The SAT Prep Black Book(71)

(D) will tempt a lot of people with the word “exotic,” because it kind of seems to go along with the idea of not understanding something. But the word “exotic” doesn’t specifically mean that something can’t be understood! This is one more example of how important it is to pay careful attention to the exact meanings of words.

(E) doesn’t work, either. We’re probably familiar with the idea of a cheese grater, or of a grate in the ground, and neither of those concepts seems relevant to the idea of failing to comprehend something.

At this point, then, (A) seems possible (since we don’t know what the word in the second blank means), and (C) might seem good, at least in terms of its structure. Let’s check out the other words in those two choices.

The first word in (A) presents a problem, because “accessible” indicates that something can be accessed easily, but the sentence is talking about people failing to understand something. “Accessible” indicates that something is easy to figure out, so it doesn’t work for the first blank.

That leaves us, again, with (C). At this point we have clear ideas why (A), (B), (D), and (E) don’t work, and we have (C) with two strange words, the second of which seems to be structured in a way that reflects the idea of failing to do something. At this point, we should go ahead and mark (C) with confidence, and get the question right.

Note, once more, that this entire type of analysis can only be successful because we’re very careful to make sure we treat the word “exotic” correctly in choice (D). Most untrained test-takers will still consider it a possibility, but it’s really not, because being “exotic” and being impossible to comprehend aren’t the same idea.





Page 791, Question 6


Unlike the question we just talked about, which we could probably figure out through careful reading and reasoning, this question is very likely to be one that most test-takers end up skipping.

We can tell that the correct answer choice should mean “separat[e] the good from the bad,” but the difficulty is that at least a couple of these words will probably be unknown to us, and the ones we’re likely to know, such as (B) and (E), aren’t correct.

There’s very little we can do in a situation like this. If we know the word “winnow,” then we can tell that (D) must be right. But most people don’t know the word “winnow.” And even if you memorize the words in these answer choices now, the chance is almost zero that they’ll come up on the SAT in a way that matters when you take the test for real.

So most test-takers should skip this question.

I wanted to mention this question to use it as a counterpoint to the one we just talked about, in which we were probably able to figure out the right answer by reading carefully and thinking carefully. It’s because of questions like this one, in which we’re probably helpless and have to skip to the next thing, that it’s so important to make sure we pick up questions that we can actually figure out.





Page 824, Question 5


For this sentence, we want a word that would describe someone who has come to expect something that they would never even have dreamed of once.

Most students miss this because they choose (E), but the sentence doesn’t actually say anything about anyone feeling bitter, so (E) is wrong.

The other words are often challenging for students, but we may be able to work through them. We may recognize that (A) means something like “surprised,” which doesn’t work here because it doesn’t capture the idea of something becoming common that was once uncommon—if something is common, it can’t surprise you. (B) is a word we might know from everyday conversation, or from television or movies; if we do know it, we can tell it isn’t correct, because it means something along the lines of “a little angry” or “upset.” (C) is a word most of us would have to skip. (D) is related to words like “aware” and “beware,” but neither of those has to do with things becoming common, either.

So we may be able to rule things out and realize that (C) is the only possibility, and the correct answer. Of course, as is often the case, being able to arrive at this correct answer with confidence is only possible if we pay strict attention to the meanings of words and the rules of the test. Many people will get sucked in by the word “embittered” and never stop to realize that the sentence doesn’t talk about anyone being bitter.





Page 842, Question 5


This sentence is one that bears careful reading. A lot of people choose (A) incorrectly, because they realize that the ideas of “gradual[ness]” and “abruptness” are important to the question, but don’t realize that the clues aren’t “signaling” the “abruptness” itself. The clues are signaling that sleep is coming, but they’re not signaling that the coming will be abrupt. Furthermore, (A) gets the relationship between the halves of the sentence backwards.