On sentence completion questions on the GRE, you will be provided with a single sentence with either one or two words omitted, and you'll need to select from the answer choices the word or set of words that best fit the overall meaning of the sentence. On the GRE test, you are provided with the following instructions:
| Each sentence below has one or two blanks, each blank indicating that something has been omitted. Beneath the sentence are five lettered or sets of words. Choose the word or set of words for each blank that best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole. |
You are asked to select the "best" word or set of words from among the word choices, and this at times can be tricky because the choices may all seem irrelevant or not as good a fit as you might imagine.
Luckily, just as with the antonym and analogy questions, there are certain tactics that you can employ to help you weed out poor answer choices. The tactics that you can employ include:
- Try to arrive at the answer BEFORE you look at the answer choices.
- Look for key words that indicate a shift or a continuation or support of a certain idea.
- When dealing with a sentence with two blanks, eliminate answers as you consider one blank at a time.
To help you prepare for the Sentence Completion questions on the GRE test, the following tactics are discussed in this section:
- Filling in the gap
- Using Key Words
- Answering One-Blank questions
- Answering Two-Blank questions
- When all else fails