SAT Critical Reading - Sentence Completion Testing Tips

The SAT critical reading section is designed to test an individual's vocabulary and reading skills. In order to evaluate these skills, the sentence-completion questions in the SAT critical reading section are designed specifically to evaluate your ability to recognize and correctly use a variety of different terms.

You should keep in mind certain key concepts when completing the sentence-completion questions. First, it is a very good idea to answer the sentence-completion questions before answering the reading-comprehension questions. This is because the sentence-completion questions do not involve as much reading as the reading-comprehension questions, so they don't take as long to answer. If you answer these questions first, you will be able to devote most of your time to answering the reading questions and you won't have to rush through as many questions later if time starts to run out.

Second, if the question has a single word missing, read the question first. This allows you to identity the specific meaning that the sentence is attempting to convey, which you will need to know in order to determine the correct answer.

Third, if the question has more than one word missing, start by reading the sentence and focus on the first answer for each choice. If the first word in a choice doesn't make sense in the first blank, then the answer is incorrect and you should move onto the next answer. Once you have identified all of the answers that appear to be incorrect, identify the answer that best fits the second blank to determine the correct choice. This can be a very effective way to answer the sentence-completion questions because it allows you to eliminate incorrect answers quickly.

Finally, if you don't recognize or can't remember the definition of a word, try to break the word down into parts or to identify where you might have heard the word before. For example, the word "neurological" can be broken down into "neuro," "logic," and "al." You can then attempt to define each part. The prefix neuro- means "nerves," the root word logic means "reasoning or science," and the suffix -al means "relating to." The word neurological therefore refers to "something that relates to the science of the nerves."