Doing well on Fill-in-the Blank and Sentence Completion

1. Read the directions.

2. Read the entire sentence before filling in the blank.

3. Notice the length of the line and how many blanks are in each sentence.  Sometimes the length of the line will indicate the length of the word.  If there are multiple blanks, you know the answer requires more than one word.

4. Look for articles and adjectives before a blank.  These provide grammatical clues to the answers.
Examples:
"a"--answer starts with a consonant
"an"--answer starts with a vowel
"the"--answer is a noun

5. Look for subject-verb agreement.  Examples: trees are; a dog is

6. Use context clues in the sentence to help you figure out the answer.

7. Do the easy ones first.  Star, circle, or mark any question you need to come back to later.

8. Look for answers in other parts of the test.  Sometimes another question in another section may provide clues to an answer you don't know.

9. After answering, reread the statement to be sure it makes sense.