Sentence Completions

Link of the Day

Gordon Parks was the first black photographer to work for magazines like Life and Vogue. In addition to being a photographer he was also a musician, a filmmaker, and a writer. He was a truly multitalented artist, and he would make a great "Excellent Example" for your essay. You can read more about Gordon Parks here.

6/12 Sentence Completions

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

With the 1969 film The Learning Tree, Gordon Parks proved what a truly ------- artist he was: he not only directed the film and composed its musical score, but also adapted its screenplay from his own novel.

You should always predict a word for the blank before you look at the answers. In this case it is especially important that you predict a word for the blank (because the words in the answer choices are fairly difficult). Note that "Gordon Parks proved what a truly ______ artist he was." The reason he was such as "______artist" is that he "not only directed the film and composed it's musical score, but also adapted its screenplay from his own novel." Since the emphasis is that Gordon Parks is able to do so many different things, you can predict that he is a "versatile author". Now you need to look at the answers below to see which one matches your prediction.


(A) complacent
(B) protean
(C) lauded
(D) clairvoyant
(E) harried

You may notice that the words in the answers for this Sentence Completion are fairly difficult. This is why it is so important to predict the answer before you look at answers.

(A) doesn't fit your prediction. We are looking for a positive word and in this context, "complacent" is a negative word.
(B) actually does fit your prediction but it's a fairly unusual word. If you don't know what "protean" means, you can move on and check the remaining answers. Eliminate any answers that don't match your prediction and then guess from the remaining choices
(C) also doesn't fit your prediction but you can see how it would be easy to talk yourself into this answer if you had not already predicted the word "versatile."
(D) is clearly wrong (Gordon Parks may be versatile, but he can't see the future).
(E) doesn't match your prediction and it has the wrong charge.

While (B) is a fairly unusual word that you might not know, the rest of the choices are clearly wrong. Once again, you can see how important it is to work through the problem step by step using the Knowsys method.

The correct answer choice is (B)

Words Tested in this SC:

complacent: Uncritically satisfied with oneself or one's achievements; smug
protean: Exceedingly variable; readily assuming different shapes or forms
lauded: past tense of laud
clairvoyant: Able to see things that cannot be perceived by the normal senses
harried: Rushed; panicked; overly busy or preoccupied

on sat.collegeboard.org 47% of the responses were correct.

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