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The SAT Prep Black Book(154)

By:Mike Barrett


By the way, even if we weren’t sure that “and” was the right way to start off this phrase, it might have helped us to realize that 2 answer choices start with “and,” while no other word appears at the beginning of the answer choices more than once. This doesn’t always indicate that the correct answer should start with “and,” but it strongly suggests that the correct answer probably starts with “and.”





Page 803, Question 13


This is yet another example of a Writing question that incorrectly compares two things of different types. If we read carefully, we see that the things being compared in the original sentence are “the number of alligators” and “the Gila monster.” In other words, the original sentence is comparing a number to an animal. But on the SAT, we have to compare things of similar kinds. So in this case, we either need to compare an animal to an animal, or a number to a number.

The only answer choice that fixes this problem is (E), which talks about “a comparison of the numbers of [both animals].” The fact that the word “numbers” is plural means that we’re talking about the number of alligators and the number of Gila monsters.

As is often the case, being aware of the College Board’s rules helps us cut right to the heart of the matter and identify the only answer choice that will be grammatically acceptable on the SAT.





Page 803, Question 14


This is probably the single Improving Sentences question that I get asked about the most.

Part of the difficulty for most students stems from the fact that the answer choices all involve such long phrases, and that so many of the phrases in the different choices are so similar to one another.

In these situations, it’s very important not to get overwhelmed by details. We should just pick a part of the answer choices to focus on and start there, and see what happens.

My inclination would be to start with the shortest answer choice—if that one is grammatically okay, then we know it’s the right answer. Unfortunately, in this case the shortest answer choice, (E), would result in an incomplete sentence, because it uses the word “being” instead of “are” or “were.” So it’s wrong, and we’re going to have to work a bit more to answer the question. Oh well.

We could also start with the original version of the underlined phrase, which we’ll find in choice (A). (A) really doesn’t seem too bad from a grammatical standpoint, but since it’s not the shortest answer choice we’ll need more than just acceptable grammar. One thing that puts me off about (A) is the phrase “that of the” at the end—that’s a lot of short words in a row, and they don’t seem to be necessary. At any rate, let’s hold on to (A) and keep moving.

We might as well look at (B) next. (B) seems grammatically weird because of the phrase “there were” after the comma.

(C) might seem tempting to a lot of students, but it makes one of the most common (and subtle) errors that the College Board likes to test us on: it switches from plural to singular when it talks about “instruments” at the beginning of the sentence but then switches to the singular verb “was.”

(D) is actually going to be the clear winner here when we take everything into consideration. It’s grammatically acceptable and it also avoids the short words “that” and “of” that appeared in choice (A). In fact, if we look carefully, (D) has all the same major phrases from (A) but in a slightly different order, and it omits those short words, so it’s the best choice.

Since we can clearly articulate a problem with each of the other choices, and since (D) follows the patterns that correct answers tend to follow, we know it’s the right choice. As you can see, this type of analysis isn’t that hard to do if you just take it step by step, but it does definitely require you to read carefully and pay attention to the text—just like the rest of the SAT does!





Page 837, Question 5


Many students incorrectly choose (E) for this question, because it’s the shortest choice and they think it’s grammatically okay. But we can’t say “emphasize how” in this context; we need to go with “emphasize that.” (As is often the case, there are more choices that begin with the word “that” than the word “how,” indicating that “that” is probably the correct option.)

The other issue in this question is the incorrect use of “their,” which is plural, to refer to the singular noun “woman” in the original sentence. (B) fixes this issue without introducing any “-ing” words like (C) does, so (B) is the right answer.