<p>After reading the 'do you believe this guy?' thread, i was wondering, Do any of you get sentence completion right without knowing at least half the words in the question? If so, how?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>that's me!!
i didn't watch it...but i find that knowing the logic is way more important than knowing every word in the answer choices </p>
<p>a lot of times i don't know exactly what the words mean but i've heard them used before...so i know the sort of connotation, which is actually enough to know whether it's right or wrong pretty often. also, i look to see if there are any roots that i know in any of the words (if you take latin, this would probably be a good strategy)</p>
<p>however, having said that, it's not like i get every vocab question right when i don't know the words...it's definitely better to know the words =P</p>
<p>Two powerful techniques you can use are 1) easy-medium-hard technique and 2) the positive negative technique</p>
<p>1) You know the sentence completions are arranged in order of difficulty. That means that the answers to the first 1/3 of the questions are going to be easy words. Next 1/3, medium words, and last 1/3, hard words. You can use this to your advantage. On the last practice SAT I took, I narrowed a two blank completion question down to two choices. The first word for one choice was something like "numerous" (or some simple word with the same meaning). The first word for the second choice was "multifarious." Without even needing to glance at the second words of either choices, I knew the answer must include "multifarious." "Numerous" is simple word. Because most people know what it means, they're going to pick it. If you're stuck on a hard sentence completion, narrow it down and then pick the choice you think fewer people will pick. If you're stuck on an easy one, know that you're probably overthinking it.</p>
<p>2) I like to establish whether a blank will accept a positive (e.g. talent, determination, magnanimity) or negative (pettiness, greed, etc.) word. For one blankers, it's gonna be + or -. For two blankers, you're given more help, it's gonna be ++ +- -+ or --. This makes it very easy to narrow down the answer choices. </p>
<p>I've used those techniques and the mistakes I make in CR are always passage based reading. I haven't even really studied vocab (the first 100 words of the RR list and that's it).</p>