So, after some careful reading and thinking, we can realize that (C) and (E) might work for the first blank. Now the issue is to figure out what could work for the second blank, out of “censure” and “eulogy.”
“Censure” sounds a lot like “censor” and seems to have a similar meaning, so it’s not a good match for the idea of “depict[ing] . . . the strengths.”
“Eulogy” is a word that a lot of test-takers might recognize from funerals, and that connotation of death might seem like a negative thing at first. But let’s think about it for a second: the eulogy at a funeral is always a positive speech, full of kind thoughts and funny stories. So a “eulogy” really could be a “depict[ion]” of “strengths,” just as the sentence requires, and (E) must be the right answer.
Of course, we don’t even have to realize that “eulogy” works if we can work out that “censure” doesn’t, and that only (C) and (E) have acceptable options for the first blank.
But notice, again, that this entire thought process requires us to read carefully and to play by the test’s rules. If we just throw in whatever sounds kind of good to us and don’t pay attention to the details, we’ll end up missing questions like this for no reason.
Page 605, Question 6
Students often miss this question because they don’t pay enough attention to the details. (How many times have you heard me say that by now? The reason it keeps coming up is that the SAT does the same things over and over again, and if you want to beat the test you have to be trained to look for those things automatically.)
From the sentence, we can tell that the first blank needs to restate the idea of “automatically reject[ing]” things that “seem silly or superstitious.” (We know this because the sentence says that scientists shouldn’t do that, and then says being a scientist isn’t a license for whatever goes in the first blank.) So let’s start with that. “Experimentation” doesn’t work for the first blank, and neither does “humility” or “rigidity,” because none of those words describe the idea of rejecting things because you think they’re silly. But “arrogance” and “smugness” work well for that idea. So let’s take a look at the other words in (B) and (D).
(B) doesn’t fit if we put it in the sentence, because we would be saying that “qualifications” don’t “pursue prejudice” (the word “they” right before the second blank refers back to the word “qualifications”). A qualification can’t pursue anything, though—only people or animals can choose to pursue something.
But some people also have a problem with (D), because it seems to them like “legitimate” should be an adjective, and the sentence is clearly calling for a verb in the second blank. We have to remember, though, that all of the options for a particular blank are always the same part of speech; in other words, if the second blank needs to be a verb, and all the other answer choices for that blank can be verbs, then it must be that “legitimate” can also be used as a verb. (By the way, the verb form of “legitimate” is pronounced “luh – jit – uh – MATE.”)
So (D) can work, because the verb “legitimate” restates the idea of being a “license” for something.
Remember, once more, how important it is to know the rules of the SAT when answering Sentence Completion questions. The many people who miss this question don’t do so because they don’t know the words “pursue” and “legitimate.” They miss this question because they don’t pay attention to details on the SAT.
Page 644, Question 5
This is another question that students nearly always ask me about. Many test-takers would probably do best to skip this one, but there are some things here that we can figure out.
First, we know that the word in the first blank must mean “elaborately contrived.” We also know that the word in the second blank must restate the idea of “master[ing]” something.
Now let’s look at the answer choices.
Most people won’t know anything about either word in (A), so we’ll skip that for now.
For (B), people will often think that being “conscientious” might be kind of related to mastering something. But if we think about it very carefully, we can see there’s a distinction there—while many masters are very conscientious in their devotion to their chosen fields, it’s possible to master something without doing it conscientiously. People can master tying their shoes without conscientious study, for instance. It’s also possible to be conscientious about something without mastering it. Further, the word “nefarious” has a negative feel to it (because of the prefix “ne-“) that doesn’t really reflect anything in the sentence. So this one is out.