Paragraph completion for competitive exams

Paragraph completion for competitive exams

Questions on Paragraph Completion involve a paragraph with the last sentence missing. The test-taker is expected to choose the right sentence to complete the paragraph from a given set of four sentence options. Questions on Paragraph Completion assess the test-taker’s ability to identify flow in language and ideas as well as comprehension skills.


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Strategies and approaches to solving paragraph completion questions

The following list contains various strategies and approaches that can be employed to solve Paragraph Completion questions.

  1. Identify the gist of the given paragraph and put it in a nutshell.
  2. Identify the author’s perspective and thread of thought.
  3. Proceed on the thread of thought while choosing the answer.
  4. In many instances, the correct choice sums up the discussion in the paragraph.
  5. In some instances, pronoun antecedents can be used in ascertaining the correct sentence.
  6. Although the correct answer option should be related to the subject in the paragraph, the last sentence before the blank is crucial in determining the answer.
  7. In some instances, the correct answer option is a short creative one which emphasizes or carries forward the idea in the second last line.


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Strategies to eliminate incorrect choices

The process of eliminating incorrect answer choices can help a test taker narrow down to the correct answer choice. The following list contains the types of answer choices that can be eliminated directly.

  1. Answer choices that repeat what is already mentioned in the given paragraph.
  2. Answer choices that move from general to specific or vice-versa too fast.
  3. Answer choices that contain information that is beyond the scope of the given paragraph.
  4. Answer choices that are opposite in theme to the rest of the paragraph.
  5. Answer choices that insufficiently summarize the given paragraph.
  6. Answer choices that offer excessive, discursive information.
  7. Answer choices that offer misleading information where the answer choice looks like it is rephrasing the summary of the paragraph but a few elements are deliberately omitted or subtly but surely distorted.

 

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Example of Paragraph Completion

The audiences for crosswords and Sudoku, understandably, overlap greatly, but there are differences, too. A crossword attracts a more literary person, while Sudoku appeals to a keenly logical mind. Some crossword enthusiasts turn up their noses at Sudoku because they feel it lacks depth. A good crossword requires vocabulary, knowledge, mental flexibility and sometimes even a sense of humour to complete. It touches numerous areas of life and provides an “Aha!” or two along the way.

  1. Sudoku, on the other hand, is just a logical exercise, each one similar to the last.
  2. Sudoku, incidentally, is growing faster in popularity than crosswords, even among the literati.
  3. Sudoku, on the other hand, can be attempted and enjoyed even by children.
  4. Sudoku, however, is not exciting in any sense of the term.



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Solution: The first sentence suggests that the paragraph is speaking about the differences between crosswords and Sudoku. Choice ‘b’ introduces a new topic and hence can be eliminated. Choice ‘c’ gets eliminated because of ‘even by children’; the assumption has to be made that children lack ‘vocabulary, knowledge and mental flexibility’. The idea expressed in choice ‘d’ is extreme in nature. Through choice ‘a’, the comparison between crosswords and Sudoku is completed and hence is the correct answer.



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