I’ve been doing a lot of text completion questions in the big book (homework for verbal in the 2 month study plan). I’m consistently getting 11/14 correct which is okay but I see that I always get the most difficult questions wrong (questions 6 and 7). What can I do here to improve? I feel like I’m a bit stuck!
Need to know about your approach to solving TC to help you with this. I find this 7 steps approach to be very helpful.
For each blank:
- What exactly does the blank describe?
- Try and look at the idea in isolation
- If you’re struggling, fill it in with a word (using usage) and then reverse engineer to figure out what its saying
- Is the idea containing the blank being supported or contrasted? How can you tell?
- What should the connotation of the blank’s idea be? What about the blank itself?
- What should the blank’s idea be conveying → think about what its supporting or contrasting. What about the blank itself?:
- What could the RHS and LHS of the blank’s idea be suggesting about what the blank describes
- What should the blank’s idea be supporting/contrasting
- How can I fill the blank in order to do this?
- Eliminate options/pairs that don’t fit the connotation (I would be careful with eliminating neutral)
- Eliminate options/pairs that don’t fit the semantics:
- No evidence → could be true, but the opposite could also be true, we just don’t know
- Contradicts (opposite of what we are looking for) OR logically contradicts something in the sentence
- Usage → the word grammatically make sense
- Justify your answer/pair → explain why its correct using connotation and semantics