Sentence completion questions, with answers
Sentence completion, often called fill in the blanks, gives a sentence with one or two gaps and four or five words or pairs to fill them. It looks like a vocabulary test, but many questions are settled by the logic of the sentence: a word such as 'although', 'because' or 'therefore' tells you whether the missing word agrees with the rest of the sentence or pushes against it.
The answers below cover predicting the answer before reading the options, the signal words for contrast, cause and continuation, two-blank questions, grammar clues, and choosing between close synonyms. Then take the free Verbal Ability diagnostic — ten questions drawn from all eight verbal topics — to see whether sentence completion is among the topics to work on first.
The questions, with answers
1How should you approach a sentence-completion question?
In short: Cover the options, predict a word of your own from the sentence's clues, and then choose the option closest to your prediction.
Options are written so that several sound possible once you see them, so decide first what the blank needs. Read the whole sentence and find the clue that fixes the missing word: a description, a result, an example or a contrast. Put a simple word of your own in the blank, then look for the option that matches it in meaning. In 'The new manager was so ______ that she remembered every employee's name within a week', the result points to a word like observant or attentive, which rules out options about kindness or strictness at once. Predicting takes seconds and protects you from attractive wrong options.
2Which signal words tell you what a blank needs?
In short: Contrast words such as 'although', 'but' and 'despite' reverse the direction of the clue; continuation and cause words such as 'and', 'because' and 'so' keep it.
Signal words show how the blank relates to the clue. Contrast words, such as 'although', 'but', 'yet', 'despite', 'however' and 'whereas', mean the blank opposes the clue: 'Despite a ______ start, the team won the final' needs something like weak or shaky. Continuation words, such as 'and', 'also', 'moreover' and 'similarly', mean the blank agrees with the clue. Cause-and-effect words, such as 'because', 'since', 'so' and 'therefore', make the blank the cause or the consequence: 'Because the instructions were ______, most students finished the task early' needs something like clear. Find the signal first and you often know the answer's direction before reading the options.
3How do you solve a two-blank sentence-completion question?
In short: Start with the blank that has the stronger clue, eliminate every pair whose word fails there, and test only the survivors in the other blank.
Two blanks give you two chances to eliminate. Pick the blank with the clearer clue, often the one next to a signal word or an explanation, and strike out every pair whose word does not fit it. Then check only the remaining pairs in the other blank. In 'The old website was ______, taking a minute to load each page, so the team ______ it from scratch', the description fixes the first blank as something like slow, and 'so' with 'from scratch' makes the second something like rebuilt. A pair with the right words in the wrong order is a standard distractor, so read each pair back into the sentence before choosing.
4How do grammar clues narrow a fill-in-the-blank question?
In short: The words around the blank fix its part of speech and form, so options of the wrong type can be struck out before you think about meaning.
Before weighing meanings, look at the grammar around the blank. After an article and before a noun, the blank needs an adjective: 'a ______ decision'. After a helping verb such as 'will', 'can' or 'has', it needs a verb form: 'She has ______ her target' needs a past participle such as met. A preposition after the blank narrows the choice further, because words keep fixed partners: in 'She is ______ of handling the project', 'capable' fits and 'able' does not, since 'able' takes 'to'. An article before the blank helps too: 'an ______ remark' needs a word that begins with a vowel sound. Grammar can remove two options without reading their meanings, which saves time for the hard ones.
5How do you choose between two options that mean almost the same thing?
In short: Check which word fits the sentence's exact situation (its strength, its tone and the words it usually goes with), not just its dictionary meaning.
Near-synonyms differ in strength, tone or use. 'Sufficient' means enough, while 'ample' means more than enough. 'Frugal' praises someone for spending carefully, while 'stingy' criticises the same habit. And words keep company: you commit a crime but make a mistake, and a decision is made, taken or reached, but not done. When two options both seem to fit, reread the sentence for its tone, whether it praises or criticises, and for its degree, whether something is slightly or completely true. The option that matches both is the answer; the other is usually a word from the right family that is too strong, too weak or aimed at the wrong target.
6What should you do when you do not know some of the options?
In short: Eliminate the words you know do not fit, judge the rest by their parts and their positive or negative charge, and pick an unknown word only when the known ones fail.
One or two options may be unfamiliar. Work from what you know: if every familiar option fails the sentence's logic, the unfamiliar one is likely right. Word parts help to judge it: mal- suggests bad or badly and -less means without, so malicious and heartless both lean negative. That charge is often enough, because the signal word has already told you which direction the blank needs. Do not choose an unfamiliar word just because it sounds impressive; hard words appear among the wrong options as well.
7How do you check a sentence-completion answer before moving on?
In short: Read the full sentence with your choice in place and confirm that its logic, its tone and its grammar all still hold.
Read the completed sentence through once. The logic should hold: a contrast word should now join two opposing ideas, and a result should follow from its cause. The tone should be even: a word much stronger or more formal than the rest of the sentence is suspect. The grammar should be intact: the word should be the right part of speech and accept the preposition that follows it. For two-blank questions, check both words together, because a pair can pass each blank separately and still produce a sentence that says something odd. The check takes seconds and catches a wrong option that survived elimination.
How the diagnostic asks it
One question from the Verbal Ability bank, exactly as a sitting would show it. The bank has 4 on sentence completion and 30 across Verbal Ability.
Choose the word that best fills the blank.
Although the first version of the app was ______, a series of updates made it one of the most reliable tools in its category.
- 1unstablecorrect
- 2dependable
- 3popular
- 4affordable
'Although' sets up a contrast with 'one of the most reliable tools', so the blank needs the opposite of reliable: 'unstable'. 'Dependable' means the same as reliable and removes the contrast. 'Popular' and 'affordable' are about demand and price, not reliability, so updates that made the app reliable would not stand in contrast to them.
Measure it
Reading answers tells you what’s true. A diagnostic tells you what you get wrong.
10 Verbal Ability questions across its topics, easy to hard, about fifteen minutes. You get a readiness figure with the arithmetic shown, the topics you missed named, and a practice set sized for today. Free: a diagnostic in every subject, a retake a month and 15 problems a day. No card.