Why the wrong answer reads smoothly
Every distractor in a transition question is written to fit the topic. If the passage is about coral reefs, all four choices will sit comfortably in a sentence about coral reefs. Nothing in the vocabulary tells you which one is wrong, and reading the sentence aloud will not either — English prose tolerates a mismatched transition the way it tolerates a wrong turn on a map: everything still moves, just in the wrong direction.
There is only one kind of error the test can be testing here, so name it before you start: the choice states a relation the two sentences do not have. Topic fit is free. Relation fit is the whole question.
Đây là chỗ điểm rơi nhiều nhất của cả cuốn. Học sinh đọc câu 1, đọc câu 2, thấy hai câu “liên quan tới nhau” rồi chọn từ nối nào nghe quen nhất. Nhưng “có liên quan” không phải một quan hệ — mọi phương án đều liên quan. Câu hỏi là: câu 2 làm gì với câu 1? Thêm vào, chống lại, suy ra từ nó, minh hoạ nó, nói mạnh hơn nó, hay xảy ra sau nó?
The substitution test
Transition words are formal. Their relations are not. Every one of the six families has a blunt one- or two-word equivalent, and blunt words are much harder to misread.
| p5.3cmp3.1cmp6.3cm@ If the choice means… | say instead | keep it only if… |
|---|---|---|
| moreover, furthermore, in addition | and also | sentence 2 sits on the same side |
| however, nevertheless, by contrast | but | sentence 2 works against sentence 1 |
| therefore, thus, consequently | so | sentence 2 follows from sentence 1 |
| for instance, for example | such as | sentence 2 is one named case |
| that is, in other words | meaning | sentence 2 adds no new fact |
| indeed, in fact | and more than that | sentence 2 outdoes sentence 1 |
| subsequently, meanwhile, ultimately | then, at the same time, in the end | the pair sits on a timeline |
Coral reefs cover less than one percent of the ocean floor but shelter something like a quarter of all marine species.\ the loss of a single reef system strips habitat from thousands of species at once.
- For example,
- Meanwhile,
- Consequently,
- In other words,
Run the swap. Such as the loss of a reef? The loss of a reef is not a case of species density, so (A) goes. Meaning the loss of a reef? Sentence~2 introduces a new event, so (D) goes. At the same time the loss of a reef? Nothing here is placed on a timeline beside anything else, so (B) goes. So the loss of a reef strips habitat from thousands of species — that is exactly what the density figure implies. Answer (C).
Ocean acidification is usually described as a threat to shell-builders, and laboratory work confirms that many molluscs grow thinner shells in low-pH water.\ several crustaceans build heavier shells under the same conditions, apparently because the extra dissolved carbon feeds their calcification.
- However,
- Consequently,
- Likewise,
- In fact,
(C) is the topical trap: molluscs and crustaceans are both marine calcifiers, so likewise feels at home. But the swap kills it — and also crustaceans build heavier shells does not follow from a sentence about thinner shells. (B) would make the crustacean result a consequence of the mollusc result, which nothing supports, and (D) would need sentence~2 to strengthen sentence~1 on the same point rather than cut across it. But does. Answer (A).
Bẫy “đúng chủ đề” hoạt động mạnh nhất với likewise, similarly, in the same way. Ba từ này không có nghĩa là “vẫn chuyện đó” — chúng đòi hỏi hai trường hợp song song, cùng chiều, cùng kết quả. Câu 2 nói về cùng đề tài nhưng ra kết quả ngược lại thì đó là tương phản, không phải song song.
The cause–concession flip
The single most common error is choosing a cause–effect word where the sentences make a concession, or the reverse. The two look alike on the page because both connect a fact to what follows it in the paragraph; they differ on whether what follows is what you would predict.
Write sentence~1, then ask: what would I expect next?
- Sentence~2 is what you expected $\Rightarrow$ therefore / consequently / as a result.
- Sentence~2 is not what you expected $\Rightarrow$ however / nevertheless / even so.
Never decide this from the topic. Decide it from the prediction.
Bees advertise a food source by dancing along an axis that encodes the angle between the sun and the flowers, so a forager who watches the dance can fly the bearing directly.\ ants carry no directional information at all: a forager lays a chemical trail and later ants follow it step by step, with no bearing encoded anywhere.
- Similarly,
- Consequently,
- In fact,
- By contrast,
Both sentences describe insect recruitment, which is what makes (A) attractive. But bees encode a direction and ants do not, so the two cases point opposite ways on the dimension being compared. Two comparable items differing on one dimension is the condition for by contrast. (B) would make ant recruitment an effect of the bee dance, and (C) would need the ant sentence to push the bee claim further instead of setting a second case against it. Answer (D).
The Aral Sea shrank because the two rivers that fed it were diverted to irrigate cotton across Soviet Central Asia.\ the exposed seabed has become a salt flat whose dust storms carry pesticide residue into villages hundreds of kilometres inland.
- Meanwhile,
- As a result,
- By contrast,
- For instance,
(A) is the trap of feel: the sentences do describe things happening over decades, so a time word seems harmless. But meanwhile claims simultaneity in a different place, and the salt flat is not something that happened alongside the shrinking — it is what the shrinking produced. (C) would need two comparable items, and only one sea is in view; (D) would need the dust storms to be one case of river diversion rather than its downstream result. Answer (B).
Mẹo dự đoán: đọc xong câu 1, tự nói trước một câu bạn chờ đợi sẽ tới. Rồi mới đọc câu 2. Nếu câu 2 trùng hướng với câu bạn vừa nghĩ ra thì nhóm nhân quả hoặc bổ sung; nếu nó bẻ ngược lại thì nhóm tương phản. Cách này nhanh hơn phân tích ngữ pháp và gần như không sai — vì đề thật luôn viết câu 2 theo đúng một trong hai hướng đó, không bao giờ để lửng.
False illustration and false restatement
For instance and in other words both introduce a sentence that seems to explain the one before it, and both are wrong far more often than students expect.
For instance needs sentence~1 general and sentence~2 particular: a named person, place, species, year, or case. If sentence~2 names nothing, it is not an example.
In other words / that is need sentence~2 to contain no fact that sentence~1 did not already contain. If sentence~2 introduces a mechanism, a number, or an event, it is not a restatement — however neatly it clarifies.
Terra preta, the dark earth found in patches across the Amazon basin, holds several times the organic carbon of the pale soils around it.\ these patches have stayed fertile through centuries of rainfall that leaches the surrounding forest floor to sand.
- In other words,
- Nonetheless,
- In fact,
- Meanwhile,
(A) fails on the restatement rule: centuries of leaching rainfall is a fact sentence~1 never mentions. (B) would need sentence~2 to cut against sentence~1, and it does the reverse; (D) puts nothing on a timeline. The relation is escalation — sentence~2 takes the carbon claim and shows it holding up under conditions that would destroy ordinary fertility. Answer (C).
Wootz steel was forged in south India from at least the sixth century and shipped west in cakes that European smiths could never reproduce, however carefully they copied the forging.\ modern metallurgists established that the banded pattern of the finished blades depends on trace impurities in the particular ores of the region, which is why the recipe travelled so badly.
- Eventually,
- However,
- Nevertheless,
- In other words,
(B) and (C) are interchangeable, so neither can be the answer. (D) fails the restatement rule: trace impurities in local ore is new information. What remains is a two-step story — a puzzle that stood for centuries, then the analysis that solved it. Answer (A).
Đừng lấy dấu hai chấm hay dấu gạch ngang trong câu 2 làm bằng chứng cho in other words. Câu 2 giải thích rõ hơn không có nghĩa là nó nói lại. Kiểm bằng một câu hỏi duy nhất: có thông tin nào trong câu 2 mà câu 1 chưa hề có không? Có một thứ thôi cũng đủ loại.
The blank looks back at the whole paragraph
When the passage runs to three sentences, the blank still opens the last one — but the relation it names may be to everything before it, not only to the sentence immediately above. Two additive sentences followed by a blank is the standard set-up for a contrast: the paragraph builds a case, and the last sentence undercuts it.
Museums have begun publishing high-resolution scans of contested objects, arguing that open access serves scholarship wherever the object physically sits. The argument has persuaded several funding bodies, which now require digitisation as a condition of a grant.\ the communities claiming those objects point out that a scan of a sacred item is a copy made without the consent of the people it belongs to.
- Accordingly,
- For instance,
- Moreover,
- However,
Sentences~1 and 2 both push the case for digitisation, so (C) reads naturally if you look only at the sentence directly above the blank. But the third sentence is an objection to the whole case, which is contrast. (A) inverts it; (B) needs the objection to be an instance of funder policy. Answer (D).
Early attempts to explain why the large nuts rise to the top of a shaken jar assumed that the small ones simply trickle down through the gaps.\ high-speed imaging shows convection currents running through the whole granular bed, carrying every particle upward along the centre and letting only the small ones return down the walls.
- Therefore,
- Instead,
- Likewise,
- Moreover,
Sentence~1 reports an account; sentence~2 supplies the account that replaces it. Instead is the contrast word reserved for substitution, and it is the only choice that registers that the first explanation has been dropped. (A) would make the imaging a consequence of the old assumption. (C) would need the two accounts to agree, and they contradict each other; (D) would put them on the same side, which is exactly what the second sentence refuses to do. Answer (B).
Khi đề cho ba câu, đừng chỉ đọc câu ngay trên chỗ trống. Hai câu đầu thường cùng chiều với nhau — đó là cái bẫy: chọn moreover vì thấy câu 2 và câu 3 “cùng nói một chuyện”. Hãy tóm cả đoạn trên thành một mệnh đề duy nhất rồi mới so với câu chứa chỗ trống.