SAT Reading/Writing Practice Set

The following text is from the 1913 story “The King’s Coin” by Emily Pauline Johnson, a Kanienkahagen (Mohawk) writer also known as Tekahionwake.

Fox-Foot, a young Ojibwe man, is guiding a group of fur traders who are traveling by canoe and suspects that they are being followed. At supper time, Fox-Foot would allow no fire to be built, no landing to be made, no trace of their passing to be left. They ate canned meat and marmalade, drank again of the stream and pushed on, until just at dusk they reached the edge of a long, still lake, with shores of granite and dense fir forest.

As used in the text, what does the word “trace” most nearly mean?

• Evidence

• Blemish

• Amount

• Sketch

Many ancient sculptures of people’s heads are missing their noses. This is because the nose is the most ______ part of a sculpture of a person’s head. It is delicate and sticks out from the rest of the sculpture, making it especially easy to break. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• recognizable

• fragile

• common

• sophisticated

K.D. Leka and colleagues found that the Sun’s corona provides an advance indication of solar flares—intense eruptions of electromagnetic radiation that emanate from active regions in the Sun’s photosphere and can interfere with telecommunications on Earth. Preceding a flare, the corona temporarily exhibits increased brightness above the region where the flare is ________. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• antecedent

• impending

• innocuous

• perpetual

To demonstrate that the integrity of underground metal pipes can be assessed without unearthing the pipes, engineer Aroba Saleem and colleagues ________ the tendency of some metals’ internal magnetic fields to alter under stress: the team showed that such alterations can be measured from a distance and can reveal concentrations of stress in the pipes. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• hypothesized

• discounted

• redefined

• exploited

Despite the generalizations about human behavior they have produced, many studies of behavioral psychology have used highly unrepresentative subject pools: students at the colleges and universities where the researchers are employed. To ________ this situation, it is necessary to actively recruit subjects from diverse backgrounds and locations. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• sanction

• ameliorate

• rationalize

• postulate

The following text is adapted from Jean Webster’s 1912 novel Daddy-Long-Legs. The narrator is a young college student writing letters detailing her weekly experiences.

[The college is] organizing the Freshman basket-ball team and there’s just a chance that I shall make it. I’m little of course, but terribly quick and wiry and tough. While the others are hopping about in the air, I can dodge under their feet and grab the ball.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

• To compare basketball with other sports

• To provide details of how to play basketball

• To state how players will be chosen for the basketball team

• To explain why the narrator thinks she might make the basketball team

In the late 1800s, Spanish-language newspapers flourished in cities across Texas. San Antonio alone produced eleven newspapers in Spanish between 1890 and 1900. But El Paso surpassed all other cities in the state. This city produced twenty-two newspapers in Spanish during that period. El Paso is located on the border with Mexico and has always had a large population of Spanish speakers. Thus, it is unsurprising that this city became such a rich site for Spanish-language journalism. Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

• To compare Spanish-language newspapers published in Texas today with ones published there during the late 1800s

• To explain that Spanish-language newspapers thrived in Texas and especially in El Paso during the late 1800s

• To argue that Spanish-language newspapers published in El Paso influenced the ones published in San Antonio during the late 1800s

• To explain why Spanish-language newspapers published in Texas were so popular in Mexico during the late 1800s

Chile’s Atacama Desert is one of the driest places on Earth. Mary Beth Wilhelm and other astrobiologists search for life, or its remains, in this harsh place because the desert closely mirrors the extreme environment on Mars. The algae and bacteria found in Atacama’s driest regions may offer clues about Martian life. By studying how these and other microorganisms survive such extreme conditions on Earth, Wilhelm’s team hopes to determine whether similar life might have existed on Mars and to develop the best tools to look for evidence of it.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

• To contrast the conditions in the Atacama Desert with those on Mars

• To explain why many life-forms cannot survive in the Atacama Desert

• To indicate why astrobiologists choose to conduct research in the Atacama Desert

• To describe certain limitations to conducting scientific study in the Atacama Desert

More than 60% of journeys in Mexico City occur via public transit, but simply reproducing a feature of the city’s transit system—e.g., its low fares—is unlikely to induce a significant increase in another city’s transit ridership. As Erick Guerra et al. have shown, transportation mode choice in urban areas of Mexico is the product of a complex mix of factors, including population density, the spatial distribution of jobs, and demographic characteristics of individuals. System features do affect ridership, of course, but there is an irreducibly contextual dimension of transportation mode choice.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined portion in the text as a whole?

• It presents an objection to the argument of Guerra et al. about transportation mode choice in urban areas of Mexico.

• It explains why it is challenging to influence transit ridership solely by altering characteristics of a transit system.

• It illustrates the claim that a characteristic associated with high transit ridership in Mexico City is not associated with high transit ridership elsewhere.

• It substantiates the assertion that population density, the spatial distribution of jobs, and demographic characteristics are important factors in transportation mode choice.

Changes to vegetation cover and other human activities influence carbon and nitrogen levels in soil, though how deep these effects extend is unclear. Hypothesizing that differences in land use lead to differences in carbon and nitrogen levels that are not restricted to the topsoil layer (0–30 cm deep), Chukwuebuka Okolo and colleagues sampled soils across multiple land-use types (e.g., grazing land, cropland, forest) within each of several Ethiopian locations. They found, though, that across land-use types, carbon and nitrogen decreased to comparably low levels beyond depths of 30 cm.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

• It describes a phenomenon that scientists do not fully understand, explains a research team’s hypothesis about that phenomenon, and then describes a finding that led the team to refine the hypothesis.

• It introduces an unresolved scientific question, presents a research team’s hypothesis pertaining to that question, and then describes an observation made by the team that conflicts with that hypothesis

• It discusses a process that scientists are somewhat unclear about, introduces competing hypotheses about that process, and then explains how a research team concluded that one of those hypotheses is likely correct.

• It explains a hypothesis that has been the subject of scientific debate, discusses how a research team tested that hypothesis, and then presents data the team collected that validate the hypothesis.