When Preparing For The GRE, Don’t Forget Text Completions!

On test day, you may see one or two questions of the type called “Text Completion.” Text Completion really is just a form of a sentence completion; use the same principles as you would use on any other sentence completion question. Let’s take a closer look at these to make sure we are comfortable with the question type.

On Text completions, instead of having a single list of answer choices, you will see independent columns of choices, and there will be three options per blank. Your task will be to click on one correct answer from each column, mixing and matching until you have a combination that makes the best sense within the sentence. Again, you must pick a choice from each column, not a row.

There is no partial credit on this question: in order to get the points for this question, you must fill in every blank of the sentence correctly.

The keys to doing well on these question are simply to think about the structure of the sentence, predict blanks, and read your selections back into the sentence to make sure they make sense.

Lets say we have this sentence:

Following the logic from sentence completions, let’s try to predict the first blank. According to the sentence, Babe Ruth had a spectacular baseball career, and all the sportswriters are talking about him, so probably we are talking about the height of his career. Is there a word in the column for blank 1 that means height?

Lets look at the three words. (It would be easy if they just included the word “height” as one of the three words, but this is the GRE exam!) If you don’t know the meaning of any of the three choices, just leave your prediction as “height” and try to predict the other blanks.

So when he was at the height of his career, sportswriters universally did …what? Well they probably praised him. Theres no indication of any reason why they wouldn’t praise him for this spectacular career, so we would look for a word like praised for the second blank. Lauded fits perfectly as it means praised. Lambasted and decried both have a negative connotation, and mean to denounce or criticize.

So, they praised the man as what not only to the sport but to American culture in general? Well, probably they praised him for being a benefit or blessing to the sport. So for blank three, we want to choose a word that means blessing or something positive. Boon means blessing. Handicap means a hindrance, and bane means a plague, curse, or cause of distress, which obviously doesn’t fit.

So, we are in a good position now… except that first blank. We need a word that means height or pinnacle of his career.

Perhaps you already knew, but zenith is the correct answer there. Zenith is something’s high point. Nadir, on the other hand, is the lowest point, and perigee refers to the lowest point of an orbiting body.

So lets read our answer choices back into the sentence and make sure they make sense.

When Babe Ruth was at the zenith of his spectacular baseball career, sportswriters universally lauded the man as a boon not only to the sport, but to American culture in general. This fits nicely.

So, the process for Text Completions is roughly the same as it is for sentence completions. You will just have to click on one answer per column.

To review the general process for sentence completions, sign-in to our GRE Course! You’ll be glad you did!

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Posted on 31. Jul, 2011 by Ryan in Verbal