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Verbal Reasoning: Text Completion

One to five sentences, one to three blanks, and no credit unless every blank is right — reading a sentence's logic as a path and filling the gaps.

13 topics · 52 questions

Each topic is a path, not a menu: work down it in order and every question builds on the one above. Click any of them to watch the answer draw itself.

How a Text Completion Item Is Built

  1. How it worksHow does one wrong blank out of three wipe out the entire item, and what does that do to the item's real difficulty?
  2. How it worksWalk me through the anatomy of a three-blank text completion: up to five sentences, three gaps, three candidate words each.
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through filling 'The committee's report was surprisingly ___, given the acrimony of the hearings' with measured, strident and belated.
  4. Going furtherWhat changes about your approach when a completion runs five sentences instead of one?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text Completion (one blank, five choices). Select the one entry that best completes the text. The trustees spent 93 minutes disputing the placement of a single comma, and by the end even the chair described the session as ___.

Reading the Whole Text Before Any Blank

  1. How it worksHow does reading the final sentence first change what the opening blank is allowed to mean?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through 'Her early work seemed ___. Only later did critics notice the irony beneath it' with naive, sly and hostile.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't the sentence that contains a blank always enough to decide what fills it?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Text Completion. Select the entry that best completes the text. The first 96 pages of the memoir read as ___. Only in the final chapter, where the author lists the 7 correspondents whose letters she had quietly been withholding, does the candour turn out to have been an arrangement.

Finding the Sentence's Logical Skeleton

  1. How it worksHow do you strip a long sentence to its skeleton without throwing away the clause that controls the blank?
  2. How it worksWalk me through drawing a sentence as a path where each clause is a segment and the blank is a missing link.
  3. Worked exampleShow me the skeleton of 'Despite a reputation for ___, the composer's private letters reveal a warmth few audiences suspected.'
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't a longer, more technical sentence automatically a harder blank?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Text Completion. Although the survey instrument ran to 191 items and required a calibration protocol the authors set out across 30 pages of supplementary material, the finding it produced was ___ enough to fit in a single sentence.

Signal Words: Contrast and Concession

  1. How it worksHow do but, yet, however, nonetheless and whereas each set the direction of the arrow through a sentence?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through 'Although the data were ___, the committee treated them as decisive' choosing among equivocal, damning and abundant.
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't every 'despite' guarantee that the blank is the opposite of the adjective sitting next to it?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to the required meaning when a sentence hides a concession inside a contrast?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text Completion. Although the trial enrolled only 48 patients and its confidence intervals were correspondingly wide, the review panel treated the result as ___.

Signal Words: Cause, Continuation and Example

  1. How it worksHow do thus, hence, since and consequently announce that a blank continues the thought instead of reversing it?
  2. How it worksHow can a colon or a semicolon act as a direction signal with no signal word in it at all?
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through 'The mayor's plan was ___: it promised savings the budget could never deliver' with candid, chimerical and austere.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't 'and' a promise that the two halves of a sentence agree?
  5. Going furtherWhat changes when a sentence stacks two signals, one per clause, pointing in opposite directions?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text Completion. The agency's timetable was ___: it promised 748 kilometres of track in 3 years, in terrain where the best previous crews had managed 57 kilometres a year.

Predicting Your Own Word Before Looking

  1. How it worksHow do you build a usable prediction when no single elegant word for the gap comes to mind?
  2. How it worksWalk me through using a plus sign, a minus sign or a clumsy phrase as your prediction instead of a word.
  3. Worked exampleShow me predicting the gap in 'The senator's apology struck reporters as ___, rehearsed down to the catch in her voice.'
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't a prediction that matches none of the choices mean the prediction was wrong?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text Completion. The minister's statement, delivered 48 hours after the bridge collapsed and reciting the same 6 talking points her office had circulated that morning, struck reporters as ___.

Doing the Easiest Blank First

  1. How it worksHow do you spot which of three blanks the surrounding sentences have already decided for you?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through starting at blank two in 'The critic was ___ in public but ___ in her notebooks, which brim with praise.'
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to the other two blanks the moment one of them is locked down with certainty?
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't solving blanks left to right match the order in which a text gives up its information?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text Completion (two blanks). The critic was (i) ___ in public but (ii) ___ in the 19 notebooks she left, which brim with praise for the very playwrights she had panned. Which entry best fills blank (ii)?

How a Later Blank Constrains an Earlier One

  1. How it worksHow does a two-blank sentence behave like two equations that share one unknown?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through 'Because the evidence was ___, the panel's verdict was correspondingly ___' with flimsy, decisive and overwhelming on offer.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens when a sentence forces its two blanks to point in opposite directions rather than the same one?
  4. Ties togetherHow does filling blanks in dependency order connect to picking the two words of a sentence equivalence pair?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Text Completion (two blanks). Because the evidence, 10 depositions taken 20 years after the fire, was (i) flimsy, the panel's verdict was correspondingly (ii) ___. Which entry best fills blank (ii)?

Two-Blank Strategy

  1. How it worksHow do you work a two-blank item as a three-by-three grid instead of reading nine whole sentences?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through 'Though ___ by nature, the novelist wrote prose so ___ that readers assumed a gregarious author.'
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't a word that sounds beautiful in blank one survive once blank two has been filled?
  4. Going furtherWhat changes when both blanks in a sentence want nouns rather than adjectives?
Your turnhard1 of 3
Text Completion (two blanks, three choices each). Though (i) ___ by nature - he declined 58 of the 106 invitations he received in a single season - the novelist wrote prose so (ii) ___ that readers assumed a gregarious author. Blank (i): reclusive, gracious, mercurial. Blank (ii): convivial, crabbed, ornate. Select the complete pair; one blank alone earns nothing.

Three-Blank Strategy

  1. How it worksHow do you order three blanks so that every one you fill shrinks the choices left for the next?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through a three-blank text whose second sentence opens with 'Yet', and watch that word settle blank two first.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to your odds on a three-blank item when two blanks are certain and the third is a coin toss?
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't a three-blank item worth three times the time you would spend on a one-blank item?
  5. Ties togetherHow does the pacing arithmetic of a three-blank item connect to the 90 seconds a verbal question is worth?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text Completion (three blanks). For 75 years the canal was the region's (i) ___, carrying 22278 tonnes of freight a week. Yet by the time the railway opened its traffic had become (ii) ___, and the trustees' minutes turn (iii) ___, full of schemes nobody expected to fund. Which entry best fills blank (ii)?

Double Negatives and Twice-Inverted Sentences

  1. How it worksHow do you count the negations in a sentence and cancel them in pairs before choosing a word?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through 'It is hardly ___ that the theory won few adherents, given its indifference to evidence' with surprising, baffling and tragic.
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't a sentence containing 'never' always demand a negative word in its blank?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens when the negation is buried inside the answer choice rather than in the sentence?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Text Completion. It is hardly ___ that the theory attracted only 9 adherents in 28 years, given its indifference to the evidence its own author had collected.

The Trap That Fits the Blank but Contradicts the Text

  1. How it worksHow does a wrong choice get built out of the topic of a sentence instead of out of its logic?
  2. Common mistakeWhy isn't a word that makes a smooth, idiomatic sentence automatically the right completion?
  3. Worked exampleShow me why 'reliable' is the trap in 'The instrument was praised as ___, though every reading it gave drifted within an hour.'
  4. Going furtherWhat changes about trap choices when a text's tone is scholarly praise rather than critique?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text Completion. The chronometer was praised on release as ___, though every one of the 96 readings taken during the 23-day sea trial drifted by more than a minute within the hour.

No Partial Credit and the Arithmetic of Guessing

  1. How it worksHow does the no-partial-credit rule fuse three independent blanks into one all-or-nothing outcome?
  2. Worked exampleFind the chance of scoring a three-blank item when one blank is certain and the other two are pure guesses.
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't getting two blanks out of three right earn anything at all on the verbal score?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A student guesses blind on 16 three-blank text completions, each offering three choices per blank and credit only for all three. How many of the 16 items should the student expect to earn credit on? Give a decimal.

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