Word Choice Questions

Introduction

Word choice (or vocabulary in context) questions on the CLT have a way of making a student feel at a loss. What do I do if I simply don’t know the words given? In response to this very real and widespread cry of frustration, we want to offer some help.

This should be said first: it makes no sense to pretend this difficulty either doesn’t exist or can easily be overcome. It does, and it can’t–not easily, at least. Depending on the strength of a student’s vocabulary, there are probably somewhere between 10,000 and 50,000 unfamiliar words in potential CLT passages. That is far more than you can realistically study and memorize, even if it were easy to identify precisely the words to study (it isn’t). So we can dispense with the idea that, as part of your CLT exam preparation, you will make a giant stack of flashcards stretching from floor to ceiling and spend hours of each day churning through it. With this in mind, how should you proceed?

A Word of Preface: Should I Attempt Word Choice Questions?

First, let’s consider your overall strategy and how you determine which questions to spend the most time on. You will likely face four pure word choice questions on test day. If you were to guess randomly on all four, the odds suggest that you would get one correct. If you were to get every other question on the Grammar & Writing section correct while guessing randomly on the word choice questions, therefore, your score would be 37/40. Would you be happy with that score? We will assume that over 99% of students reading this would say yes. Granted, it is very hard to answer the other 36 non-word choice questions correctly, but this thought exercise reveals two principles:

1. If you are tight on time, guess quickly on the word choice questions. (Do not leave them blank. Never leave a CLT question blank!)
2. If you have the time, address word choice questions using the strategies below, but skip them the first time through and address them last, after you complete every other question.

Assuming you plan to give time and attention to the word choice questions on test day. How should you do so? Here are some tools for that project.

Approach Question

Should you leave the sentence below as it is or opt for one of the three alternatives listed in the answer choices?

If no one can collaborate Beth’s story of her whereabouts the night of the crime, then she will have to find another alibi.

1. NO CHANGE
2. conspire
3. corroborate
4. consolidate

Some of the most challenging Word Choice questions occur when two words sound similar. Do you know the difference between “collaborate” and “corroborate”? The first of the two may sound more familiar; does it sound right to say “collaborate Beth’s story”? “Collaborate” means “work together,” as in a group project. It is what is known as an intransitive verb, meaning it does not take a direct object. You cannot “collaborate” something; you simply collaborate. So we can rule out answer choice A.

Before addressing the other close-sounding word, let’s consider the other choices. To “consolidate” is to make something stronger or combine several things together into a whole. That sounds really close in that Beth does need to have a strong story so she won’t have to find another alibi. But the subject is “no one,” which would sound odd with “consolidate”, and in any case a story is not the sort of thing you might consolidate. (Although you might consolidate evidence to make the story stronger.) Beth’s story doesn’t really need strengthening; it needs proof.

What about “conspire”? Here the logic of the sentence helps us. Beth will have to find another alibi if there is not proof or confirmation of her story. We don’t want anyone to “conspire” in this context; that would only make Beth sound more guilty! In any case, to “conspire a story” doesn’t sound right; “conspire” is another intransitive verb.

That leaves corroborate. Notice that, even if you don’t know that this word means to confirm or back up with evidence, you can eliminate the three (presumably more familiar) words by using the context. And context is what Word Choice questions are all about! (Well, that and using your vocabulary.) So “corroborate” conveys exactly what Beth’s story needs: confirmation. The answer is C.

Part 1: General Strategy

1. Read the surrounding context. The DIRECT method already instructs you to always read the entire sentence in which the underlined portion is found. In many cases, this will be sufficient context to address the question, but there are certainly times where it is necessary to look further back in the passage in order to pick up all the necessary clues.

2. Find the clues. What clues does the context hold concerning which word will work best? These clues could be any part of speech, but look especially for words of emphasis, particularly contrast. You have no better friend on the CLT than words like “but”, “however”, and “although”.

Consider the following example: *My sister crept into my room so _______ that I had no idea she was there until she spoke.* What are the clues to the word we should fill in the blank? Take a moment to list them all, then check out the spoiler below.

All of these words and phrases work together to paint a mental picture of the sister’s action. Do you have that picture in your mind? If so, now do this:

3. Predict the word you’re looking for. If your mental picture of the sister was clear and accurate, you would probably suggest a word like “quietly”. (The fancier among us might go with stealthily or furtively.) Whatever you chose, as long as it was in this realm of meaning, it should do the trick. Note also that the word should be an adverb, a word with an “-ly” ending, because it modifies “crept” and follows “so”.

But wait a minute, you might be saying: the CLT doesn’t give us a “_____” blank on the test. It gives us a word and we have to either accept that word or choose one of three replacements. True! But this strategy still works; you simply need to pretend the original word is not there to apply it. Don’t consider the answer choices until you’ve done so, and you will have set yourself up much better to grasp which of the choices makes the most sense.

4. Make your choice and plug it back into the sentence. Read the entire sentence with your chosen word in place and ask yourself whether it sounds as apt as you hoped when choosing it. If something sounds inappropriate or odd to you, and you feel you have the time to continue working on the question, revisit the answer choices and see if you eliminated one of the other choices too quickly.

Part 2: Decoding Vocabulary

Step 4 in the method above assumes you understand what the four answer choices mean; as already noted, that might not be the case. How can you help yourself make educated guesses when at least one of the four choices is unfamiliar to you? Here are some tools for decoding unfamiliar words.

1. Return to your roots. You might not have seen the word before, but have you seen part of it? If you have taken Latin, you have a significant leg up in identifying the meaning of a prefix, suffix, or main stem of a word. Let’s consider the challenging word circumspect. Many, if not most, students will be unfamiliar with this word, or at least uncertain about its definition. If you have taken Latin, however, you are likely aware that circum means “around” and that spect has to do with “looking”. (You don’t even need Latin; think of how a _circum_ference goes around a circle and how _spect_acles are for seeing.) With these tools at your disposal, you can at the very least suppose that circumspect has something to do with “looking around.” Its meaning, more precisely, is “cautious” or “prudent”, but those ideas are not a significant distance away from the idea of someone who, as the proverb says, “looks before he leaps.”

2. Make room for Romance. We mean Romance languages here (corny, we know). If you haven’t taken Latin, there’s an excellent chance you’ve taken either French or Spanish. If so, you probably know that both of those languages come from Latin, so you can access the language at the root of many English words by thinking about your world language study. If you’ve taken Spanish (or even if you haven’t), you may be familiar with the phrase “Feliz Navidad” (Merry Christmas). So what if you see the word felicitous on the CLT? That first part looks a lot like the word for “merry” or “happy” in Spanish. At the least, you could guess (correctly) that the word has a positive connotation. It doesn’t mean “happy” in the sense of an emotion but rather in the sense of a “happy occurrence”: something that appears random but that benefits those to whom it happens.

What about French? One of the first phrases you may have learned is “Je parle francais” (“I speak French”). If that word “parle” (infinitive parler) means “speak”, then what do you think parlance might mean in English? Something to do with speaking, for sure. “Parlance” refers to a manner or mode of speech. Someone might use the phrase “in common parlance” to talk how people usually speak. Note how, whether we use Spanish or French, we have tools to, at minimum, make our guesses on Word Choice questions more likely to be correct!

3. Add a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” You might not know exactly what a word means but nevertheless have some sense of whether its connotation is positive or negative. Consider the word refulgent. It kind of rolls off the tongue and has a part that sounds like a “full” in the middle. Indeed, the word turns out to mean “radiant”. By contrast, how about pestilence? Even if you don’t know that word refers to a terrible contagious disease, you probably have a sense from “pest” that it can’t be good! Admittedly, the sound of a word can differ somewhat based on the “ear” of the hearer (maybe you didn’t think “refulgent” sounded amazingly positive), but the “thumbs up/thumbs down” can nevertheless be helpful in narrowing down the answer choices.

4. Words aren’t usually “only children.” Most hard vocabulary words have “siblings” or cousins” that are simply different parts of speech. A challenging noun may have a similar word that is a verb or an adjective. An unfamiliar word might point to a similar word that feels more familiar in its adjective or adverb form. Let’s start with the word tutelage; you might not know the word exactly, but doesn’t it sound a bit like “tutor”? Indeed, it’s related; being under someone’s “tutelage” means that person is teaching you. Or take a stranger word like opacity. What word have you heard, perhaps in science class, that has the same first three letters? Did you think of the word “opaque”? It turns out that opacity is simply the noun form of opaque. It’s harder to recognize because it changes the q to a c, but not impossible to see if you look carefully.

Part 3: Two More Tools

1. Consider shades of meaning. Sometimes a pair of words can mean similar things but have a small but significant difference in their exact meaning. Consider these sentences:

-Lee made a self-denigrating joke.

-Lee made a self-deprecating joke.

These are challenging vocabulary words, but if you’ve heard these words before, you might notice a small difference. A “self-deprecating” expression puts the narrator down but in a lighthearted, aw-shucks, charmingly humble way. A “self-denigrating” joke would have a harder, meaner edge; in that sentence, Lee is not being kind to himself at all, and there’s nothing lighthearted about it. Sometimes answer choices can differ in these more nuanced ways; you might be able to narrow down the answers to two somewhat similar ideas but than have to dig deeper to identify the difference between those remaining choices.

2. Look out for differences in style. Consider these two ways to say essentially the same thing:

-Alina makes her coffee extra strong to perk her up.

-Alina makes her coffee more potent than usual to keep her alert.

Both of these sentences tell the same story: Alina needs her strong coffee! But the first sentence is less formal and the second sentence more formal. Although CLT passages will, in general, tend toward the more formal sides, there are degrees of difference in that formality that are worth noticing as you seek to choose the correct word or phrase. On occasion, a passage will come from a speech rather than a written work; the language in speeches is often less formal, so be sure to note the nature of the work being excerpted to understand what sort of formal or informal language you might expect from this author.

Practice Passage

In this section, you’ll find an excerpt from David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1977. We have included five Word Choice questions to go with the passage.

Everyone will readily allow, that there is a considerable difference between the perceptions of the mind, when a man feels the pain of [1] soothing heat, or the pleasure of moderate warmth, and when he afterwards recalls to his memory this sensation, or anticipates it by his imagination. These faculties may mimic or copy the perceptions of the senses, but they never can entirely reach the force and vivacity of the original sentiment. The utmost we say of them, even when they operate with greatest vigor, is that they represent their object in so lively a manner, that we could almost say we feel or see it. But, except the mind be disordered by disease or madness, they never can arrive at such a pitch of vivacity, as to render these perceptions altogether undistinguishable. All the colors of poetry, however splendid, can never paint natural objects in such a manner as to make the description be taken for a real landscape. The most lively thought is still[2] internal to the dullest sensation.

We may observe a like distinction to run through all the other perceptions of the mind. A man in a fit of anger is actuated in a very different manner from one who only thinks of that emotion. If you tell me that any person is in love, I easily understand your meaning and form a just conception of his situation, but I never can mistake that conception for the real disorders and [3] agitations of the passion. When we reflect on our past sentiments and affections, our thought is a faithful mirror, and copies its objects truly; but the colors which it employs are faint and dull, in comparison to those in which our original perceptions were [4] contained. It requires no nice discernment or metaphysical head to mark the distinction between them.

Here therefore we may divide all the perceptions of the mind into two classes or species, which are distinguished by their different degrees of force and vivacity. The less forcible and lively are commonly denominated Thoughts or Ideas. The other species want a name in our language, and in most others; I suppose, because it was not requisite for any, but philosophical purposes, to rank them under a general term or [5] appendage. Let us, therefore, use a little freedom, and call them Impressions; employing that word in a sense somewhat different from the usual. By the term impression, then, I mean all our more lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will. And impressions are distinguished from ideas, which are the less lively perceptions, of which we are conscious when we reflect on any of those sensations or movements above mentioned.

1. soothing
   A. NO CHANGE
   B. predictable
   C. unseasonable
   D. excessive

2. internal
   A. NO CHANGE
   B. inferior
   C. infernal
   D. infinite

3. agitations
   A. NO CHANGE
   B. aggravations
   C. acclimations
   D. explications

4. contained
   A. NO CHANGE
   B. contaminated
   C. captured
   D. clothed

5. appendage
   A. NO CHANGE
   B. appellation
   C. opinion
   D. opposition

For Reflection

1. Rate the difficulty of CLT Word Choice questions for you from 1 (no problem) to 5 (problem!). This will help you decide how much time to spend preparing for this passage.
2. How would you rate your vocabulary compared to your peers? What could you do to build your vocabulary (a worthy goal well beyond the CLT).
3. Which of the strategies for decoding hard words most resonated with you? Which one(s) do you think you’ll need to practice in order to really know how to use it/them well?