What Is a Sentence Completion Test?
When preparing to begin new employment, you may be asked to complete a series of verbal reasoning tests including a sentence completion test. The test is a type of psychometric exam; in other words, an exam used to measure your personality, behaviors, cognitive ability, or any combination of the above. No need to fret–these assessments work to provide each test taker with a fair and objective analysis of their potential in the workplace.
The sentence completion test measures your aptitude for vocabulary, language comprehension, and critical thinking skills. This article aims to help you know what to expect when taking the test and how to prepare to do your best! We will discuss sub-topics within the test, offer preparation tips, and provide multiple-choice questions to help you practice.
What Should I Expect From a Sentence Completion Test?
The sentence completion test evaluates your ability to decipher and utilize language. The key points that this assessment looks for are grammar, vocabulary, context comprehension, and logic. Most often, this test is used for academic and employment purposes to gauge your problem-solving abilities alongside your capacity for critical thinking and language use.
What Are the Sub-Topics Within Sentence Completion Tests?
The assessment can cover a wide range of topics. Each of these focuses on a particular aspect of language, requiring you as the test taker to apply your prior knowledge and understanding to complete the sentences appropriately. Below you will find a list of common sub-topics accompanied by in-depth explanations as well as examples.
Analogy:
An analogy is a comparison of two things. In sentence completion tests, analogy-based questions often require you to identify the relationship between two given things, then look at a half-completed analogy using the same relationship to accurately identify the correct comparison.
Example Question:
“Puppy is to dog as kitten is to ____?”
- parrot
- cub
- cat
- orange
In this example, the relationship between “puppy” and “dog” is that “puppy” is the word for a baby dog. Applying this same relationship to the word “kitten,” we can safely assume that the correct answer is C: cat.
Inference:
Inference questions ask you to look at provided context in order to choose a word that best fits the given scenario. When it comes to these questions, it’s often best to use the process of elimination to narrow down the choices first. Once you’ve narrowed your potential answers, you can then insert these choices into the blank to see what fits best.
Example Question:
“We worked hard to simplify many of the _____ amendments within the company rulebook. They were too out-dated and complicated, which made the rulebook difficult to read for new employees.”
- byzantine
- nuanced
- shallow
- abundant
Breaking down this question, we can easily rule out two of the answers: “nuanced” and “shallow.” Nuanced refers to something being very specific, so it would not make sense to simplify nuanced amendments. Shallow means that something has very little depth or purpose–which would also not require any sort of simplifying.
This leaves us with two possible choices: “byzantine” and “abundant.” Even if you aren’t sure what byzantine means, a quick look back at our context makes the word “abundant” easy to rule out. Due to “abundant” meaning “many,” the use of this word would make the sentence redundant. This leaves us with the correct answer–A: Byzantine, which means overly complicated. In fact, if you look once more at the given context, you can see that the definition is mentioned in the second sentence!
Grammar:
Grammar questions present you with a sentence that may be grammatically incorrect and ask you to either correct the sentence using one of the answer choices or leave it as-is. While an extensive knowledge of grammatical structure is beneficial when tackling these questions, often you can again use the process of elimination to assist you. Another tactic when it comes to grammar questions is simply to read the sentence and see if it sounds funny.
Grammar questions may also present you with a sentence that is correct as far as punctuation and structure go, but use the incorrect homophone. A homophone is a word that sounds exactly like another word–common examples are: your/you’re, their/there/they’re, see/sea, and so many others. English is chock full of homophones!
Example Question:
“The supervisory team needs to know if ___ work for the day is done yet. ____ deadline is approaching, after all!”
Fill in the blanks with the correct words.
- you’re / They’re
- you’re / Their
- your / Their
- your / There
Now, if you’re familiar with these homophones and the correct usage, this question is fairly simple. However, if you aren’t comfortable with pronoun homophones, it may be difficult to eliminate some answer choices. Remember that an apostrophe within a pronoun makes it a contraction, or a combination of two words. In this case, “you’re” can be separated into “you are.” If we plug “you are” into the first blank in the question sentence, we can see that it doesn’t make sense to say “you are work,” making A and B obviously incorrect.
Taking a look at C and D, we see that the second blank is now the one we need to either correctly identify or eliminate an answer choice. To solve this, remembering the following trick is helpful: “there” has the word here in it, which means it refers to a place. “Their” has the word heir in it, which means it’s possessive. Using this logic, we can now see that the correct answer is C: your / Their, due to both blanks needing a possessive pronoun!
Vocabulary:
Vocabulary questions have the potential to be the most tricky of the sub-topics. These questions ask you to identify the correct synonym of a given word. A synonym is a word that has the same meaning as another word. These questions often do not provide context, which eliminates a potential tool you can use to help. Background knowledge of roots and stems is helpful when it comes to these questions, but the English language contains thousands of roots and stems, so we once again arrive at using the process of elimination if you are unsure as to what the given word means. Let’s look at an example.
Example:
“Identify a synonym of the word nomadic.”
- Traveler
- Icelandic
- Stationary
- Cleaver
Let’s begin by studying the given word: nomadic. The root of this word is “nomad,” which is a person who moves (from place to place) often. Using that knowledge, we can immediately eliminate “Icelandic” (meaning a person from Iceland) and “stationary” (meaning to not move at all). Looking at our remaining options, we should now focus on the word “cleaver.” While “cleaver” refers to a type of knife, it means “makes an effort to separate themselves or others” when applied to a person. While it has a similar meaning to the word “nomadic,” it’s not as good of an answer as A: Traveler, which refers to someone who travels from place to place.
The best thing you can do to prepare for vocabulary questions is simply to work on expanding your vocabulary, which is explained in greater detail below.
When it comes to these sub-topics, familiarizing yourself with their structure gives you an advantage as well as helps you further prepare for the test.
How to Prepare for the Sentence Completion Test?
- Work to Expand Your Vocabulary: When it comes to expanding your vocabulary, the quickest and easiest way to do this is simply to read often! It doesn’t matter what you read as long as you’re exposing yourself to new words. Try to find something you enjoy reading whether it be a fictional book, a memoir, news articles, blog posts, etc. You can also take advantage of online vocabulary-building exercises. These come in the form of games, online flashcards, videos, and more!
- Get on Top of Grammar: Make a point to review grammar rules and practice applying them to varying sentence structures.
- Understand the Importance of Context: Alongside reading to better your vocabulary, reading is also crucial to developing an understanding of context. Again, find something you enjoy reading and go at it! Context clues are a huge help when it comes to sentence completion tests.
- Practice, Practice, Practice: There are a ton of online resources you can utilize to practice sentence completion, such as the one you’re reading this article on! Below you will find a set of practice questions. Repeatedly quizzing yourself will help to develop the skills you need to succeed when it comes to taking the assessment.
- Analyze Answer Choices: No matter what kind of test it is, you can use the answer choices to help you answer the questions. The process of elimination (the process of narrowing down answer choices starting with ones that are obviously incorrect) is an invaluable tool for any test-taker.
