Text Completion Strategies

In this part, you will need to complete a Text, such as a memo, letter or advertisement. There are
four missing words (or groups of words) in each Text, each with four possible Answer Choices.

Text Completion STRATEGY #1

Wrong Verb Form

These wrong Answer Choices use the correct root word, but the ending of the word is wrong, making
it into a different part of speech, the wrong verb tense.  These wrong Answer Choices may also use
the wrong preposition.

Example:

Question Sentence: “Everyone was happy they received a 5% _______ under the new
contract.”

A) risen WRONG - this is a verb
B) rising  WRONG  - this gerund is about “moving up”, not “money”
C) rose  WRONG - this is a verb
D) raise CORRECT

Notice that because of the word “a” in the sentence, the blank MUST be a noun, which
makes Answer Choices A) and C) clearly wrong.

Text Completion STRATEGY #2

Using Context to Choose Answers

These wrong Answer Choices use the correct root word, but the ending of the word is wrong, making
it into a different part of speech, the wrong verb tense.  These wrong Answer Choices may also use
the wrong preposition.

Example:

Question Sentence: “We need to ________ the numbers from last year’s budget one more
time before we can make any decisions.”

Because the words before the blank are “need to” and the words after it are a Noun
Phrase, the blank must be a Verb.

The words “numbers”, “last year’s budget”, and “one more time” are clues that the blank
must be a verb that means doing something with numbers a second time.

A) discover WRONG -numbers cannot be discovered more than once

B) explore WRONG - numbers cannot be “explored”
C) examination WRONG  - noun, wrong Part of Speech
D) go over CORRECT