This is the first question we’ve looked at together, but right away it jumps into some of the harder ideas we’ll encounter on the SAT, like the parallelism issue. In a practical sense, many students would have an easier time recognizing that the four wrong answers are wrong than they would in singling out the correct answer right away. That’s fine. Just keep on working at it, and remember that most questions won’t be this challenging.
Page 391, Question 7
For this question, we have to remember that the College Board considers something “metaphorical” when it can only be taken non-literally. So (B) is correct because of phrases like “river of clouds,” which aren’t literally possible. Now let’s look at the wrong answers:
(A) is going to be tempting to a lot of students who mistakenly view the SAT Reading section as a test of literary interpretation.
(B) is correct.
(C) doesn’t work because there is no actual analogy here.
(D) is no good. Flashback doesn’t work because, while the text is in the past tense, its point of reference is also in the past tense. In other words, at the time that the author was actually standing on the Peak, he wasn’t thinking about his past. (Note that this wrong answer requires a mistake similar to the one that would lead us to choose (C) in the previous question.)
(E) is a problem because irony doesn’t work. The text doesn’t describe a contradiction that someone is unaware of.
Page 391, Question 8
Here, the correct answer is (C) because the passage tells us how she’s celebrated (“biographies, plays, novels, films”) and also why (“her fascinating life and lineage . . . have turned her into an icon”).
(A) doesn’t work because we aren’t told why she liked computers.
(B) doesn’t work because there’s no discussion of her character.
(C) is correct.
(D) doesn’t work because the text doesn’t mention the modern-day computer. It does mention “computer science” in general, and it does mention early computing devices from the 19th century, but it never specifically mentions a “modern-day” device.
(E) doesn’t work because the text doesn’t say anything about wanting other women to pursue similar careers. Many students who view this test as a normal school test might be tempted by this answer choice, because they would argue that it will probably encourage some women to enter the field of computing. But the text doesn’t actually say anything to encourage that, so (E) is wrong. Remember that, on the SAT, everything must be spelled out.
Page 391, Question 9
For this, we need a statement that contradicts the passage, because we’re asked to find a statement with which the author would disagree. (A) is right because the passage says the reason she is an “icon” has something to do with her “lineage,” which is her “family history” by definition.
(B) is wrong because the author says King’s design was the “first,” which means it was original. A lot of students would probably choose this by accident because they might accidentally misread the word “disagree” in the question stem.
(C) is wrong because the author specifically says she has become an icon, which means that interest in her exists in popular culture. Again, remember that we’re looking for an answer choice that specifically contradicts the text, because of the word “disagree” in the question stem.
(D) doesn’t work because the text never says that she was not well known long after her work was complete.
(E) doesn’t work because the text specifically says her life is “fascinating,” and we need to find the answer choice that contradicts the passage because of the word “disagree” in the question.
Students miss this question all the time in practice—not because they don’t understand the passage or the answer choices, but because they misread the question in the first place. Remember that answering questions correctly on the SAT will always require careful reading and attention to detail.
Page 392, Question 10
A lot of students miss this question because they don’t read it carefully enough. The correct answer is (D), because the passage is about the relationship between Africans and African-Americans, and it says that the world “takes note” of it, which means it is “significant.”
(A) doesn’t work because the passage doesn’t mention African Americans having an impact on African societies.
(B) doesn’t work because the passage doesn’t mention embracing American culture. It does say that people reached out to each other for “reassurance, reaffirmation, fraternity, and strength,” but reaching out for those things is not the same idea as embracing someone else’s culture.