Complete the Words: Restoring Missing Letters from Context
What the task actually tests
Each item is a short passage with several words broken off after the first two or three letters. You supply the rest of the word. Nothing here tests handwriting or listening: it is a vocabulary-plus-context task with a strict spelling requirement, so a word with the right meaning but a wrong ending scores zero.
Check four things, in this order:
- Part of speech. The words around the gap tell you whether a noun, verb, adjective or adverb is needed. A determiner ("the", "these", "a") usually signals a noun; a subject plus no other verb signals a verb slot.
- Meaning and collocation. Which word does the sentence's logic demand, and which word naturally keeps company with its neighbours ("conduct a survey", "heavy rain", "highly likely")?
- Inflection. Singular or plural, past or present, comparative? The printed letters rarely include the ending, so you must add it.
- Spelling. Watch doubled consonants, -ible/-able, -ence/-ance, and American spellings in American passages.
Traps
- Right meaning, wrong form. "The data was collect___" needs collected, not collect.
- Local fit, global clash. A candidate can match the word just before the gap and still contradict the second half of the sentence. Read the whole sentence before typing.
- Look-alikes. affect/effect, principle/principal, economic/economical.
- Over-writing. Type only the missing letters; do not retype the printed ones.
Worked example
"The resear____ were asked to hand in their fin___ reports by Friday." Researcher is a countable person noun and the verb is "were", so the answer must be plural: researchers. Before "reports" an adjective is required, and the sense is "last, closing": final. Rule of thumb: read the completed sentence aloud - if your ear stumbles on agreement or tense, the form is wrong.