step. Step 3: Apply process of elimination to the choices until you find the answer.