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TOPIK II Reading: How to Solve Sentence-Insertion Questions
Level
B1
Type
Guide
Theme
Reading strategy
작성자
Y
작성시각
You land on question 39. This time there's no set of four sentences to reorder. Instead, there's a full paragraph with four marked spots, labeled ㉠, ㉡, ㉢, and ㉣, plus one extra sentence sitting off to the side. Your job is to figure out which of the four spots that sentence actually belongs in.
This is a different skill from the sentence-ordering questions at 13–15. There, you're building a paragraph from scratch. Here, the paragraph already works on its own, and you're finding the one place where an extra piece slots in without breaking anything.
Read the extra sentence first, not the paragraph
Before you even look at the four blanks, read the standalone sentence carefully and ask what it's leaning on. Does it start with a connector like 하지만 or 그래서? Does it contain a demonstrative like 그동안, 이런, or 그것 that needs something specific to point back to? Whatever that sentence depends on has to already exist in the paragraph, right before the spot where it belongs.
Then check each blank from both sides
Read the paragraph normally, and at each blank, test the extra sentence by asking two questions: does it flow naturally from whatever comes right before it, and does whatever comes right after it still make sense once the extra sentence is sitting there? A spot only works if both directions hold up, not just one.
Here's a paragraph that works the same way a real question does, with the four blanks sitting between the sentences rather than attached to them:
어제 친구에게 오랜만에 연락이 왔다. ( ㉠ ) 우리는 대학교 때 같은 동아리에서 만난 사이였다. ( ㉡ ) 그동안 서로 바빠서 연락을 못 하고 지냈다. ( ㉢ ) 이번 주말에 오랜만에 만나서 저녁을 먹기로 했다. ( ㉣ )
Extra sentence: 졸업한 뒤로는 거의 5년 동안 한 번도 만난 적이 없었다.
The extra sentence mentions 5년 (five years) with no context yet for where that number comes from, so it needs to land somewhere that a stretch of time makes sense. Look at what comes right after ㉡: 그동안, "during that time," which only works if a specific span of time was just named. Drop the extra sentence into ㉡, and 그동안 now clearly points back to the 5 years just mentioned. Try ㉠ instead, before the paragraph has even brought up university or graduation, and 졸업한 뒤로는 (since graduating) has nothing to attach to yet. Try ㉢ or ㉣, after 그동안 already had to stand on its own, and you've solved nothing while stranding a sentence about the past in the middle of weekend plans.
What actually changes on the IBT screen
The reasoning is identical between paper and computer versions. On the IBT, instead of marking a bubble next to ㉠, ㉡, ㉢, or ㉣, you click directly on the blank where the sentence belongs. If you've already trained yourself to check both sides of a blank, that habit carries straight over regardless of how you're marking the answer.
Next time you hit this question type, on paper it's 39 through 41, on the shorter IBT test it shows up elsewhere in the set, read the loose sentence first and ask what word in it is still waiting for an answer. That's usually where the right blank is hiding.