Types of Words

When taking your exam you’ll probably be asking some questions that involve seeing the relationship between words, understanding this relationship and then finding an answer that is similar.

I’ll give you an example:
Artist is to paintbrush as and then there will be a series of answers down here.

And when you get to those sorts of things, they seem very straight forward, but I want to give you a tip that will help you get it right more often than not and make a better educated guess if you’re uncertain of the answer.

So, you begin with the first word, and you figure out what type of word it is. An artist is a person. A paintbrush is an object.

So as you’re going through the answers, you’re looking for a pair of words where the first one is a person and the second one is an object. Once again if you understand what this relationship is and can identify them, then the answer becomes much easier to make an educated guess if you’re not absolutely certain at what the answer is.

Obviously, if you know what the answer is, go with what you know but if you’re not sure, stop, take the time to break this down and then look at the answers accordingly.

So let’s try another example.

Alright in our example here, this is the beginning example. These are the possible answers.

The beginning example says a gardener is to the hedge as the either wind or sculptor is to rock.

So you might say the gardener trims or cuts the hedge, or even cuts away at the hedge. And by making that sentence you’ve made a relationship between them and you sort of understand what gardeners do to hedges. Now when you come down though, the gardener takes away the hedge or cuts away the hedge, you might say the wind cuts away the rock.

Well that’s the right answer, right, because it’s the same thing? The wind cuts away the rock but wait a minute! Sculptors cut away at rock. Oh no, it could be both. Which one am I going to do?

Go back here to our original example. Gardener is a person. Hedge is an object. Here, wind is an object. Rock is an object. But sculptor is a person. So if you’re going to keep the relationship the same, and you’re uncertain, follow this pattern, and it will become very plain that B, Sculptor, is the answer because it matches the original pattern. A gardener is a person and a hedge is an object. Sculptor is a person, rock is an object.

So even though it’s logical to talk about wind, through erosion, cutting the rock, to match the same relationship that they had in the original, you just come down here and find how it matches. Person to person. Object to object.

Now hopefully this technique will help you out if you’re looking at these word pairs and trying to understand the relationship between them. Make a sentence about it but also identify what each one is. Person or an object, that sort of thing and then find the answers below that match the same pattern.