The best, and most helpful, tactic for answering analogy questions is to come up with a sentence between the two capital words BEFORE you look at the answer choices, and only then look at which choices fit into the sentence that you made. This focuses you to think about the capital words before you jump to the solutions. Even if you do not know the definition of several of the words in the choices, you can eliminate all choices that you know are incorrect.
Test Tip |
Make a sentence that uses both capital words BEFORE you look at the answer choices. This will help you to organize your thoughts and to eliminate wrong answer choices. |
For example, if you are given the pair APPLE : FRUIT, an obvious sentence is, "An APPLE is a particular kind of FRUIT." That's an easy one.
If you are given the pair CHAMELEON : LIZARD, then an example sentence is "A chameleon is a type of lizard." But that's not the ONLY type of relationship that you can come up with. Also, you can write, "A chamelion is a lizard that changes colors." It doesn't matter that there are many possible relationships between the word choices. What's important is that you come up with a sentence so that you actively think about the words, which will help you to arrive at the answer. Later on, if it turns out your sentence is not good enough and you can only eliminate 2 of the 5 choices, you can always revise your sentence by making it more specific or more broad.