Verbal Reasoning : Complete the Sentence (Type M)

The Complete the Sentence type requires you to select 2 words which are the most relevant to each part of the sentence, and by doing so completing the sentence. To decide which word is most relevant you will have to work out the relationship. The relationship can be based on position, age, wording, opposites and more.

By completing the first section of the sentence you can, more easily, select the right word for the second section. The questions are broken down by is to and as statements.

The is to statement helps you to identify the first relationship, for example Item 1 is to … as Item 2 is to ….

The “is to” is there to help you identify the link, and how the word you select links best to the Item. You then use the same link for the second “is to”.

The questions you are looking to ask include things like what is Item 1 similar to, close to or like – which one has the closest relationship? It can be straightforward, but you have to remember to recognise the word with the closest relationship.

The answer you choose must be from the group of possible answers already provided. You may see that the possible answers may have some sort of connection in one way or another, don’t let that faze you, instead, focus on the closest answer. A question type like this focuses on the following skills:

• Broad understanding and awareness of English vocabulary
• Knowing word groups
• Knowing relationships e.g. between people, places, objects, animals, actions
• Being able to work logically, systematically and efficiently
• Understanding order and identifying levels of relevance
• Identifying and re-applying a relationship / rule

To summarise, a big part of this question looks to evaluate your knowledge, understanding and awareness of the English language. It will do this by expecting you to pull together word groups and relationships. You can only do this by identifying the relevance of the word. Asking yourself how connected is this possible solution to the original word and why is a really good place to start.

Thinking around the context, or background to how these words are used and their possible relationships is also another place to start. To finish off this question however, not only do you need to identify the broader relationship / rule, but you then have to re-apply it (in the second part of the sentence).

The reason why this is being tested is to understand not only how you establish a relationship e.g. young to old, but also your knowledge of how this relationship can work in different situations and ways e.g. kitten is young, cat is old and puppy is young, dog is old.

So here, not only are we establishing knowledge of the English language, word groups and relationships, but also awareness of how those words relate directly to the world, people and things.

What does the Complete the Sentence Question Look Like?

As you can tell from the Gaggle example below, the Complete the Sentence question type is in the following format:

• General instructions with an example
• A full sentence per question
• 2 areas in the sentence which are missing words that you need to fill in
• 1 mark per question

How do I answer this question?

Before we get into a working example it is important to know that, like other question types, the Complete the Sentence question has a process that you can apply. Always remember that with this question type there are 2 key components. The first one is your knowledge of relationships between objects and things. The second is your knowledge of the English language and its word groups.

Once you can build, identify and recognise relationships and understand what these relationships mean in the English language can you then compare and understand the relevancy. What this means for you is that you need to expand your general knowledge of things, parts of things, places, objects and more.

You also need to understand that things can come in varieties, in different phases and with a load of connections, for example a cat was once a kitten and a dog a puppy. When we say connections all we mean is that the thing is linked or connected to something else for example a son is connected to a father. Another example is that a finger is connected to a hand.

After knowing this you need to understand what this means for the English language for example a foot connected to a human is called a foot, but for a cat their foot would be called a paw. Can you see how the relationship between the thing and the object e.g. the foot and the human is the same as the cat and the paw except that the English term being used is different?

Lets go a bit further and break down a systematic process you can quickly apply to help you understand the relationship and then work out the answer:

1. Make sure to read the sentence from left to right and remember it is up to you to decide on what the links are
2. Break the first part of the sentence down and identify the object
3. Look at the options given to you for answers
4. Between the object and the options identify the option that is the most closely linked or connected to the object
5. Remember why this option is the most closely connected to the object
6. Go to the second part of the sentence (past the as)
7. Identify the second object
8. Look at the options given to you and see which option the second object is most closely connected to
9. Is the reason for the connection between the second object and its answer the same reason for the first object and that answer?
10. If the answer to number 9 is yes then select your answers
11. If the answer is no to number 9 you need to focus in on making sure the reason why the connection between both objects and their answers is the same

A key point to remember here which may be a bit confusing is that the link or connection between the object and the answer must be the same at both parts of the sentence.

For example, if the reason you chose the most relevant option was based on age, wording, area in the first part of the sentence, then you have to do the same for the second part.

Working Example of Complete the Sentence

Lets see the process we built out in the previous section in practice:

Question 1:

Chair is to (lead, sit, bend) as Bed is to (draw, plant, lie)

We will take the question above and run it through our process.

First of all we want to read from left to right so we know what the whole question looks like. What we can see is that there is an object and a set of options that we choose from, and then another object with another set of options to choose from.

Now, lets break this question down so its more manageable. We will look at only the first half as there is an object and a set of options:

Chair is to (lead, sit, bend)

Looking at the object Chair we can see 3 options, lead, sit and bend. We need to see which option is the most closely connected to Chair. So we know that lead isn’t really something you do with a Chair – we can be sure that’s not the answer.

You can bend a Chair, but sit is what you usually do with a Chair – you sit on it. Not only is it the one that makes most sense it is also the option the most closely linked to Chair.

So the reason why we chose sit is because that’s what you do with a Chair – you sit on it. We have to remember this because the next object we have to find an option based on what you do with it.

Now lets look at the second part and its options:

Bed is to (draw, plant, lie).

Using the rule from before we need to find an option which is the most linked to Bed and is what you do with it.

We know you can’t plant a Bed, you can draw a Bed so there is a link but drawing is not what you do with a Bed.

This leaves us with lie – we know you lie on a Bed, it is closely linked to Bed and it also matches the rule for the first object – meaning the answer has to be something you do with the object.

And that’s it we can confidently answer the question by saying that:

Chair is to sit as Bed is to lie.

What if I can’t answer the question?

First of all always remember that these question types are hard and require you to use a few different skills to find your answers. What this means is that you will not get all of these right and that you need to try your best. The easiest and quickest way to do this is to follow a simple process that you can always apply and to really practice this process until you feel confident.

Now, in the situation where you are struggling to answer the question lets really break down what you need to do and give it another shot:

• Read the question carefully and slowly – do not get upset or flustered this is normal
• Identify the objects and the options
• Read Object 1 and decide on what the connections are going to be – REMEMBER this is down to you to decide, there are no hints or suggestions. You need to link the object to the option based on the connection that you see
• Keep a mental note of why you connected Object 1 to an option
• Now for Object 2 use the same reason to connect it to an option
• If you cannot link any Objects to any options ask yourself what is the closest link that I recognise and decide on that – do the same for each of the Objects
• If you do not recognise any of the options take your best guess and ask yourself, which option makes sense when I speak about this Object
• If you are still struggling take your best guess. Look at the options you know the meanings of and see if they match with the Object or not then move on