LET English Reviewer Sentence Completion

Choose the best answer for each item.

1. More than one friendly whale has nudged a boat with such _________ that passengers have been knocked overboard.
a. enthusiasm
b. animosity
c. lethargy
d. serenity

2. Readers were so bored with the verbose and redundant style of the Victorian novelists that they welcomed the change to the _________ style of Hemingway.
a. prolix
b. consistent
c. florid
d. terse

3. Fossils may be set in stone, but their interpretation is not; a new find may necessitate the __________ of a traditional theory.
a. assertion
b. revision
c. formulation
d. validation

4. The linguistic _____________ of the refugee children is reflected in their readiness to adopt the language of their homeland.
a. conservatism
b. inadequacy
c. adaptability
d. philosophy

5. Lucille is too much ___________ in her writings: she writes a page when a sentence should suffice.
a. pleasant
b. lucid
c. verbose
d. efficient

6. It is remarkable that a man so in the public eye, so highly praised and imitated, can retain his _______________.
a. idiosyncrasies
b. dogmas
c. humility
d. magniloquence

7. Breaking with established artistic and social conventions, Picasso was _________ genius whose heterodox works infuriated the traditionalists of his day.
a. a venerated
b. a trite
c. an iconoclastic
d. an uncontroversial 

8. A tapeworm is an example of a __________ organism, one that lives within or on another creature, deriving some or all of its nutriment from its host.
a. a protozoan
b. a parasitic
c. an exemplary
d. an autonomous

9. The mob lost confidence of him because he never ___________ the grandiose promises he had made.
a. tired of
b. renegade on
c. delivered on
d. retreated from

10. Emily Elizabeth Dickinson,received little honor in her lifetime but her poetic legacy has gained considerable fame _______________.
a. anonymously
b. posthumously
c. prematurely
d. previously

11. Unlike the highly ________ Romantic poets of the previous century, Rudyard Kipling and his fellow Victorian poets were _______ and interested in moralizing.
a. emotional . . . didactic
b. sensitive . . . strange
c. dramatic . . . warped
d. rhapsodic . . . lyrical

12. Ana is an interesting ________, an infinitely shy person who, in apparent contradiction, possesses an enormously intuitive ________ for understanding people.
a. phenomenon . . . disinclination
b. caricature . . . talent
c. paradox . . . gift
d. aberration . . . disdain

13. Truculent in defending their rights of sovereignty under the Articles of the Confederation, the newly formed states __________ constantly.
a. apologized
b. squabbled
c. digressed
d. acquiesced 

14. No real life hero of ancient or modern days can surpass James Bond with his nonchalant _______ of death and the _________ with which he bears torture.
a. veneration . . . guile
b. concept . . . terror
c. disregard . . . fortitude
d. impatience . . . fickleness

15. Surrounded by sycophants who invariably ________ in her singing, Zsa Zsa wearied of the constant adulation and longed for honest criticism.
a. assailed
b. thwarted
c. reciprocated
d. extolled

16. Despite the growing ______________ of the Party list Representatives in the Philippine Congress, many political experts fell that the NGOs are still ______________ in the government.
a. decrease . . . inappropriate
b. prominence . . . underrepresented
c. skill . . . alienated
d. number . . . misdirected

17. Although Tagalogs often use the terms Bisaya and Cebuano ____________, people coming from the Southern part of the Philippines are profoundly aware of the ___________ the two.
a. unerringly . . . significance of
b. confidently . . . origins of
c. deprecatingly . . . controversies about
d. interchangeably . . . dissimilarities between

18. There is nothing __________ or provisional about Bronte’s early critical pronouncements; she deals ___________ with what then radical new developments in poetry.
a. tentative . . . confidently
b. dogmatic . . . arbitrary
c. imprecise . . . inconclusively
d. shallow . . . superficially

19. This well-documented history is of importance because it carefully __________ the __________ accomplishments of the Filipino artists who are all too little known to the public at large.
a. recognizes . . . negligible
b. scrutinizes . . . illusory
c. substantiates . . . considerable
d. distorts . . . noteworthy

20. An experienced politician who knew better than to launch a campaign in troubled political waters, he intended to wait for a more ________ occasion before he announced his plans.
a. provocative
b. unseemly
c. questionable
d. propitious 

ANSWER KEY
1. A – enthusiasm
2. D – terse
3. B – revision
4. C – adaptability
5. C – verbose
6. C – humility
7. C – an iconoclastic
8. B – a parasitic
9. C – delivered on
10. B – posthumously
11. A – emotional . . . didactic
12. C – paradox . . . gift
13. B – squabbled
14. C – disregard . . . fortitude
15. D – extolled
16. B – prominence . . . underrepresented
17. D – interchangeably . . . dissimilarities between
18. A – tentative . . . confidently
19. C – substantiates . . . considerable
20. D – propitious