SAT- English practice-1

Brown, this biography suggests, was an ____employer, giving generous bonuses one day, ordering pay cuts the next.

• indifferent

• objective

• unpredictable

• ineffectual

• unobtrusive

While there were some tasks the candidate could _______, others she had to attend to herself.

• perform

• endorse

• delegate

• misconstrue

• rehearse

Although caterpillars and spiders belong to

distinctly different classes of arthropods and

come to produce silk quite independently, the silks they produce have remarkably _______ compositions.

• delicate

• diaphanous

• mutable

• similar

• durable

Concrete actually is _______, like a sponge—it

can absorb up to 10 percent of its weight in water.

• delicate

• elastic

• porous

• ubiquitous

• washable

His dislike of _______ made him regard

people who flaunted their wealth or

accomplishments as _______.

• flattery.....charlatans

• poverty.....misers

• boasting.....braggarts

• failure.....opportunists

• procrastination....spendthrifts

Some of Kandinsky’s artistic innovations are

now so much a part of our visual world that

they appear on everything from wallpaper to

women’s scarves without causing the

slightest _________.

• profit

• remorse

• boredom

• effort

• stir

Short stories, in Hemingway’s phrase, have

plots that show only “the tip of the iceberg”;

such stories _______ a _______ shape below

but do not describe that shape in detail.

• cover up......distinctive

• hint at.....bulkier

• depart from.....nebulous

• thaw out....colder

The title Rage of a Privileged Class seems

________, for such a privileged group would

seem on the surface to have no _________

sustained anger with anyone.

• (A) incongruous...time for

• (B) paradoxical...reason for

• (C) ambiguous...familiarity with

• (D) ironic...indifference to

• (E) witty...capacity for

Darwin’s ideas, which viewed nature as the result of cumulative, _________ change, triumphed over the older, catastrophist theories, which _________ that mountains and species were created by a few sudden and dramatic events.

• drastic...anticipated

• regular...denied

• frequent...disproved

• abrupt...insinuated

• gradual...maintained

Though their lack of external ears might suggest otherwise, mole rats are able to use _________ to communicate.

• (A) gestures

• (B) touch

• (C) smells

• (D) sounds

• (E) symbols