The Critical Reading
Sentence completion questions measure your
Section
The critical reading section gives you a chance to show
how well you understand what you read. This section has
two types of questions:
● Sentence completions (19 questions)
● Passage-based reading (48 questions)
Note: Calculators may not be on your desk or used
on the critical reading section of the SAT.
Approaches to the Critical Reading
Section
● Work on sentence completion questions first. They
take less time to answer than the passage-based
reading questions.
● The difficulty of sentence completion questions
increases as you move through the section.
● Reading questions do not increase in difficulty
from easy to hard. Instead, they follow the logic
of the passage.
● The information you need to answer each reading
question is always in the passage(s). Reading care-
fully is the key to finding the correct answer. Don’t
be misled by an answer that looks correct but is
not supported by the actual text of the passage(s).
● Reading questions often include line numbers to
help direct you to the relevant part(s) of the pas-
sage. If one word or more is quoted exactly from
the passage, the line number(s) where that quota-
tion can be found will appear in the test question.
You may have to read some of the passage before
or after the quoted word(s), however, in order to
find support for the best answer to the question.
● Do not jump from passage to passage. Stay with a
passage until you have answered as many questions
as you can before you proceed to the next passage.
● If you don’t know what a word means in a sentence
completion or reading passage, consider related
words, familiar sayings and phrases, roots, prefixes,
and suffixes. Have you ever heard or seen a word
that may be related to it?
● In your test booklet, mark each question you don’t
answer so that you can easily go back to it later if
you have time.
● Remember that all questions are worth the same
number of points regardless of the type or difficulty.
Sentence Completions
● knowledge of the meanings of words.
● ability to understand how the different parts of a
sentence fit together logically.
Directions
Each sentence below has one or two blanks, each blank
indicating that something has been omitted. Beneath
the sentence are five words or sets of words labeled A
through E. Choose the word or set of words that, when
inserted in the sentence, best fits the meaning of the
sentence as a whole.
Example:
Hoping to ------- the dispute, negotiators
proposed a compromise that they felt would
be ------- to both labor and management.
(A) enforce . . useful
(B) end . . divisive
(C) overcome . . unattractive
(D) extend . . satisfactory
(E) resolve . . acceptable
abcd,
Answering Sentence Completion
Questions
One way to answer a sentence completion question with
two missing words is to focus first on just one of the
two blanks. If one of the words in an answer choice is
logically wrong, then you can eliminate the entire choice
from consideration.
● Look at the first blank in the above example.
Would it make sense to say that “negotiators” who
have “proposed a compromise” were hoping to
enforce or extend the “dispute”? No, so neither (A)
nor (D) can be the correct answer.
● Now you can focus on the second blank. Would
the “negotiators” have proposed a compromise that
they believed would be divisive or unattractive to
“both labor and management”? No, so (B) and (C)
can be eliminated, and only choice (E) remains.
● Always check your answer by reading the entire
sentence with your choice filled in. Does it make
sense to say, “Hoping to resolve the dispute, the
negotiators proposed a compromise that they felt
would be acceptable to both labor and manage-
ment”? Yes.
Correct answer: (E) / Difficulty level: Easy
The Critical Reading Section 5