SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

The Lascaux Cave paintings -detailed paintings of animals found in what is now France and dating from around 17,000 years ago-are sometimes said to be emotionally powerful despite their age, but in fact the paintings are__precisely because of their age. It is the link of shared humanity with the artists across so many centuries that gives the Lascaux Cave paintings such resonance.

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

Some robots such as Surena (developed in 2008) and COMAN (developed in 2012) feature humanoid characteristics like bipedal locomotion so that people will find it easier to interact with them. While these features can help to__feelings of comfort in people, a robot that looks too like human can fall into the "uncanny valley," meaning that its appearance unintentionally unsettles those who encounter it.

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

Text corpora such as the International Corpus of English are enormous collections of electronically stored texts that can be used for empirical testing of hypotheses regarding how__a word is in spoken and written English. For instance, one might have a guess about the incidence of the word "first," but only an analysis of a corpus can prove that "first" is the third most commonly used adjective.

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

The following text is adapted from Matthew Arnold's 1869 nonfiction book Culture and Anarchy.
The Times (a British newspaper, replying to some foreign strictures on the dress, looks, and behavior of the English abroad, urges that the English ideal is that everyone should be free to do and to look just as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like the rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that.

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

The bird species Myiobius barbatus (the bearded flycatcher), which forages in relatively dense vegetation, and Platyrinchus saturatus (the cinnamon-crested spadebill), which forages in open areas or low-density vegetation, share territory in French Guiana with Thainnomanes caesius (the cinereous antshrike), which emits a loud alarm call when it detects predators. Biologist Ari Martinez and colleagues, who studied the ecological community the species share, hypothesized that there is an inverse relationship between birds' field of vision while foraging and their sensitivity to alarm calls from neighboring species.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support Martinez and colleagues' hypothesis?

A report from an international organization that monitors the numbers of women serving as judges or magistrates on various nations highest courts, such as the Supreme court in Finland and the Supreme Court in the Dominican republic. From 2009 to 2013, the number of women serving as justices or magistrates on highest courts in most countries increased. However, there are also countries where the number decreased or remained unchanged; for example,__

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the example?

Daniel Jug and colleagues found that tilling-the practice of turning soil with hoes, plows, or other machines before planting crops-was associated with an increased yield of winter wheat. But some studies of other crops have found the opposite effect, for example__

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the assertion?

Population figures for a city can vary significantly depending on what areas are included in the count. Often, governments will report a value for the city proper (including only residents within the city limits) and another for the larger metropolitan area (including residents from nearby places beyond the city limits). Citing the data in the table, a journalist claims the population estimates from the United Nations (UN) most likely included people outside the cities proper.

Which choice best describes data in the table that support the journalist's claim?

The Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) seeks to discover long-term trends related to aging by compiling and analyzing evidence from approximately 66,000 participants in multiple countries. As with most longitudinal studies, extensive funding support is needed for SAGE to collect the relevant data over timescales and at intervals that will support robust conclusions. But the quality of a more constrained investigation, such as a sociology study seeking only to yield the average age at which people in a given city first become parents, is much less dependent on high levels of funding because（  ）

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Anne Bronte's 1847 novel Agnes Grey contains elements drawn from Bronte's own life: there are many parallels between the experiences of the novel's tide character and those of Bronte, and as a result Agnes Grey is regularly described as an autobiographical novel. This characterization can be useful, but it also presents drawbacks in terms of how the work is perceived, as it may lead readers to believe that Bronte merely fictionalized true events, which, in an artistic field where creativity and inventiveness are prized, can suggest that__ 

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Previous research has shown that plant species with a narrow geographical range tend to be more genetically homogeneous than plant species with extensive ranges are. Based on these findings, researchers recently ran simulations to predict how the genetic variation of several species of Mammillaria, a genus of cactus found throughout the Americas, might change in different distribution conditions. One of these species, klissingiana, is found only in the state of Tamaulipas. The researchers simulated what would happen if klissingiana spread to new habitats outside Tamaulipas, and, consistent with previous findings, the results showed that__

Which choice most logically completes the text? 

Arthurian legends (tales related to the character of King Arthur) derive from many sources, such as Annaies Cambriae, composed around 970, and the Mabinogion from the 12th and 13th centuries. One of the most significant sources, Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, was written in Latin in the 1130s; some material from it was later adapted by the Norman poet Wace into the Roman de Brut in 1155. But while no source before 1155 includes references to the famous Round Table at which Arthur's knights assembled, both the Roman de Brut and Sir Thomas Malory's 15th-century compilation of Arthurian legends, Le Morte d'Arthur, do. It can therefore be inferred that__

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Few new parents - that their baby will someday become an astronaut. Yet if Jerry L. Ross's parents had made this prediction when he was born in 1948, they would have been correct, for NASA selected him for the job in 1980. 

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

The following text is from Kenneth Grahame's 1908 novel The Wind in the Willow. The Rat is looking for the Mole, his friend, in the woods.
[The Rat] had patiently hunted through the wood for an hour or more, when at last to his joy he heard a little answering cry. Guiding himself by the sound, he made his way through the gathering darkness to the foot of an old beech tree.

As used in the text, what does the word "guiding" most nearly mean?

Alfred Nobel intended for the Nobel Prize to be an award honoring those who have contributed "the greatest benefit to mankind." Indeed, the work of Richard Laurence Millington Synge represented a significant__the field of chemistry, and in 1952 he was among those awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "their invention of partition chromatography." 

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

The arrival of humans to the Americas is thought to have__a sudden decrease in biodiversity throughout the continents. Although the extinction of species like the toxodon was likely the result of a combination of factors, from decreasing food sources to habitat destruction, most of these factors can be directly tied to the presence of humans. 

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

Some robots such as Surena (developed in 2008) and COMAN (developed in 2012) are designed to resemble humans so that people will find it easier to interact with them. To this end, certain features such as the ability to respond to voice commands can help to create the comforting semblance of humanity, but a robot that appears too similar to humans can make people feel more unsettled than__ 

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

The following text is Rainer Maria Rilke's 1897 poem "Evening" (translated by Jessie Lamont in 1918).

The bleak fields are asleep, My heart alone wakes; The evening in the harbour Down his red sails takes.

Night, guardian of dreams, Now wanders through the land;

The moon, a lily white, Blossoms within her hand.

Which choice best states the function of the undeclined portion in the text as a whole?

When people think of dinosaurs with feathers, they typically think of winged dinosaurs, such as the bat-like Ambopteryx. However, many dinosaurs that didn't have wings also had feathers on their bodies. For instance, research indicates that the wingless, large Yutyrannus likely had feathers.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

Text 1:

In 2017 Buenaventura, Colombia, was named a City of Gastronomy by UNESO in recognition of the city's unique food culture. The honor is well known among residents of the city as well as tourists who visit. It's obvious that the selection of Buenaventura by UNESCO has brought awareness to local recipes, cooking practices, and chefs and has provided a boost to the city's tourism industry.

Text 2:

Many people in Buenaventura's restaurant industry hoped that food tourism would increase after the city was chosen as City of Gastronomy in 2017. However, as researcher Eerang Park and colleagues argue, cities must still create effective marketing strategies to benefit fully from being named a City of Gastronomy. Without an intentional effort to promote the city's food scene, many current and potential visitors to Buenaventura may not even be aware that it's home to uniquely delicious food.

Based on the texts, what would the author of Text 2 most likely say in response to the underlined claim in Text 1?

In a study by Mika R. Moran, Daniel A. Rodriguez, and colleagues, residents of Panama City, Panama, and Fortaleza, Brazil, were surveyed about parks in their cities. Of the 318 respondents from Panama City, 53.5% indicated that they use the city's parks, and of 938 respondents from Fortaleza 35.7% indicated using city parks. Given that the percentage of Panama City respondents who reported living within a 10-minute walk of a park was much lower than that reported by Fortaleza respondents, greater proximity alone can't explain the difference in park use.

The text makes which point about the difference between the proportions of Panama City residents and Fortaleza residents using parks?

The following text is adapted from Daniel Defoe's 1704 nonfiction book The Storm.

The sermon is a sound of words spoken to the ear, and prepared only for present meditation and extends no farther than the strength of memory can convey it; a book printed is a record, remaining in every man's possession, always ready to renew its acquaintance with his memory, and always ready to be produced as an authority or voucher to any reports he makes out of it, and conveys its contents for ages to come, to the eternity of mortal time, when the author is forgotten in his grave.

Which choice best states the main ides of the text?

The Far Side of the World, first published in 1984, is a novel in Patrick 'Brain's Aubrey/Maturin series, which includes twenty books plus an unfinished fragment of a twenty-first. Like the rest of the books in the series, The Far Side of the World has a rather abrupt ending, but the following book, The Reverse of the Medal, picks up neatly where The Far Side of the World leaves off. Thus, the sudden ending is only an issue if one considers the books as independent texts-the Aubrey/Maturin series is best thought of as a single
incredibly long work, similar to other multivolume stories, such as John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga.

Which choice best states the main ides of the text?

One student is writing an essay about four pyramids for a history class and wants to indicate how long ago each pyramid was built. Consulting the table, the student finds that the Tikal Temple IV was built__ 

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the text?

Life Among the Paiutes is an 1882 autobiographical narrative by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins. In the work, Winnemucca directly addresses the reader to establish her authority and credibility, writing______

Which quotation from Life Among the Paiutes most effectively illustrates the claim?

Hypothesizing that lullabies, characterized by their slow tempos, are universally calming to infants, Constance M. Bainbridge and colleagues played a lullaby song in the Scottish Gaelic language and a non-lullaby song in the Seri language to a group of infants. The team found that the infants' heart rates decreased more during the lullaby than during the non-lullaby. Since a decrease in heart rate is associated with relaxation, the team concluded that the lullaby relaxed the infants. Noting that reduced heart rate can also be associated with increased attention, one critic argues that instead, the lullaby simply attracted the infants' attention. Bainbridge and colleagues also measured pupil size, as pupils typically become larger when a stimulus captures a person's attention.

Which finding, if true, would most directly weaken critic's claim?

In the early 19th, ships in the British Royal Navy were ranked based on military strength. The system considered the number of a ship's cannons and decks. "First rate" was the highest ranking, and "sixth-rate" was the lowest ranking, followed by unranked ships. This ranking deter mined the size of a ship's crew: first-rate ships had between 850 and 875 crewmen, while lower-ranked ships had fewer. Two of the ships in the British Royal Navy from this period were the Dreadnought (98 cannons and three decks) and the Royal George (120 cannons and three decks). Of these two, only the Royal George was ranked a first-rate ship. It can therefore be concluded that______

Which choice most logically competes the text?

Some features, such as the mihrab (or niche), are present in nearly every mosque. But mosques often reflect multiple architectural styles, resulting in a unique__of those influence, as in the case of the Sheikh Zayed Mosque, which combines elements from the Persian, Mughal, and Moorish styles.

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

The following text is from E. Pauline Johnson's 2002 poem "Shadow Lake." The little fern-leaf, bending Upon the brink, its green reflection greets, And kisses soft the shadow that it meets With touch so fine, The border line The keenest vision can't define; So perfect is the blending. 
As used in the text, what does the word "define" most nearly mean?

The Underdogs is a 1915 novel by Mariano Azuela, originally written in Spanish. In the novel, the town of Juchipila is depicted as a striking sight for a group of soldiers as they view it from afar:__ 

Which quotation from a translation of The Underdogs most effectively illustrates the claim?