Skip to content
← Library
By subject · 5 min

Gaokao English: how to solve the 7-choose-5 section

A logic puzzle disguised as a reading task. Cohesion markers do most of the work.

In the 7-choose-5 section (阅读七选五), a passage has five gaps and you are given seven candidate sentences. Two of the seven are distractors that fit nowhere.

Read the whole passage first without looking at the options. Understand the argument before you start matching.

Then look at each gap: what comes immediately before it, and what comes after? Underline the pronouns and connectives around it — 'this', 'however', 'in addition'. These are the seams the correct sentence has to join.

Match options to gaps by those seams, not by topic. Two sentences may be about the same subject, but only one will connect grammatically to both sides of the gap.

Fill the easiest gaps first. The last gap you tackle should be the hardest, and by then you will only have two options left to choose between.

More in By subject
← Previous
Gaokao English: reading comprehension speed tricks
Next →
Gaokao English: writing the short letter task