Now that we have finished our analysis of the previous question type, it's now time for us to go ahead
and move into taking a look at the strategy for the sentence completion question.
The sentence completion question is, I would say probably a mid range level question in terms of difficulty.
It's not as easy as the short answer or the field, the blank question, but it's not as difficult as
a paragraph location or choosing to to five from a list question.
So let's go ahead and take a look at this sentence completion question.
First of all, on the right hand side, you can see the way this question looks.
They're going to be giving you like half of a sentence.
Most of the time, they're going to give you the first part of the sentence.
And then you have to look in the box and you see a, B, C, D, E, F, g, h, and you have to be
able to decide which one of those answer choices is the missing half of the sentence.
So, for example, for number five, it says Brice Pitt believes.
So what does he believe?
Now, sometimes students will ask me, they'll say, well, can I just look in the box and just pick
something that I think fits doesn't work that way.
It doesn't work that way because if you look, multiple answer choices could fit that.
Bryce Pit believes material wealth doesn't necessarily create happiness.
Bryce Pit believes optimists tend to be unrealistic about human evolution.
Bryce Pit believes optimism is and is advantageous for human evolution.
So you see, you can't just look at the box and choose something that you think looks right, doesn't
work that way.
You have to be able to go find the matching.
You have to be able to go find the sentence in the passage where it talks about what Bryce Pit believes.
Read that sentence, then look at the answer choices and find the matching paraphrase for what he believes.
That's the way it works.
So when we look at the question requirements, this question is asking students to go to the passage
and locate the missing portion portion.
There's a scanning requirement.
You have to be able to look at the keywords and the question, go find that language, read it, and
then find the match.
Now, this question is a little more challenging because it requires deeper understanding instead of
just looking for a synonym word match.
Here you're really looking for a paraphrase of like several words.
So when we go and find out what Brice Pitts said, you may have to look at six or seven words in that
sentence for what he said.
They look at the answer choices and look for a paraphrase of that belief or a paraphrase of that statement.
So it requires a deeper level of understanding.
So in terms of strategy, in terms of some helpful strategic information, this question goes in order.
I want to say, most of the time it does.
There have only been a couple of rare, rare occasions where it hasn't gone in order.
And the only time that has happened is if you have like questions five and six are in back to back sentences
and it might be out of order.
That's the only time I've really seen that.
So I can't say all the time, but my my first assumption is that it's going to go in order.
Number two, I would do this question if I have a question set in.
My question said, I have a field of blank question.
I have a sentence completion question and I have a yes no, not given question.
I'm probably going to do the field of blank and the yes no, not given and then do the sentence completion
question because it just, you know, it would give me a chance to really look at the passage and get
a handle on the passage, understanding of the passage before doing the sentence completion question,
which requires a little bit deeper understanding.
Number three, very often an answer choice is a combination of two sentences.
And what I mean by that is if you're looking at a paragraph.
And you have paragraph B, right?
The question part might come from the second sentence and then the answer part might come from the third
sentence.
So really, they're creating a compound combination of the second and third sentences to create the
question and the answer.
They're putting it together in one sentence.
And so you need to be aware of that.
You need to be aware of that.
And when we look at a couple of examples, I'll try to point that out to you.
So now let's take a look at how to attack this question in terms of strategy.
First of all, you want to look at the questions and identify the keywords, right?
You have to focus on the words in the question, the question words, not the answer.
Choices, the words and the answer choices don't matter until after you have found the matching sentence.
Now, when you're looking at the the questions, you want to look at it and decide, well, which questions
are going to be the easiest to attack first?
Right.
Which questions?
Have a name, right?
A proper name or a number or very specific language.
Those are going to be the questions that are easiest to find first.
And I think you want to find the easiest ones first.
Because remember what I told you, that the questions go in order.
Most of the time.
And so that means if number two is the easiest to find, first, start with number two, find number
2/1.
Then you know, number one is right before that and number three is after that one right after.
You've identified the easiest question and scan for that question, you want to then read the matching
sentences or sentence and then look in the box at choices.
A b, c, d, e.
F, g.
H.
Looking at the box and find which one has the matching missing information.
That's what you're doing here.
Which one has the matching missing information?
So most of the time, strategy, strategy and tactics for the ILS exam for the reading part is very
straightforward to understand.
The challenge is application.
How well can you apply it?
How well can you scan and how fast can you process English and find matching meaning?
Because here we're dealing with paraphrasing most often paraphrasing, not matching up synonym words,
which is a higher level and more difficult level of English.
So let's look at this example here.
Let's look at this example here.
All right.
We identify the keywords identified, the easiest to scan first read the sentence, match, apply to
strategy.
So all of these are probably really straightforward to find.
Right.
Is usually usually for this question.
It's not difficult to find the sentence because you can look at number five here.
And when you look at number five, right, you see Bryce Pit.
That's easy to find.
Henley Center, easy to find.
Adweek Easy to find.
Annual review of clinical psychology, easy to find.
Stephen Stack Easy to find.
Once you have to be aware of what this question is, that sometimes a name can appear more than once.
So what?
I'm looking for the name Bryce Pit.
I'm going to check if I see his name more than once.
Because sometimes the first place you see his name won't match anything.
And then the second time you see his name, it actually matches it actually gives what he believes.
So you want to always be aware of that possibility.
So we look here for this paragraph.
Right.
And what I'm looking at here, everybody, are numbers seven, eight and nine.
Right.
Seven, eight and nine.
So when we look at number seven, let's go ahead and read what it says.
Number seven says the study conducted by Ad Week finds.
Few studies have tried to ascertain the proportion of optimists in the world, but a 19 a 1995 nationwide
study conducted by the American magazine Adweek found that about half the population counted themselves
as optimists, with women slightly more apt than men to see the sunny side.
So here everything is coming from one sentence, really one sentence.
Because the first part, the study, the study conducted by Ad Week, we see that the first time nationwide
survey conducted by the American magazine Ad Week, there is the first half of the sentence.
There's the first half of the sentence.
End.
What did he find?
Found.
Finds.
That about half the population counted themselves as optimists, with women slightly more apt than men.
That's a match for choice.
E.
Right.
The feelings of optimism vary according to gender.
Look at how they're using synonym language.
They're not they're not using the same words.
Women and men.
Right.
Or women more than men.
They're for women and men.
They're using gender.
They're testing your English.
Keep in mind, that's what they're doing.
They're testing your English.
Women more than men.
Synonym for vary.
That's the test of English.
It's a paraphrase.
Okay, now let's go ahead and move on to number eight.
Number eight says the annual review of clinical psychology reports.
So now let's move down to the second paragraph.
Optimism is one of the central traits required in building resilience, say Yale University investigators
in the annual review of clinical psychology.
There's the first part.
So this is a situation where they're taking the first half from one sentence and then the answer choices
in the second sentence.
They answer that resilient people learn to hold onto their sense of humor, and this can help them to
keep a flexible attitude when big changes are planned are warranted.
Right.
So that's a match for choice number G.
Choice G C is evenness of mind under stress.
So look what it says.
Hold onto their sense of humor.
Right.
And this could help them keep a flexible attitude.
That's all paraphrasing of evenness, of mind under stress.
Right.
To building resilience.
Right.
So you have to be able it's all about paraphrasing with the sentence completion question.
None of the other answer choices are a really good paraphrase of that language.
Now some people might say, Well, how come I can't choose H as an answer?
Well, you can't choose AIDS because AIDS is talking about having an optimistic outlook as a habit.
Right.
They're not talking about habits here.
Choice nine, Stephen Sack says in his report.
Now, Steven Sach is going to be easy to find.
We just need to check if his name appears more than once.
So one of the best ways to acquire resilience is through experiencing a difficult childhood.
The psychologist Stephen Check.
Stephen Stack reports in the Journal of Social Psychology.
So that is a match for what?
DX.
Adversity is the breeding ground of resilience.
Right.
Difficulty experiencing difficulty is the same as adversity.
Right.
And we see they're talking about acquiring resilience.
So, again, paraphrasing, paraphrasing, paraphrasing that.
So some questions require a higher level of English.
So, for example, filled the blank questions, basic level English sentence sentence completion questions
are more of upper intermediate, intermediate English.
Then when you get to the paraphrase, the paragraph location question or the choose 2 to 5 from a list
that's probably closer to advanced level English work.
So different questions require different levels of English.
Here we have another example.
Right.
So here we're looking at numbers ten and 11.
Number ten says headline of colony collapse disorder states that.
So now look at paragraph a.
Recently, ominous headlines have described a mysterious ailment colony collapse disorder that is wiping
out the honeybees that pollinate many crops.
So there is the first part.
Now the second part that we have to match is in the second sentence.
Without honeybees, the story goes, feels will be sterile, economies will collapse and food will be
scarce.
That's a match for what choice be?
It would cause severe consequences both to commerce and agriculture.
Synonym language.
Economies will collapse.
Standing in for commerce fields will be sterile, synonym for agriculture.
Right.
That's that's what we're doing now.
Number 11.
Viewpoints of freeness manifests that right.
So here we have the same thing.
The same thing.
Right.
The first part, Reno and Phoenix.
Reno.
Reno, Fritos is right here at the beginning of Section DX.
And then the second part contains the actual answer choice.
Bruno Freitas.
And.
Agronomists pointed out that in nature, such a high degree of specialization usually is a very dangerous
game.
It works well, while all the rest is an equilibrium, but runs quickly to extinction.
At the very least, this balance in effect, by developing an agricultural system that is heavily reliant
on a single pollinator species, we humans have become risky, rascally, over specialized.
That's a match for choice.
A and agricultural system is fragile when relying on a single pollinate.
A single pollinator.
Right when it when it says humans have become rascally over specialized.
That's synonym for fragile.
Right.
We see single pollinator species there already.
And we also see agricultural system.
So choice F is a match for that language.
Okay.
So coming up next in the next lectures coming up, we're going to give you a full passage application,
a full passage application, so you can see the way that the scanning works for this question type and
also how the application process works for this question type.
Thank you very much for joining me and I look forward to talking to you in the next lecture.
Take care.