SAT Review Transitions, Words in Context, Grammar

Riley Black—the author of critically acclaimed books such as My Beloved Brontosaurus (2013)—is best known for writing about dinosaurs, but she has also conducted hands-on fieldwork. ______ her fieldwork has included paleontological digs in Utah, Montana, and Wyoming, and her dinosaur fossil discoveries can be seen at places such as the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• • Specifically,

• • Conversely,

• Subsequently,

• Regardless,

Osage Nation citizen Randy Tinker-Smith produced and directed the ballet Wahzhazhe, which vividly chronicles Osage history and culture. Telling Osage stories through ballet is ______ choice because two of the foremost ballet dancers of the twentieth century were Osage: sisters Maria and Marjorie Tallchief.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• • an unpredictable

• an arbitrary

• a determined

• a suitable

Far from being modern inventions, ______ more than 5,000 years ago.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

• Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia used drinking straws

• drinking straws were used by Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia

• ancient Mesopotamia was home to Sumerians who used drinking straws

• the use of drinking straws by Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia happened

In 2022, mountain guide Phil Henderson led the Full Circle expedition, a team of ______ that became the first all-Black team of climbers to summit Mt. Everest and that works to promote diversity and representation in outdoor adventure sports.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

• mountaineers;

• mountaineers and

• mountaineers

• mountaineers,

When composing music for film, Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi typically uses traditional orchestral instrumentation with the piano as the lead, resulting in emotional, contemplative melodies. ______ for the score of the animated film Spirited Away, he incorporated some unorthodox digital instruments, such as synthesized chimes and bells, to create the whimsical, otherworldly sound of the spirit world.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• However,

• Moreover,

• Similarly,

• Therefore,

Some foraging models predict that the distance bees travel when foraging will decline as floral density increases, but biologists Shalene Jha and Claire Kremen showed that bees’ behavior is inconsistent with this prediction if flowers in dense patches are ______: bees will forage beyond patches of low species richness to acquire multiple resource types.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• depleted

• homogeneous

• immature

• dispersed

When they were first discovered in Australia in 1798, duck-billed, beaver-tailed platypuses so defied categorization that one scientist assigned them the name Ornithorhynchus paradoxus: “paradoxical bird-snout.” The animal, which lays eggs but also nurses ______ young with milk, has since been classified as belonging to the monotremes group.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

• it’s

• their

• they’re

• its

Researcher Lin Zhi developed a process for increasing the tensile strength—measured in gigapascals, or GPa—of silkworm ______ dissolving and reweaving the silk in a solution of iron metal ions, zinc, and sugar, Zhi increased the amount of force required to stretch it from approximately 0.5 GPa to 2 GPa.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

• silk and by

• silk by

• silk, by

• silk. By

Researchers believe that pieces of hull found off Oregon’s coast are from a Spanish cargo ship that was lost in 1697. Stories passed down among the area’s Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians support this belief. ______ Siletz stories describe how blocks of beeswax, an item the ship had been carrying, began washing ashore after the ship was lost.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• For this reason,

• For example,

• However,

• Likewise,

Mineralogical differences are detectable in samples collected from two locations on the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, but such differences may not indicate substantial compositional variations in the asteroid. Cosmochemist Kazuhide Nagashima and colleagues note that at the small scale of the samples, the distribution of minerals is unlikely to be ______.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• redundant

• neglected

• uniform

• • ongoing