What are some tips for answering fill-in-the-blank questions?

Fill-in-the-blank questions are testing your understanding of context and facts. Usually, if you have been paying attention and keeping up with your homework, the question will be pretty simple to figure out.

Example: "Twinkle, twinkle, little ___" should be familiar to anyone who has heard the song. However, in order to fill in the sentence "Snakes can unhinge their ___ to swallow food," you need to have studied snakes in your science class so that you remember that they unhinge their jaws.

Here are some specific tips for different kinds of questions.

• If there is a list of words that you can use, try putting each word into the blank and reading it (to yourself if you are in class, out loud if you are alone) to see if it makes sense in that spot.
• If you have a comparison question ( "x is to y as z is to ___"), think about what you know about x and y, then see if you can think of anything that will have a similar relationship to z. For example: "Boat is to water as helicopter is to ___" would make you think about how boats and water go together. Boats are things you can use to travel in water, so you would think that helicopters are things you can use to travel in air, then you would choose "air" as your answer.