SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

Until 1917, there was no formal measure in the United States Senate that could be_________to end a debate that had been excessively prolonged as a tactic to block voting on a matter. In that year, a procedure was created to allow a majority of senators to curtail deliberation and force a vote.

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

The Apollo Moon landings (1969-1972) brought charged particle detectors and temperature probes to the Moon and produced large amounts of data, much of which was stored on technologies that are now obsolete. A data-transfer project is working to_________these data so that the information is available to researcher Seiichi Nagihara, who is investigating temperature changes on the Moon.

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

New and interesting research conducted by Suleiman A. Al-Sweedan and Moath Alhaj is inspired by their observation that though studies of the effect of high altitude on blood chemistry are__________, the effect on blood chemistry of living in locations below sea level, such as the California towns of Brawley and Holtville, has received comparatively little notice.

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

The glossy ibis and the little blue heron are long-legged birds that live in wetlands, like the Everglades in Florida. Laura DAcunto and colleagues wanted to know how these birds choose an area in which to live. They looked at features of the birds habitats, such as the geographic location of the area and how deep the water is during breeding season. They found that although only glossy ibises prefer areas with deep water during breeding season, both glossy ibises and little blue herons prefer areas that have standing water for more than 60 days per year. The researchers therefore concluded that neither species is very drawn to areas where__________.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Land art, or earth art,is characterized by its large scale and the fact that it's often placed in remote or surprising locations. Land art is also notable for the wildly diverse ways in which it is created: Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, for instance,was created by arranging rocks in a large spiral in Utah's Great Salt Lake, whereas for Wheatfield—A Confrontation, Agnes Denes planted and harvested a field of wheat in Lower Manhattan in New York City.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

Fossil evidence indicates that the End-Triassic mass extinction—the relatively sudden die-off of about 80 percent of species (including many species of bivalves)—occurred approximately 201 million years ago. Researchers have identified the effects of a sudden release of carbon dioxide as a possible initial cause of this mass extinction. But mass extinctions, while abrupt in geological terms, unfold over thousands or millions of years: it's likely that multiple factors drove extensive species loss.

 

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

The following text is from Yung Wing's 1909 memoir My Life in China and America.

We landed in New York on the 12th of April, 1847, after a passage of ninety-eight days of unprecedented fair weather. The New York of 1847 was altogether a different city from the New York of 1909. It was a city of only 250,000 or 300,000 inhabitants; now it is a metropolis rivaling London in population, wealth and commerce. The whole of Manhattan Island is turned into a city of skyscrapers, churches and palatial residences.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

The US Department of Agriculture's Fruit and Tree Nuts Outlook is a document that covers a variety of subjects, from the causes of reductions in grapefruit supply to the number of avocados that are imported from abroad. A student studying agricultural economics is consulting a graph in the document that shows the prices for which several types of nuts have been sold by growers in the United States over four growing seasons from 2016 to 2020. The student wishes to determine in which season walnuts reached their lowest price. Consulting the graph, the student finds that this season was the________.

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

Studying tools unearthed at a cave site on the western coast of Italy, archaeologist Paola Villa and colleagues have determined that prehistoric Neanderthal groups fashioned them from shells of clams that they harvested from the seafloor while wading or diving or that washed up on the beach. Clamshells become thin and eroded as they wash up on the beach, while those on the seafloor are smooth and sturdy, so the research team suspects that Neanderthals prized the tools made with seafloor shells. However, the team also concluded that those tools were likely more challenging to obtain, noting that______.

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to support the research team's conclusion?

Peter Pan is a 1911 novel by J. M. Barrie. In the fantasy novel, a dog named Nana is a nurse (nanny) for the children in the Darling family-Wendy, John, and Michael. The narrator describes Nana as planning for events like a human would:_________.

Which quotation from Peter Pan best illustrates the claim?

Some researchers posit that the species inhabiting the South Pacific island of Grande Terre belong to clades that predate the island's split from remnants of the former supercontinent Gondwana around 80 million years ago. A study conducted by Michael A. Sundue et al. found, however, that the crown age (the age of the most recent common ancestor of all living and extinct species in the clade) of the clade of Grammitis ferns on Grande Terre is 8.5 million years; Sundue et al. further found that the crown age of the clade of Grammitis ferns in the South Pacific generally is approximately 10.0 milion years.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

Text 1

For decades, ornithologists assumed that if they saw a singing white-eyed vireo—a bird species found in temperate North America—they must be observing a male. That's because birdsong has long been considered a male trait; researchers have argued that singing enables males to attract mates and claim territory.

Text 2

Recent evidence shows that a female white-eyed vireo is as capable of song as a male is. In fact, Karan J. Odom and colleagues found evidence of female song in 71% of the 323 species they examined. They claim that the historical mischaracterization of birdsong as a male trait is largely the result of bias: much of the research ornithologists have carried out has been near universities in the temperate northern hemisphere, where female birdsong is less common than it is in the tropics.

Based on the texts, how would Odom and colleagues (Text 2) most likely respond to the view of birdsong presented in Text 1?

In medieval England, jugglers and minstrels made livings as traveling performers,but the pieces they performed have been a mystery, thought to be lost or never committed to paper at all. Recently, however, James Wade has argued that a manuscript collection compiled in the fifteenth century by Richard Heege contains three pieces likely copied from a repertoire book belonging to a minstrel working in the area around Heege's home. Wade cites features of the texts indicative of live performance, such as politely addressing the audience, extensive use of simple rhyming (allowing for easy memorization), and requests for tips (payment) from listeners.

Which statement, if true, would most strongly support Wade's argument?

The advent of online streaming has led many music listeners to drift away from ownership of music (through downloads or through physical media such as compact discs) in favor of the streaming services YouTube Music and AccuRadio,among others. Luis Aguiar studied the effect of the 2011 implementation of a restriction on the free version of the French streaming service Deezer: its unlimited usage was reduced to five hours a month, while the paid premium version's usage remained unlimited. Aguiar found that listeners who used the free service visited licensed online music sellers (e. g., the iTunes store) and sites that make unlicensed music available to download about 2% less after the restriction was implemented,suggesting that__________.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Exclusively inhabiting tropical countries such as Senegal, wild chimpanzees lack adaptations to seasonal variations in ultraviolet B (UVB) irradiance from sunlight;since UVB exposure enables vertebrates to synthesize vitamin D, Sophie Moittié and colleagues studied zoo chimpanzees in Italy and other mid-latitude countries to see how vitamin D levels are affected by the seasonal variations in UVB irradiance that occur in those locations. They found that chimpanzees' vitamin D levels were significantly lower in winter than in summer and appeared unaffected by oral supplementation of vitamin D administered by zookeepers. Moittié and colleagues point out, however, that supplementation was rare, highly varied, and poorly tracked, and therefore they caution against concluding that__________.

 

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Many ranching terms come from Spanish. For example, the word "lasso" (a rope)_________from the Spanish word lazo, and "cinch" (a belt) derives from cincho. This is because the first Anglo, African, and Native American cattle ranchers in the southwestern US learned the trade from Spanish-speaking Mexican vaqueros, ord cowboys.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of

Standard English?

A preserved specimen of the marine protist G. conglobatus collected from the South Atlantic has been identified as the species lectotype, a term________that this specimen serves as the basis for all formal scientific descriptions of the species.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

Debuting in 1982, San Francisco to Hawai'i Overnight! is just one of the_________that have been curated by the staff of the San Francisco International Airport.

 

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

After touching down on Mars on May 25, 2008, the Phoenix lander spent 161 days exploring the geology of the red planet, including its many________To aid in communication, scientists gave informal names like Neverland and Dodo to some of the smaller yet notable rocks discovered.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

Leptoptilos dubius, also known as the greater__________can be found in places like Hakaluki Haor in Bangladesh and Northern Santuk in Cambodia, but more than 80 percent of this endangered stork species is found in Assam, India. There, wildlife biologist Dr. Purnima Devi Barman is on the front lines of a conservation effort that aims to bring adjutants back from near extinction.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

Broadcasting from the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe's lands in northern Minnesota,the Native-run radio station KOJB 90.1 FM does much to serve the local Ojibwe-speaking community.__________it broadcasts local news and music as well as programming in the Ojibwe language.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Biologists have yet to agree on a single concept of what defines a species. Thus,numerous competing species concepts are used within the field, a dilemma known as the species problem. The cohesion species concept, described in 1985 by Templeton, defines species in accordance with phenotypic cohesion. The genetic species concept,____________delineated by Baker and Bradley in 2006, organizes species according to genetic similarity.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

From mountains to monuments, deserts to rainforests, and isolated islands to teeming cities, the sites on UNESCO's World Heritage List are chosen because they hold cultural or natural value that the organization wishes to preserve for future generations.___________in 2010, UNESCO recognized the importance of Kiribati's Phoenix Islands Protected Area, home to one of the world's largest oceanic coral ecosystems, by adding it to the list as a natural heritage site.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

· A U-shaped curve in a river channel is called a meander.

· A meander forms when water erodes sediment from one side of the riverbank and redeposits that sediment on the opposite side.

· Meanders will gradually change shape and migrate downstream over time.

· A river with high sinuosity has many meanders, and a river with low sinuosity has few.

· The Willapa River in the United States has high sinuosity.

The student wants to identify what causes meanders. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

· Modern Pueblo tribal nations were preceded by the Ancestral Puebloan civilization,which occupied parts of the southwestern US until approximately 1600 CE.

· Keet Seel in northeastern Arizona is a former Ancestral Puebloan settlement inhabited from approximately 1250-1300 CE.

· It was constructed in a natural cliff alcove and had multistory adobe and stone buildings.

· These buildings had cube-shaped, contiguous rooms that surrounded kivas.

· Kivas are round rooms typically used for ceremonial purposes and as gathering spaces.

The student wants to provide a detailed overview of the structures at Keet Seel. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

· Vexillology is the study of flags.

· The flags of many countries include symbols like animals, plants, or landforms.

· These symbols often represent an aspect of the region's history, culture, or landscape.

· The flag of El Salvador includes a palm branch.

· The flag of Zambia includes an eagle.

Which choice most effectively uses information from the given sentences to emphasize a difference between the two flags?