GRE Exam: A Simple Guide To Solving Text Completion Problems

Text Completion questions consist of a one-to-five-sentence passage with one to three blanks. You are asked to use logic and the context of the sentence to identify the best word for each blank. There is no partial credit for Text Completion questions.

For Text Completion questions with one blank, there will be five choices.

For Text Completion questions with two to three blanks, there will be three choices for each blank

Single-Blank Text Completion Questions
Single-blank Text Completion questions will always have five choices. Your task is to use the context of the sentence to select the choice that best fits in the blank. When most people do Text Completion questions, they take the word in each choice and insert it back into the sentence. Though this approach will sometimes lead to the right answer, the better method is to predict the answer and then see which choice matches your prediction.

How will you predict the answer? By identifying the contextual clues. Contextual clues are words or phrases that link elements of a sentence. These clues help provide a logical structure for understanding the relationship between the sentence’s different components. Though the terminology might seem foreign, you use contextual clues whenever you infer the meaning of a sentence.

Take a look at the following sentence and choose your own word for the blank.
In contrast to his earlier ____________, Jack is now extremely diligent.

What word did you put into the blank? Was it something like laziness or apathy? If so, why? Chances are, you recognized that the phrase “in contrast” indicated that the word in the blank should be the opposite of Jack’s current “diligent” behavior. In the preceding example, “in contrast” is the contextual clue. It tells us that how Jack is now will be the opposite of how Jack was before.

Contextual clues will typically fall into three categories:
- Contrast signals: but, yet, nonetheless, nevertheless, despite, in spite of, in contrast, contrasted with, opposed to, although, however, on the contrary, rather than, still, though
- Continuity signals: indeed, and, also, moreover, furthermore, in addition, in fact, semicolon (;), colon (:)
- Cause-effect signals: thus, therefore, consequently, due to, because, since, as a result, hence, so

Now that you have looked at contextual clues, let’s look at the steps for answering a typical Text Completion question.

Due to an insatiable ___________, the business executive felt no qualms about employing unethical means to generate profits.
benevolence
curiosity
ambiguity
deliberateness
avarice

Step 1: Identify the Contextual Clue
In the previous sentence, the phrase “due to” is a cause-effect signal.

Step 2: Determine the Contextual Clue’s Relationship with the Rest of the Sentence
Determine the relationship that the contextual clue creates between the blank and the different parts of the sentence. In the example, the phrase “due to” indicates that the word in the blank will characterize someone willing to pursue unethical means to generate profits.

Step 3: Predict Your Own Word for the Blank
From Step 2, you know that the word in the blank will describe someone who will take extreme measures to make money. What would be an appropriate word to describe this behavior? Greed comes to mind.

Step 4: Select the Answer That Best Matches Your Prediction
Among the five choices, the closest synonym for greed is avarice. The correct answer is E.

Double- and Triple-Blank Text Completion Questions
In double- and triple-blank questions, you will be given one to five sentences with two to three blanks and asked to select the appropriate word for each blank. In these questions, there are only three choices for each blank, and there is no partial credit.

Let’s look at an example:
The writer’s deft mastery of the novelistic form was not, as commonly thought, a function of (i) ____________: he spent years (ii) ____________ his skills until his previous weaknesses became applauded virtues.

When working with double and triple blanks, many of the strategies for single blanks will apply.

However, you must keep the following rule in mind: you don’t have to start with the first blank. Instead, identify which blank will be easier to work with, and use the methods already discussed to determine the word for the blank. Then move on to the remaining blank, and use contextual clues to determine the appropriate word for that blank.

In the previous example, the word in the first blank depends on what comes after the colon. You should thus determine the word for the second blank first, and then use that word to determine the word for the first blank.

To determine the word for the second blank, you can use the process outlined earlier. The contextual clue “until” indicates that the writer did something to his skills to change them from “weaknesses” to “virtues.” Now make your prediction. If the writer made weaknesses into virtues, then he probably refined his weaknesses. Now find the word in the choices that most closely matches refined. Of the choices, the word that most closely matches refined is honing. Thus the correct answer for the second blank is E.

Now to determine the word for the first blank, assume that honing is in the second place, and go through the same process as before. The word in the blank refers to an erroneous belief about the author’s “mastery of the novelistic form.” If the writer “spent years honing his skills,” then the talent took time to develop. It would thus be erroneous to believe that the talents were based on “instinct.” Of the choices, the phrase that most closely matches “instinct” is innate abilities. The correct choice for the first blank is A.