Answers and Discussion
- How did you go about locating the answers?
Type A: You may have selected key words from the questions which would help you to locate the area in the passage where the information can be found. Then you should have read through the extract carefully in order to understand what information it contains and then to identify the missing information which would complete the sentence in the question. Candidates will usually be instructed to select the words directly from the passage. They should take care to spell the words correctly as they will lose the mark if they copy the words wrongly.
Type B: You may have selected key words from the first given half sentence and then scanned the passage for words having similar meanings. Having located the area in which the information may be found, you may then have gone through the list of possible answers to choose the most appropriate one.
- Did you read through the whole passage before trying to complete the sentences?
You should read through the whole passage first to get a general idea of the contents before you try to answer the questions.
- Did finding the right ending for each beginning involve finding a single word or phrase?
It is always necessary to understand the context in order to provide the correct ending. If you have to provide the ending yourself it will be a single word or phrase from the passage but the structure of the sentence may be different from that in the passage.
- Did you read all the possible endings before choosing an answer?
Even when you have predicted the ending and found it amongst the options you should still look through all the possible endings. There may be two endings that are very similar but one is more accurate than the other. There may be just one word that distinguishes two possible endings and makes one a better ending than the other.
- What skills are being tested in this item type?
In Type A the skill being tested is the ability to locate detail/specific information. In Type B, the skill is understanding the main ideas.
