Sentence Completions

Link of the Day

What's the point of a clean room? They are used to keep sensitive materials or chemicals from being contaminated. Everyone who enters usually needs special garments to keep flakes of skin or strands of hair from mixing with the materials. When those special garments are worn out, labs send them to Kimberly-Clark to be recycled.In fact, the company is currently expanding their cleanroom and laboratory garment recycling initiative to include gloves. This program takes used materials from clean-room laboratories and clinics to make new plastic materials such as plastic lumber and picnic tables. Cool!

4/19 Sentence Completions

Choose the word or set of words that, when inserted into the sentence, best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.

Remember to read the sentence and make a prediction before looking at the answer choices. Looking at the choices before predicting the correct answer will cost you time and is very likely to change how you think about the question. The sentence will have clues built in to lead you to the correct answer, so rely on them instead of looking at the answer choices.

Mrs. Williams found it ironic that her twelve-year-old son, who made all A's on his report card, was so ------ at home, apparently unable to follow her most basic instructions concerning such commonsense matters as tidiness.

First, look for clues. This sentence has plenty. The boy is clearly smart, since he regularly earns good grades in school. However, when he gets home, his mother finds that he cannot (or will not) follow her instructions regarding tidiness... basically, he didn't want to clean his room. His mother found this apparent dip in intelligence ironic. The blank, then, would have a word that means the opposite of "smart," so "dense," "dull," or "slow" would work.

Mrs. Williams found it ironic that her twelve-year-old son, who made all A's on his report card, was so dense and slow at home, apparently unable to follow her most basic instructions concerning such commonsense matters as tidiness.



Next, look at the answer choices to find one that matches your prediction.

A) stubborn

B) astute

C) candid

D) obtuse

E) sullen

Someone astute would be excellent at following directions, so eliminate B. Candid simply means impartial, so eliminate it as well. Stubborn, obtuse, and sullen could all describe a boy who doesn't want to clean, but only obtuse gives the impression that his behavior makes him appear less intelligent than he is. The answer is D.

Words tested in this SC:
Stubborn: Refusing to move or change one's position; obstinate
Astute: Shrewd or crafty
Candid: Impartial; straightforward and sincere
Obtuse: Intellectually dull or dim-witted
Sullen: Having a brooding ill temper, sulky; somber or dismal


On sat.collegeboard.org, 50% of responses were correct.


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