SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

The following text is from Lilliam Rivera's 2020 novel Never Look Back. The text describes the narrator arriving at his father's apartment.

"Pops, I'm here!" I drop my bag and set my guitar case against a wall. I place my keys on the bowl right next to the ceramic elephant Pops got me on one of his trips to Santo Domingo when I was a little kid.

2020 by Lilllam Rivera

 

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

The invertebrates Haywardozoon pacificum and Trophomera mangani have recently been discovered inhabiting the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), an area of abyssal plain between Hawai'i and Mexico where mining is permitted. The number of other invertebrates that may inhabit the CCZ is currently _______ , as the area's biota is poorly sampled and the few samples that have been taken cannot be presumed to be representative.

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

The Polynesian languages, a group of related languages originating on islands in the Pacific, typically have ______ array of consonant sounds. For example, the Tokelauan language of the South Pacific has eleven consonants, and 'Olelo Hawai'i, the language of the Native Hawalian people, has eight. Globally, however, the median number of consonants per language is over twenty two.

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

Maryam Hosseini and her team used aerial images of well-mapped areas of Boston to train a computer program to identify sidewalks. When it was tested on images of Brooklyn, it ________

identified sidewalks in the vast majority of cases and even whether sidewalks were concrete or brick. Hosseini believes the program will improve on this already-strong performance as it gets used more.

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

The following text is from Julia Alvarez's 2000 novel In the Name of Salomé. Salomé, a poet, is hosting guests in the front parlor of her family home, and Ramona is her sister. A salon is a social gathering for the exploration of intellectual ideas.

It was evening when the two men got up to leave. Tía Ana had already come into the room several times to see if these guests had departed yet. The front parlor had always been her special province, as she used it for her little school. Now, every evening, it turned into Salomé's salon, as Ramona called it, and it was never in order for its transformation back to a classroom the following morning.

2000 by Julia Alvarez

 

Which choice best describes the function of the reference to the parlor as Tia Ana's "special province"?

According to historian Vicki L. Ruiz, Mexican American women made crucial contributions to the labor movement during World War Il. At the time, food processing companies entered into contracts to supply United States armed forces with canned goods. Increased production quotas conferred greater bargaining power on the companies' employees, many of whom were Mexican American women: employees insisted on more favorable benefits, and employers, who were anxious to fulfil the contracts, complied. Thus, labor activism became a platform for Mexican American women to assert their agency.

 

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

Text 1

Despite how the Indian dish madras differs from Mauritius's gato pima, both dishes are described as a "curry." The word's history, however, is fraught. It's a term created by British and Portuguese colonizers to refer to the myriad spiced sauces with ties to the Indian subcontinent. In 1973, chef Madhur Jaffrey dismissed the term "curry" as inaccurate, and in 2021 blogger Nisha Vedi Pawar suggested that people abandon the term both for its colonial origin and for its failure to grasp the intricacies of India's cuisines.

Text 2

Growing up in India, chef Chintan Pandya didn't encounter the term "curry" often: his family didn't cook curries, but some of his neighbors did. Although the blanket use of the term is rooted in colonialism, Pandya calls some of his dishes curries. Having traveled throughout India as part of his training, he came to appreciate the country's diverse cuisines and the diverse uses of the term "curry."

Text 1 and Text 2 present points of view about which topic?

In a large community science effort, biologist Grace Herzel and colleagues collaborated with hundreds of students and other amateur science enthusiasts for more than three years to study how butterfly color and weather conditions relate to butterfly behavior. They found that butterfly color might influence behavior more than butterfly size does, and that butterflies tended to prefer orange and red flowers on cloudy days and multicolor flowers on partly cloudy days.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) and other films by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul are contributions to slow cinema, an art house genre whose contemplative pacing and deprivileging of narrative are further exemplified by films such as Andrei Tarkovsky's Solarts (1972). Apichatpong describes his films as sleep inducing, which might suggest that they bore their audiences, but boredom does not necessarily cause sleep: in the absence of a goal to which one attaches attention and interest, the tension of boredom can be anxiety inducing rather than soporific. Thus, Apichatpong's description of his films is not self-deprecation; rather, his work invites sleep and thereby strips the description of its negative connotation.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

Sandra Cisneros's English-language short story "Eyes of Zapata" occasionally includes words and phrases from the Mexican dialect of Spanish. While the story doesn't translate the Spanish text into English, the meaning can be inferred from the surrounding English text. Ana Castillo adopts a comparable approach to Spanish in her English-language novel So Far from God. Both works thus remain accessible to all readers of English, not just those who can also read Spanish.

What is the main topic of the text?

A student who is researching volcanoes in Ficuador notes that the country is home to different types of volcanoes. For example, ________

 

Which choice most effectively uses information from the table to complete the example?

The Pueblo of Laguna is the largest of the nineteen Pueblo tribal nations in New Mexico, covering nearly 800 square miles. Most Pueblo tribal nations are much smaller. For example, the total area of Pueblo of Sandia is 38.9 square miles, and the total area of Pueblo de Cochiti is ________

 

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

Handcrafted in the Philippines by the Boholano people, asin tibuok is an artisanal sea salt made from filtering seawater through the ashes of charred coconut husks. The salt is desired for its complex flavor, and only a few family-owned shops have the knowledge and skill to produce it. A 1995 law mandated that all salt sold in the Philippines must be iodized. This was a policy intended to combat malnutrition, as iodine is an essential mineral, but the process used to make asin tibuok is incompatible with methods used to iodized salt. The unintended consequences of the 1995 law was a steep decline in asin tibuok manufacturing, as their salt could not be lawfully sold in the Philippines. As asin tibuok is meant to be "finishing salt" and best enjoyed sparingly, advocates for traditional food practices have suggested that _________

Which choice most logically completes the text?

British professional soccer team Manchester United Football Club, whose home uniform color is manly red, won more than half its home matches between 1947 and 2003. This is a higher proportion of home matches than Hull City Association Foothall Club, whose home uniform color is not red, won during the same period. According to a study by Martin J. Attrill and colleagues, the color red can cause people to respond with fear and hesitation, which the researchers think helps explain Manchester United's success, Nadav Goldschmled and colleagues reanalyzed the published data from this study, however and found no evidence that red uniformed teams are more likely than other teams to win, suggesting that Manchester United's performance at its home stadium _______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Drummer Dennis Chambers's distinguished career includes many memorable achievements, such as working on the Brecker Brothers' album Retarn of the Brecker Brothers. However, as house drummer at Sugar Hill Records, a record label that was a pioneer of early hip hop ______ Chambers joined too late to play drums on the label's classic song "Rapper's Delight."

 

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

London-based Nigerian sculptor Sokari Douglas Camp creates art by cutting, bending, and welding recycled metal materials into new and thought provoking shapes. Her work---which has been featured in galleries around the world, such as the Potters Field Commission for Southwark Councll in London and Skidmore College's Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery in New York---often references at least one of several _______ the environment, and Kalabari culture.

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

When a soil is classifled using the International Union of Soll Sclences' system, its similarity to each of the 32 soil reference groups---defined by several criteria--- ________ evaluated, one group at a time, until a match is found. The comparisons are made in a specific order: thus, the criteria for lixisols (solls with clay-rich subsoill) are only applied if the soil doesn't match the criteria for ferralsols.

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

Blaise Pascal's Pascaline device---concelved, like willam Oughtred's carller Circular Sllde Rule, amid the seventeenth century push to replace manual calculations with faster and more accurate machine-based methods--- _______ among the first reproducible calculating machines.

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

Amruta Yelamanchili has worked at NASA's famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), one of the world's leading facilities for robotic space exploration. _______ Yelamanchili worked as a data scientist on the JPL's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover team, which improved upon the 2011 Curiosity rover design by adding a coring drill to the robot that could collect rock samples for later analysis.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

A recent study tracked the number of bee species present in twenty-seven New York apple orchards over a ten-year period. _______ found that when wild growth near an orchard was cleared, the number of different bee species visiting the orchard decreased.

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

The Chimú civilization had prolonged conflicts with their neighbors the Incas, culminating in a 15th-century war between the two cultures. The Muralla La Cumbre is a Chimú -built earthen wall, 6 miles long and 8 feet high. Initially archaeologists believed it to be a byproduct of Chimú's conflict with the Inca, ______ recent research suggests that the wall was constructed around 1100 CE and was likely used to mitigate flooding caused by the periodic El Niño weather cycles that occur in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

The word "orange" comes from the fruit and not the color of the fruit, as the English word comes from the Sanskrit word "Naranga," which is that language's name for the tree that bears oranges. In fact, the earliest known use of orange as a color occurred in 1502. _______ English speakers would describe the color as "yellow-red" or say it was the same color as the spice saffron.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Two siblings from the same biological parents can inherit different physical traits. For instance, one sibling might inherit thin lips; the other sibling. ______ might inherit full lips.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

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

·Fashion designer Kofi Ansah was born in Ghana in 1951.

·Ansah left for England in 1979 to study fashion.

·After finding success in the European fashion industry, he returned to Ghana in 1992.

·Ansah founded The Federation of African Designers.

·Academic Adwoa Owusuaa Bobie credits Ansah for popularizing the idea that successful African creators should return to their home countries to build resources there.

The student wants to emphasize the significance of Ansah's return to Ghana. 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:

·E.M. Forster was an arclaimed writer

·He is best known for his novels.

·Forster's most famous novels include A Room with a View (1908) and Howards End (1910).

·His first published work of fiction was a short story called "Albergo Empedocle."

·It was published in Temple Bar in 1903.

 

The student wants to provide a specific example of one of E.M. Forster's most famous works. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes 10 accomplish this goal?

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

·The Carnegie Prize is an International art competition administered by the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

·Painter Anselm Kiefer of Germany won a Carnegie Prize gold medal in 1985.

·Kiefer's winning artwork was a painting entitled Midgard

·Sculptor Jean Arp of Germany won a Carnegie Prize gold medal in 1964.

·Arp's winning artwork was a sculpture entitled Sculpture Classique.

 

The student wants to contrast the two artworks. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?