Sentence Completion and Short Answer Strategies

Sentence Completion Rules

Sentence completion questions require you to complete a sentence using words taken directly from the passage. Three rules govern every sentence completion answer:

Rule 1 — Use exact words from the passage. Do not paraphrase. If the passage says "photosynthesis" and your answer requires a scientific process, write "photosynthesis" not "the process plants use to make food."

Rule 2 — Stay within the word limit. "NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS" means one, two, or three words are acceptable. Four words is always wrong regardless of content.

Rule 3 — The completed sentence must be grammatically correct. If the sentence reads "The building was constructed in ___" your answer must be a year or date, not a noun or adjective.

How to Locate Sentence Completion Answers

Sentence completion questions follow the order of the passage — Question 1's answer appears before Question 2's answer in the text. Use this to navigate efficiently.

Identify a key word in the sentence that is unlikely to be paraphrased — a proper noun, a technical term, a number. Scan for this word in the passage. When you find it, read carefully around it to find the answer.

Short Answer Questions

Short answer questions ask you to answer a question directly using words from the passage. The same rules apply — exact words, word limit, grammatically sensible answer.

The question word tells you what type of answer to write. "Why" requires a reason. "When" requires a time. "Where" requires a location. "How many" requires a number.

The Paraphrasing Challenge

The question is always paraphrased from the passage. "What caused the decline?" in the question might correspond to "The reduction was attributed to..." in the passage. Train yourself to recognise these synonyms:

caused by = attributed to = resulted from = due to = as a consequence of decreased = declined = fell = reduced = dropped increased = rose = grew = expanded = climbed