(C) has the word “and,” just like (A) does, and is wrong for the same reason.
(D) doesn’t work because it would be saying that the review, not the symphony, had a melodious movement.
(E) is correct because the conjunction “but” indicates we’re joining two ideas that are dissimilar.
Page 408, Question 10
Many test-takers will find this question confusing because it has so many underlined words. One of the easiest ways to approach a question like this is to focus on individual parts of the answer choices—remember that even a single mistake in the answer choice causes the whole thing to be wrong, so once we identify a flaw in a choice we can stop worrying about it. In other words, if we take each choice on its own and discard it as soon as we run into a problem with it, then we don’t have to keep five different versions of a 19-word phrase in our heads at once.
(A) doesn’t work because the “consumption” would be “building new farms,” which is impossible.
(B) doesn’t work because the word “it” can’t be directly replaced with a singular noun phrase in the sentence, which is a requirement of SAT grammar (even if it’s not a requirement of English grammar in real life).
(C) is the correct answer because it’s grammatically correct and it’s the shortest answer choice—remember that when the shortest answer choice is grammatically acceptable, it’s always correct.
(D) doesn’t work because the word “it” doesn’t refer to a noun phrase elsewhere in the sentence.
(E) is grammatically okay (though a little awkward sounding), but it loses to (C) because (C) is the shortest choice and it’s also grammatically correct.
Page 408, Question 11
This question often frustrates students, because it often sounds to them like two or three of the choices are all equally acceptable. At times like this, it’s very important to remember that there is ALWAYS a single correct answer, and that the reasoning behind the correct answer must be consistent with the reasoning behind all other real SAT Writing questions.
In this case, the issue boils down to one of parallelism: since the original sentence says “in northern England,” our sentence needs to end with “in the Highlands.” Only one answer choice also contains “in,” and that’s (E), so (E) is correct.
We can learn a lot from this question, actually. Most test-takers will see this question, get frustrated, and just pick whatever sounds best to them. But a well-trained test-taker never forgets that EVERYTHING on the SAT follows certain basic rules and patterns, and there is ALWAYS one answer choice that is predictably correct. If we don’t see what separates the right answer from the other answers, then we must have overlooked some important detail somewhere, and it’s our job to find that detail before we answer the question—in this case, of course, the detail is the word “in.”
Conclusion
As you can see, being aware of the unwritten rules and patterns that the College Board uses when constructing the Improving Sentences questions makes answering them a lot easier. Now let’s look at some of the questions from the Blue Book that students have typically asked about most.
Video Demonstrations
If you’d like to see videos of some sample solutions like the ones in this book, please visit www.SATprepVideos.com. A selection of free videos is available for readers of this book.
A Selection of Challenging Questions
Now that we’ve gone through a complete section of Improving Sentences questions, let’s take a look at a sample of some of the more challenging questions from the Blue Book, the College Board’s Official SAT Study Guide.
These questions are some of the ones that students have asked me about the most over the years. Of course, they still follow the same rules and patterns as other questions, but sometimes test-takers have a harder time identifying those things in certain situations. So these questions aren’t really doing anything different from any other questions; it’s just that they’re sometimes a bit more subtle about what they’re doing.
As with other question explanations in this book, you’ll need a copy of the Blue Book to follow along. Let’s get started.
Page 430, Question 9
I wanted to single out this question for consideration because it’s a good example of the way that questions can often be misinterpreted by test-takers as they prepare for the SAT.
Many people incorrectly assume that (E) is correct because it avoids the passive voice constructions that appear in (A), (B), and (C), but that isn’t actually the reason that (E) is correct. In other words, if we assume that passive voice is a problem on all SAT questions, then we’ll find ourselves getting questions wrong when the correct answer happens to use the passive voice.