EIAT reading comprehension: the gap-fill format explained

Reading comprehension is 35 of the EIAT's 100 questions, according to NEIEP's study guide. The example NEIEP publishes is a cloze passage: a short piece of prose with numbered gaps, and four candidate words for each gap. Here is how that format works and how to answer it quickly.

Probably not the format you are expecting

A lot of aptitude-test practice teaches the True / False / Cannot Say format: a passage, then a statement you judge against it. That is not what NEIEP's published EIAT example looks like.

In NEIEP's example you read a short passage with four numbered gaps, and for each gap you choose one of four words. NEIEP's study tips for the section also mention identifying main ideas and drawing conclusions, so read for meaning, not just grammar. NEIEP does not say every reading question uses this layout, so be ready for some variation.

If you spend all your preparation on True/False/Cannot Say drills, you will have practiced a different skill.

What it is actually testing

Two things at once. Vocabulary, in the sense of knowing what ordinary words mean, and comprehension, in the sense of following the argument of the passage well enough to know which meaning is needed.

In NEIEP's example the passage is about career readiness, and one gap asks what employers want candidates to demonstrate. The options include adaptability and stubbornness. Both are real words and both fit the grammar. Only one fits what the passage is saying.

How to answer quickly

1. Read the whole passage first. It is short. The gaps often depend on a sentence you have not reached yet, and a minute spent reading saves you guessing four times.
2. Predict before you look. Decide what sort of word the gap needs before reading the options. Going in with an expectation makes the right one jump out and stops a plausible wrong one anchoring you.
3. Check the whole sentence, not the gap. Several options will fit the words immediately around the gap. Usually only one fits the sentence as a whole.
4. Watch for opposites. Wrong options are often the reverse of the idea the passage needs, like stubbornness where the sense calls for adaptability. Check each option against the direction of the argument.
5. Trust the first fit. If you are constructing an elaborate reason why an unlikely word could work, you have gone past the intended answer.

Can you prepare for vocabulary?

Not by memorizing word lists — the words used are ordinary. What does help is reading anything with an argument in it, regularly, for a few weeks before the test. That builds the thing actually being measured: following a piece of prose closely enough to know what belongs in it.

In the meantime, practice the format itself on our reading comprehension section, which uses the same gap-fill structure as NEIEP's published example.