SAT Mc Graw Hill 2011

210 MCGRAW-HILL’S SAT

Lesson 1: Verbal Inference

What Are Sentence Completion

Questions?

Now look at Question 2: Since we became trepin-

dantafter running around the cregiendo,the word tre-

pindantdescribes human beings, and perhaps other

animals that can run, rather than, say, rocks. It also

seems to describe a temporary staterather than a per-

manent trait, since we weren’t trepindantbefore we

started running around. What would make us col-

lapse in a heap? Exhaustion, of course. So trepindant

probably means exhausted,which big objects like

cregiendoscould never be.

Attacking the Questions

Always reread the sentence with your selected

response to check it. Too many students forget

this simple step. Rereading helps you to avoid

overlooking anything important. Check that

thelogicand the tonemake sense.

Consider the following sentence:

As part of our game, we ran twice around the

cregiendo until we became so trepindant that we

collapsed in a heap on the porch.

Is the word cregiendoa noun, a verb, or an adjective?
How about trepindant? Since they are nonsense words,
you could not have known the answer to those ques-
tions before reading this sentence. After reading it,
though, you should have some idea about what
cregiendo and trepindant might mean. Cregiendomust
be a noun because it’s the thingwe ran around, and tre-
pindantmust be an adjective because it describes us
after we ran around the cregiendo.With your vast ver-
bal inference skills, you’ve probably figured out more
than just the part of speech of cregiendoandtrepindant.
Try these questions:

1. A cregiendois about as big as (A) a spider
   (B) a pillow (C) a car (D) a house (E) a village.


2. Can a cregiendobetrepindant?

Even the world’s smartest and most powerful com-
puters find these kinds of questions very, very tough.
It’s easier to program a computer to become a chess
grandmaster or to predict hurricanes than to answer
such “common-sense” questions. Common sense
seems simple, but this simplicity is deceptive. So revel
in your brilliance!
Look at Question 1: A cregiendois something that
kids can run around, but running around it twice
causes you to collapse. Your common sense tells you
that such a thing would be roughly as big as a house.
A village is way too big to run around in a game, and
the other things are much too small to exhaust you.

Example:

Although these animals migrate, they are

not -------; they remain loyal to their estab-

lished ranges and seldom stray into new areas.

(A) predators (B) burrowers

(C) grazers (D) scavengers

(E) wanderers

Don’t worry about the choices yet, just read the sen-

tence. These animals seldom stray,so they must not

bewanderers.It’s possible that they are not predators,

orburrowers,orgrazers,orscavengersalso, but the

sentence doesn’t provide any information about those

traits. Your choice should be (E).

Check Your Work

Attack Sentence Completion questions system-

atically: (1) Read the entire sentence, saying

“blank” in place of the missing words. (2) Think

about the logicof the sentence. (3) Complete the

sentence with your own words.(4)Scan through

the choices and look for a match.(It probably

won’t be an exact match; pick the closest

choice.)

Every SAT will contain about 20 Sentence

Completion questions as part of the Critical

Reading portion of the test. These questions

test your verbal inference skills. Your verbal in-

ference skills are the skills you use to figure out

the meaning and usage of an unfamiliar word

when you read or hear it in a sentence.