SAT Prep Black Book: The Most Effective SAT Strategies Ever Published (15 page)

Here we have another great example of a question that test-takers often miss because they read it as though they were in a classroom discussion.

The correct answer is (E) because the cited text talks about women “exerting influence on political events” by doing the tasks mentioned in the question, and (E) says those tasks are “examples of political activities.”

Many students incorrectly choose (A), (C), or (D), because these choices are fairly close to the text and would probably be decent interpretations of the text. But we have to remember not to interpret the text at all when we’re working on the SAT. So (A) fails because the text doesn’t specifically say whether those activities “altered the course” of anything. (C) is wrong because the text doesn’t say that women were unable to do anything besides those activities. (D) is wrong because the text doesn’t say whether those activities directly affected households or not.

This is another question in which we have to look carefully at the text and find the answer choice that parallels the situation described in the text. With a question like this, the key thing to do is to read really carefully, as always.

The phrase “essential lessons” in the text is referring to what “young animals may be learning” in the previous line, which is “the limits of their strength and how to control themselves among others.” So we need an answer choice that reflects this.

(A) doesn’t work because, among other things, it doesn’t specifically indicate that the class is “young.”

(B) is correct because it incorporates the idea of being “young” and the idea of being on a team, which would necessarily involve being around others.

(C) doesn’t work because it doesn’t specifically mention the idea of the child being around other children.

(D) doesn’t work because it doesn’t say that the bear is a “young animal.”

(E) doesn’t work because it doesn’t mention the idea of the kitten being around other animals.

Students often miss this question, along with many others about these two passages, because they make assumptions about what the author means, instead of reading carefully.

The relevant text says that “both the . . . inner voice . . . and the . . . literary or stylistic voice are . . . sexed.”

(A) is wrong because the text never mentions the idea of “stylistic problems” being created for the “writer.”

(B) is wrong because the author never mentions a preference on the part of the reader. A lot of students mistakenly choose this answer because they think it would make sense that people would prefer a writer of their own gender, but the text never says anything about a preference.

(C) doesn’t work because the text doesn’t mention romantic love.

(D) is correct because it restates exactly what appears in the text. The text says that
the “stylistic voice” is “sexed.” The word “voice” can refer to a writer’s specific way of expressing himself, so the phrase “stylistic voice” in the text means exactly the same thing as “use of language” in the answer choice. If something is “sexed,” it means that it has typical characteristics of one gender, so saying that the “stylistic voice” is “sexed” is the same thing as saying that the “use of language” is “shape[d]” by “gender.”

(E) is another commonly chosen wrong answer. It doesn’t work because nothing in the text talks about a reader having difficulty expressing
his own
voice. The text talks about the fact that it’s sometimes hard for the reader to imagine
the writer’s
voice if the writer is of a different gender. Once more, we see how critical it is to read every detail of every answer choice, and to take nothing for granted!

Students often have a lot of questions about this passage. As always, those questions tend to arise from not reading carefully enough.

Here, we’re asked to find an answer choice that reflects Mulcahy’s mood or attitude at the time that he “smile[s]” in line 33. The rest of the sentence that mentions the smile says that Mulcahy feels “a kind of pity, mingled with contempt and dry amusement.” So we want an answer choice that reflects those emotions.

Many people like (A), but (A) has problems that keep it from being correct. The original text doesn’t say that Mulcahy feels pity for himself, but (A) mentions “self-pity.” The original text also doesn’t specifically say anything about being cynical or skeptical in those lines.

Some people also like (D), but the text doesn’
t specifically talk about “disappointment,” even if it seems natural to assume that someone who has just been fired might be disappointed.

(E) ends up being correct because the phrase “condescending sympathy” goes with “a kind of pity,” while “amused scorn” in the answer choice goes with “amusement” and “contempt” in the text.

People often miss this question because they
don’t stop to think about the specific meanings of the words “that” and “how,” and about the difference between those meanings.

In this context, the word “that” indicates the existence of a particular fact; when the author says “I can show
that
Fido is alert,” he means that he can demonstrate the truth of a particular fact, which is the fact that the dog is alert to something.

In this context, the word “how” indicates the specific way in which something is happening. When the author says he can’t show “
how
[Fido is alert],” he’s saying that he can’t demonstrate the specific way in which Fido is alert.

If we put these ideas together, we see that the author is saying he can show the truth of the alertness, but not the way the alertness works.

When we realize that “awareness” and “alertness” are synonyms in this context, and when we realize that the phrase “the nature of” goes with the idea of “how” something happens, we see that (D) restates what the author says, so it’s the correct answer.

People who get this wrong tend to choose all four of the wrong answers with more-or-less equal frequency, so let’s take a look at them.

(A) doesn’t work because the difference between “seeing” and “believing” is mentioned in lines 39 and 40, and it’s not mentioned in connection with the difference between “
that
” and “
how
” that we’re being asked about. This is a great example of how we have to read very carefully to make sure that we’re choosing an answer choice that combines the right ideas from the text.

(B) doesn’t work because the text doesn’t mention how the cat perceives things.

(C) doesn’t work because the text doesn’t mention anything to do with the difference between a hypothesis and a speculation.

(E) might seem attractive at first, because the text does mention “falsifyingly literal representations” in line 44. But there’s a problem here: the text
doesn’t say anything to match with the phrase “accurate representations” in this answer choice.

This question is yet another good example of how we have to read very carefully when we work on the SAT. It’s also a good example of the way we have to be willing to treat consecutive statements as synonymous on the Passage-Based Reading questions. The first sentence of the essay talks about “two warring souls,” and then line 6 talks about “the tension between race pride and identification with the nation as a whole.” The idea of “tension” between two things in that second sentence goes with the idea of “warring” in the first sentence, so the two “souls” at “war” are “race pride” and “identification with the nation as a whole.”

Th
at’s exactly what (C) refers to, which is why (C) is correct.

Again, it’s important to read everything carefully, and to force ourselves to find the answer in the text. A lot of people just talk themselves into (B), (D), or (E) because they don’t insist on finding an exact match in the text.

This question seems to be asking us to speculate about how something in one passage would be applied to another passage. In these types of questions, it’s critical to remember that
no speculation is actually called for. We’ll find the correct answer directly in the text, as always.

In the final paragraph of passage 2, the author says, “. . . the shrillest critics are not necessarily the most authoritative.” He adds that “the very shrillness of their cries . . . quickly exhausts their wind.”

The majority of passage 1 is dedicated to a variety of criticisms.

The correct answer, then, is (E), which talks about how critics who are “loud” will have influences that
are “short-lived.” Notice how “loud” goes with “shrill” in the text, while “short-lived” goes with the idea of the critics being “quickly exhaust[ed].”

None of the other choices reflect
s anything that the author of passage 2 mentions in the last paragraph. That paragraph doesn’t talk about constructive advice, conforming to public opinion, being widely read, or being taken seriously.

People who miss this question almost always do so because they give up on the idea of finding the answer directly in the text, and just talk themselves into something so they can move on. But the answer
is
in the text for this question, just like it is for every other Passage-Based Reading question on a real SAT.

In the second line of the italicized print at the beginning of the passage, we learn that the narrator is writing about “his grandmother, Susan Ward.” In line 10, we learn about “the grandfather she [Susan Ward] was writing about.”

So both the narrator and Susan Ward are writing about a grandparent, which makes (C) correct.

Let this question serve as a reminder of two things. First, it’s important to remember that the answer is always spelled out in the text, no matter how much difficulty we might have in identifying that from time to time. Second, it’s important to remember not to give up looking for the correct answer—
if you decide that something is weird about this question and you just take your best guess, you’ve basically made a decision to give points away for no reason.

This question asks about an assumption, but, as always, we’ll find the correct answer choice by reading the relevant text very carefully. The quote we were told to read says, “’Adaptation follows a different path in each person. The nervous system creates its own paths. You’re the neurologist—you must see this all the time.’”

Note that the last sentence of the quote says, in black and white, that the reason the listener must know about the nervous system is that he sees it all the time, since he’s a neurologist. The text isn’t requiring us to know anything about neurology; we don’t have to make any assumptions about what neurologists do or don’t know. Instead, the quoted text specifically says that a neurologist “
must
” (emphasis mine) be familiar with how the nervous system adapts.

This fits with choice (C), which says “all neurologists are aware” of the “adaptability.” Note how “adaptability” from the answer choice fits with “
adaptation” in line 37. So (C) is correct.

Some students get hung up on the phrase “all neurologists,” because the quote in the text is only directed at a single neurologist. But “all” is appropriate here, since we were asked to figure out which assumption underlies the quote: if it were possible for there to be any neurologists who didn’t know about adaptation, then the statement “you
must
know
because you’re a neurologist
” wouldn’t make any sense. So the assumption must be that
all
neurologists know about it.

Some of the wrong answers incorrectly combine concepts that appear in the passage. (B), for instance, includes the idea of different paths, the idea of understanding, and the idea of neurologists, but it doesn’t tie those ideas together in the same way the text does. We have to make sure we don’t talk ourselves into this kind of answer!

This question gives a lot of students the impression that they need to interpret the text, since the passage is a work of fiction and the question is asking about a character’s emotional state. But it’s important for us to remember that literary interpretation is never the way to go on the SAT.

In line 45, we’re told that the young clerk “was cut to the heart,” and that he felt like Akakyevitch was saying “I am your brother.”

So t
he correct answer here is (E), which says that the clerk feels “compassion.” To understand why, it might help to know that the expression “to be cut to the heart” means something like “to be profoundly moved.” Further, the word “compassion” literally means that we feel something with someone else.

In the text, the clerk watches Akakyevitch getting teased, and the clerk himself feels “cut to the heart.” In other words, the clerk feels a deep emotion in response to watching Akakyevitch’s suffering. This is what “compassion” means by definition.

Most of the other answer choices don’t make any sense relative to the text—from a literary standpoint we might be able to explain a choice like “fear” by saying that the new clerk might have been afraid he would be harassed like Akakyevitch, but on the SAT that doesn’t work, since the passage never mentions the new clerk being nervous or worried about being targeted.