But even if we don’t know the rest of the words, we can probably take their suffixes apart. Notice that the sentence talks about something being done to these “business stratagems;” something about them is ultimately changed as the result of a “transformation.” Now notice that some of the answer words in the answer choices sound like words that involve some kind of transformation process being applied.
For instance, (A) has the word “streamlined,” which definitely sounds like it could be used to describe something that has been transformed by streamlining. (B) has “mitigated”—even if we don’t know what that means, the “-ate” suffix there tells us this is probably an adjective made out of some kind of “mitigation” process. So that might seem like it could work, too.
But notice the second words for (A) and (B). (A) has the word “infighting,” which doesn’t really sound like any kind of transformative process. (B) has “jingoism,” and even if we don’t know what that word means, the suffix “-ism” usually indicates a set of beliefs, not a process.
Apart from (D), which can’t be right because “innovation” is positive, there’s only one answer choice that has two words in it that both sound like some kind of process: (C) has both “ossified” and “bureaucratization.” “Ossified” sounds like some kind of transformative process because of the suffix “-ify,” which we also find in words like “classify” or “pacify” or “rectify,” all of which describe the idea of doing some action to something. “Bureaucratization” has that suffix “-ization,” which also sounds like a kind of active, transforming process, like we see in the words “pasteurization,” “ionization,” and “immunization.”
Believe it or not, we can be sure (C) is right if we simply realize that “innovation” doesn’t work and that (C) is the only other choice with two words that could describe a transformation. We don’t even need to know what those words mean.
Now, let me be very clear that this exact type of solution will not be possible on every single Sentence Completion question, for the reasons I described earlier in this section: the College Board uses a wide variety of sentence structures and a wide variety of words, so we have to be flexible in our solutions. Sometimes we’ll look at a question with a lot of unknown words and there just won’t be anything we can do. But sometimes we’ll be able to work out the question mostly by reading carefully and paying attention to suffixes, and that’s what happened here.
Conclusion
This might feel like a strange, unreliable way of answering SAT questions. If it seems that way to you, it means you’re still thinking as a traditional, cramming-oriented test-taker. Just loosen up a little bit and try using these techniques in practice. After a few questions they’ll begin to feel much more natural.
It will probably help to check out www.SATprepVideos.com, where a selection of free videos is available for readers of this book.
In order to help that process along, let’s take a look throughout the rest of the College Board’s book at some other test items that students have often had questions about.
A Selection of Challenging Questions
Now let’s talk about some solutions for the SAT Sentence Completion questions that people typically have difficulties with. As always, you’ll need a copy of the College Board’s Blue Book to follow along.
I strongly advise you to follow along with these solutions as a way to continue to improve your performance on Sentence Completion questions.
Page 402, Question 6
This is a two-blank question that a lot of students miss because they don’t bother to consider their answer in the context of the original sentence. Most people who miss this question choose (A), because the idea of “cheapen[ing]” something seems to fit nicely in the sentence for the first blank, and “affordable” definitely works for the second blank.
The problem, though, is that it doesn’t make sense to say that the new method “cheapened” an “industry.” A product might have been cheapened, but the industry as a whole can’t technically be cheapened—the industry doesn’t have a price that could be lowered, which is what “cheapening” would have to mean in this context.
If we go back to the original sentence and imagine saying it with the word “cheapened” in place of the first blank, we can probably feel right away that it’s odd to talk about an “industry” being “cheapened.” But, again, a lot of students don’t catch this mistake because they don’t take the time necessary to go back and fit the word back in the sentence to make sure it’s correct.