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Intro to Double Blank Sentences

OK, welcome to the module on two blank text completions. In this video, we’re gonna learn about the basic strategies. The strategies are very important, but what’s just as important are those strategies we learned for one blank text completions.

Well, why? Because they apply. They apply in many cases in the way we’re going to tackle two blank text completions. So very first thing is to read the entire sentence, starting here with “Trent”.

“Trent was able to combine with : in heated debate he would always tactfully hear his opponent’s side, before exposing the logical flaws of that position”. So we want to identify what sort of question this is.

Going back to one blank text completions, this is a type of text completion where you’re defining what these blanks are, and so, therefore, we have to know what comes after the blanks.

So we know because we have read the entire sentence. We have identified now the sentence type. It’s simply defining these two blanks. There’s no shift going on, and what did we do with blank text completions?

We look for the keywords, for the clues, and ‘“heated debate”. Well, this person would always tactfully, tactfully hear his opponent’s side. So a good thing to remember is to try to deal with one blank at a time.

It’s a very good strategy because if you try to put too much on your plate, find the clues for both of these, try to come up with a word for both blanks, it’s going to be a lot more difficult than doing one blank at a time.

So, “Trent was able to combine “. Well, he tactfully listened to his opponent’s side. To be tactful is to be sensitive in a social setting. So what word here means, I am going to be sensitive to you and polite. Well, hesitation?

No. Hostility? Definitely not. If one exercises civility, on the other hand, that person is being kind in the social context. They are being tactful, and there’s our answer for the first blank.

Now, you will notice that the two blank text completion is different. Why? Because there are three answer choices versus five. Three answers choices for the second blank are different from those for the first blank, so we have gotten the word civility for the first blank. And now, we can move on to the second blank. Well, we now know from reading this entire sentence from the beginning that there’s more to come, and that more will refer to the second blank.

It says “before exposing the logical flaws of that position”, so that’s great. This guy, Trent, was a very good debater. He would listen to the other side, but then would show how the other side was wrong. What did he have here?

Well, he combined politeness, civility, with an ability to reason and argue, and so that’s going to be my word, the word that I can come up with and match to the answer choice. Again, you don’t have to come up with an exact word, but a phrase.

So this person is good at debating, so they have intelligence? Sure. Sarcasm? No. That’s very negative. It doesn’t go with the tone of the sentence, and definitely cowardice doesn’t work. He’s good at debating, and so he’s able to combine civility with intelligence.

Now, the final thing here to note, these are the two answers, but in order to receive full credit, you have to answer both of these correctly. You can’t answer civility and sarcasm and hope for half a point.

OK, we are going to try another two blank text completion, and in this case, well, let’s do what we did last time. Start off by reading the entire sentence, “In stark contrast to his later , Madison mostly merriment during his college years, despite the fact that his school had a reputation for revelry”. So we want to do what?

We want to identify the sentence type. We want to look for shifters and start contrast, so we know that this first blank now is opposite to the second blank.

So in stark contrast to his later fun guyness, again, I’m making up my own words here, Madison mostly avoiding merriment. Or in stark contrast to his later crazy guyness, Madison mostly–well actually, crazy guy and fun guy are the same thing so I take that back–in stark contrast, he was not such a fun guy, Madison mostly invited merriment. So the point is these two blanks are opposite.

That’s great. We know the relationship between these two blanks, but how do you know which one is which? That is, is this the fun guy one or is he having fun during his college years? That’s what we always have to remember what the rest of the sentence says. So “despite the fact that his school had a reputation for revelry”, so now you can see that there is another contrast going on there, so it is sort of a double contrast when you identify the sentence type. And you’ll see that there is more complexity in two blank text completion simply because there’s typically more words, and there are two blanks. Once we get to three blank text completions, it will be even more complex, but here we have that double contrast going on, and we can start from the end here where it says, “despite the fact the school has a reputation for revelry”, for fun. So even though everyone was having fun at college, Madison avoided merriment in stark contrast to his later fun guy, partying guy, he mostly avoided merriment. So notice we are still dealing with one blank at a time. I was able to come up with the word for the second blank first, and again, we need a synonym for void.

It is definitely not ‘took part in’. Think about wallow, you wallow in your misery, you wallow in your grief, you get deeply involved in something, but that doesn’t really work because we are going for the opposite. You’re avoiding it all together, and that is what the word abstain means. Now again, we come up–we can deal with the first blank.

The importance here being you do not need to deal with the first blank always first. So again more or less, we’ve come up here with, look for keywords, and we come up with our own words, and now we’re matching.

So “in stark contrast to his later”, so we need a word that means he’s having a fun time. He’s the party guy. What word is that? So a lot of people would be drawn to this, and that’s something you have to realize too with two blank text completions. Sometimes a word can kind of work, and that is very similar to the one blank text completion. Kind of work doesn’t really count. If somebody is amiable, they are friendly.

Does that mean they are partying? No. Not by definition.They may party.They may not party. Conservatism is the opposite of what we are going for here. And therefore, the word ‘carousing’ must mean to party, which it does.

If one is carousing, they are having a great time engaging in merriment and revelry. And there are our two answers in this case. So again, two blanks a little bit more complicated. Make sure you read the entire sentence, identify the sentence type the way you learned with one blank text completion, and of course, follow the same basic strategies, and that should always help you get to the answer.