A logical completion question tests whether you can finish a text’s reasoning from its clues. Read the words leading into the blank to see whether it needs a conclusion, a prediction, or a purpose. For a purpose, ask what the planned next step is meant to do. Then put the clues in a few words and predict only what the clues support. Wrong endings often add a goal that the text gives you no reason to expect.
Hints
- Hint 1
Ask what Ortiz hopes to do by presenting her findings. The words so that tell you the blank gives a purpose.
- Hint 2
Look for the link between the finding and its audience. What did Ortiz’s team find, and why would transportation planners need to know it?
Step-by-step
Connect the clues to Ortiz’s purpose
Step 1Read the purpose cue
Ortiz plans to present these findings to regional transportation planners, and so that tells us the blank gives her reason for doing it. What should that reason connect? It should link what the team found with what this audience can do, so we’re looking for the purpose of sharing the finding, not a new fact about the cats.
- Step 2
Put the finding in a few words
Her team found that the cats tend to avoid crossing roads during dusk, when traffic is heaviest. What does that suggest the presentation should address? Let’s predict that Ortiz wants to help the cats get across busy roads, since her finding points to traffic as a problem for crossings.
- Step 3
Link the purpose to the audience
What can regional transportation planners do with a finding about road crossings? They work on highway plans, so they can use the finding about when mountain lions avoid crossing to guide road changes. The ending highways can be modified connects the presentation to road changes that help mountain lions cross safely. Choice D.