← Craft and Structure
Craft and Structure: Words in Context & Text Structure
Words-in-context questions ask for the best synonym given the surrounding sentence's specific meaning and tone; text-structure questions ask how a passage (or part of it) is organized or what its purpose is.
Strategy
For words-in-context, cover the answer choices, predict your own replacement word based on context clues in the sentence, then find the choice that matches your prediction — don't just pick the most common definition of the word.
For text structure/purpose, identify the function each part plays (introduce a claim, provide a counterexample, complicate an argument, restate/summarize) rather than just its topic.
Key terms (1)
- Words in context
- Choosing the meaning of a word or phrase based on how it's specifically used in the surrounding sentence, not its most common dictionary sense.
Practice Quiz
Question 1 of 2Score so far: 0/0
Text: The senator's checkered career, marked by both landmark legislative victories and a costly ethics scandal, made her a divisive figure heading into the election.
As used in the text, what does the word 'checkered' most nearly mean?