Craft… | SAT The Reading and Writing Section

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Mar 17, 2024

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The Appalachian Trail is a hiking path in the eastern United States. Much of the 2,000 mile trail passes through wilderness areas. In order to _______ those areas, the United States Congress passed the National Trails System Act in 1968, ensuring that the trail would not be sold or commercially developed. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

Difficulty: Easy

borrow

postpone

protect

decorate

The following text is from Edith Wharton's 1905 novel The House of Mirth. Lily Bart and a companion are walking through a park. Lily had no real intimacy with nature, but she had a passion for the appropriate and could be keenly sensitive to a scene which was the fitting background of her own sensations. The landscape outspread below her seemed an enlargement of her present mood, and she found something of herself in its calmness, its breadth, its long free reaches . On the nearer slopes the sugar-maples wavered like pyres of light; lower down was a massing of grey orchards, and here and there the lingering green of an oak-grove. Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

Difficulty: Hard

It creates a detailed image of the physical setting of the scene.

It establishes that a character is experiencing an internal conflict.

It makes an assertion that the next sentence then expands on.

It illustrates an idea that is introduced in the previous sentence.

Composer Florence Price won first place for her score Symphony in E Minor at the 1932 Wanamaker Foundation Awards. The piece was performed the following year by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a significant recognition of its quality. Price continued to compose many musical pieces throughout her career, blending traditional Black spirituals with classical European Romantic musical traditions. In recent years, Price's concertos and symphonies have been performed and recorded by several major orchestras, further preserving her work for others to enjoy. Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

Difficulty: Easy

To provide examples of Price's importance as a composer

To argue that more major orchestras should perform Price's compositions

To describe the musical styles that inspired many of Price's symphonies

To compare Price's scores with those of classical European composers

Some bird species don't raise their own chicks. Instead, adult females lay their eggs in other nests, next to another bird species' own eggs. Female cuckoos have been seen quickly laying eggs in the nests of other bird species when those birds are out looking for food. After the eggs hatch, the noncuckoo parents will typically raise the cuckoo chicks as if they were their own offspring, even if the cuckoos look very different from the other chicks. Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

Difficulty: Easy

It introduces a physical feature of female cuckoos that is described later in the text.

It describes the appearance of the cuckoo nests mentioned earlier in the text.

It offers a detail about how female cuckoos carry out the behavior discussed in the text.

It explains how other birds react to the female cuckoo behavior discussed in the text.

While scholars believe many Mesoamerican cities influenced each other, direct evidence of such influence is difficult to ascertain. However, recent excavations in a sector of Tikal (Guatemala) unearthed a citadel that shows ______ Teotihuacan (Mexico) architecture--including a near replica of a famed Teotihuacan temple--providing tangible evidence of outside influence in portions of Tikal. Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

Difficulty: Hard

refinements of

precursors of

commonalities with

animosities toward

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