Conquer SAT Sentence-Completion Anxiety

The phrase "SAT sentence completion" can strike fear in the heart of even the best-read student. After all, just how frequently do we use words like "circumlocution," "abrogate," and "pellucid"? (Yes, those actually are some of the most commonly found words on the SAT!) Don't let a few three-dollar words put a damper on your child's confidence. With the right test-taking skills, it's very possible to excel at these sentence-completion questions.

Before you begin your SAT tutoring session, help your child put things in perspective. Encourage her to see the sentence-completion questions not as an impossibly difficult vocabulary test, but rather as a very doable logic puzzle. Avoid the temptation to make thousands of flashcards, with the word on the front and the definition on the back. Straight-up memorization is, according to Bloom's taxonomy, a low-level skill that requires a lot of effort for very little payoff. SAT completion questions are not about how many words your child can cram into her brain. Rather, they're about how well she understand parts of words, and whether she can find the commonality among words with similar roots. And, as with all sections of the SAT, sentence-completion items measure the student's ability to think critically in a high-stakes testing environment. As you help your child prepare for the SAT, keep the following suggestions in mind.

Get to the Root of the Issue. Sure, a word such as "pestilential" looks pretty tough. But your child can conquer this five-syllable behemoth—and other tough words—by understanding word roots. What does this word sound like? Can we hear other words within it? Your child might know the word "pestilent," or he might simply know the word "pest." Either way, he's set up for sentence-completion success. The Latin root pest- refers to something that is unhealthy. And, in fact, the word "pestilential" means "tending to produce disease." Just by knowing the simple word "pest," your child can tackle this high-level word. (Note: If your child is enrolled in Latin classes, or if he studies a Romance language such as French, his familiarity with Latinate word roots will come in incredibly handy on the SAT. Just one more reason why learning a foreign language is so beneficial!)

It Takes Two. Many of the sentence-completion items on the SAT require not one but two vocabulary words. The first word in an answer choice may seem perfectly right, but if the second word doesn't fit, that answer choice is completely wrong. As with all SAT questions, remind your child to thoroughly read the question and all of the answer choices before making a selection. The test-makers are tricky, and they often place perfect-sounding answers in the first blank to test a student's ability to read all the way through a question. There's no need to fall into that trap!

Look into Your Vocab Crystal Ball. If your child seems flummoxed by many of the answer choices, consider covering up those choices and simply having her read through the question. Then, ask her to predict what sort of word might fit in the blank. For example, a sentence-completion might read, "The poet read a very somber _______, and everyone was weeping by the end." What do we know about the word in the blank, before we even look at the options? We know that the word relates to something sad. We know that the word is a type of written work (after all, a poet is reading it). Armed with this useful knowledge, we can eliminate answer choices that have "happy" or neutral connotations, or that describe something other than a piece of writing. Encourage your child to make predictions based on context clues before she dives into the answer choices; these predictions take very little time but are immensely helpful.

In future posts, we'll discuss more ways to conquer specific SAT sections. If you're looking for a great SAT tutor for your child, consider Peterson's online course or TestCircle's unique video preparation. Both companies have a proven track record for helping students excel on standardized tests.