Are you taking the digital SAT and wondering how you can get the best reading score ever? In this blog, I’m going to talk through three really difficult reading questions.
Question 1
Question number one: I’m going to start off with a words in context question. Words in context questions make up around 19% of this exam and are the most frequently tested item on the digital SAT. So, you’ve got to make sure that you know how to approach the hardest questions in the section. Now, sometimes these questions are hard because of vocabulary, so I definitely recommend that you up your vocabulary, but sometimes they’re hard because of secondary meanings, complexities, and things like that. And that’s what this question is. It’s kind of like a secondary meaning kind of question where the clues are not super distinct. Sometimes, on these words in context questions, you can find the keyword, and you just circle the three keywords.
Economist Marco Castillo and colleagues showed that nuisance costs—the time and effort people must spend to make donations—reduce charitable giving. Charities can mitigate this effect by compensating donors for nuisance costs, but those costs, though variable, are largely _______ donation size, so charities that compensate donors will likely favor attracting a few large donors over many small donors.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
a. supplemental to
b. predictive of
c. independent of
d. subsumed in
So, there are a few ways that I can approach this. One thing is that I want to try to understand the question as much as possible whenever I have these words in context. The first thing that I need to do is comprehend. I need to understand what’s going on and what I would anticipate in the blank. I really am going to sort of work through it with logic. To me, a nuisance cost would be that if I have to donate to somebody, I have to put a check in an envelope and put a stamp on it, so my nuisance cost is that I’ve got to pay for an envelope and a stamp, then drive myself to the post office or stick it in my mailbox. Maybe another nuisance cost would be that if I’m giving stuff to Goodwill, I have to stick all this stuff in my car and drive it over. Or if it’s a couch or something, it might be too big, and I’d want to get a truck to drive it over. So if Goodwill gives me a truck that drives to my house and picks up my couch, that’s getting rid of my nuisance cost. So what this passage is saying is that we can compensate donors for nuisance costs, but those are largely “blank” donation sizes, meaning that it’s not really worth it for charities to compensate donors who don’t donate a lot for their nuisance costs. So, if charities say they’ll only do it if you’re a really great donor, it probably means that they don’t have anything to do with donation size.
In our answer choices, we have supplemental to, predictive of, independent of, or subsumed in. “Supplemental to” means it adds on to the donation size, but that doesn’t really make sense that nuisance costs add on to the donation size because nuisance costs don’t create more donations. Next, “predictive of” donation size also doesn’t make much sense because why would charities only want to favor a few large donors over lots of small donors? Why would that make them not want to accept donations from more people? It doesn’t necessarily track with this or give me an explanation of that. Then, we have “independent of” donation size. What does it mean if you’re independent of donation size? And this is where the secondary meanings can kind of trip some of you guys up. So you might think “independent” is something like going out on your own and think that that makes no sense. And so some of you are going to get rid of this because you don’t understand the secondary meaning, but that’s what makes it hard. And then we have “subsumed in,” which means buried in donation size. It doesn’t make sense that you have costs that are buried in the donation size, so we’re going to get rid of that.
The meaning that “independent of” has here is that it isn’t influenced by it. So the idea of “independent of” is the idea that you have to pay for a stamp and an envelope if I’m mailing you a check, whether I give you five bucks or whether I give you a million bucks. If two things are independent of each other, they don’t influence each other. There’s no cause-and-effect relationship, right? “Independent of” means the opposite of a cause-effect relationship. That’s the definition of independent that we want here, and that’s the closest that we can find to unrelated.
So, a few tips for you guys here on this hard question: How could you have gotten this right if you weren’t 100% sure of this secondary meaning of independent of? One thing you can do after you comprehend is find the perfect word, and then try to find what I call the closest to perfect. If you do this perfect answer first and you look for what’s closest to the answer you came up with, you might be able to get this right just because it vibes in that direction. So sometimes that can save you, even if you don’t know the secondary meaning. But again, we always want to be watching out for what a second meaning might be and making sure that that makes sense.
Question 2
This next question is a form structure and sense question, and I love form structure and sense because it’s one of the easiest areas to improve on. If you have missed major points in that area, head on down to our online course and watch all the videos in there, because it’s one of these things that once you learn the rules, you’re good. And what I love about this question is that it’s a modifier’s question. There’s maybe one to three modifier’s questions per test. Once you learn this rule, you never have to miss a modifier’s question again. It’s that simple. It’s that easy.
Despite being cheap, versatile, and easy to produce, _____ they are made from nonrenewable petroleum, and most do not biodegrade in landfills.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
a. there are two problems associated with commercial plastics:
b. two problems are associated with commercial plastics:
c. commercial plastics’ two associated problems are that
d. commercial plastics have two associated problems:
So, whenever we have an ING descriptor in an opening phrase in a sentence, whoever or whatever is being described by that ING word—which is called a participle, if you want to get into it—has to be right there after the comma. So, the first choice is going to be wrong because, after the comma, I have to have the word plastics. I cannot have “there are two problems” or “two problems are associated with.” I also cannot have a possessive “commercial plastics’.” It has to be commercial plastics. So if you know this modifier’s rule, you’ll know that all of these are wrong.
Participles are kind of tricky because sometimes they’re being used as part of a main verb. Sometimes they’re even being used as what we call a gerund, which means they’re a noun. But in this question, the “being” ING word is a participle. It doesn’t have a subject-verb, and it’s not a noun. So, after eliminating the wrong choices, you’ll find that the last answer choice is the only one that makes sense in this sentence.
Question 3
Okay, so this next one is text structure and purpose, and it’s a function question. So function questions are asking you what the purpose of a line or a sentence is. A few things with function questions. I’m going to read everything first. I’m going to try to figure out what its purpose is on my own, and then I’m going to look at the answer choices, but I also am going to be aware that oftentimes on these function questions, I’m going to have to deal with abstract ideas that I need to translate into concretes. So, if I tell you guys one quick rule on this, it’s to translate your abstracts into concretes.
The following text is from Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel, The House of Mirth. Lily Bart and a companion are walking through a park.
Lily had no real intimacy with nature, but she had a passion for the appropriate and could be keenly sensitive to a scene which was the fitting background of her own sensations. The landscape outspread below her seemed an enlargement of her present mood, and she found something of herself in its calmness, its breadth, and its long free reaches. On the nearer slopes the sugar-maples wavered like pires of light; lower down was a massing of gray orchards, and here and there the lingering green of an oak grove.
Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?
a. It creates a detailed image of the physical setting of the scene.
b. It establishes that a character is experiencing an internal conflict.
c. It makes an assertion that the next sentence expands on.
d. It illustrates an idea that is introduced in the previous sentence.
So, Lily wasn’t a nature person, but if something was really fitting, if she really vibed with the nature thing, she would be into it. And then the underlined sentence here is an example of that. That’s the best way to think.
Which choice best describes the function of the underlying sentence? I’m going to turn my abstracts into concretes. For the first answer choice—the detailed image—that would be like the sugar maples and gray orchards, which is the third sentence, not the underlined sentence. This is the wrong sentence, guys. The second choice—it establishes that a character is experiencing an internal conflict—is just kind of weird. The third choice is what makes this question hard. The next sentence offers specific details, but I don’t know if that’s expanding on an assertion. It gives an example, so in concrete, this is the “massing of gray orchards below.” I don’t know if it expands on it; it just details the stuff to come. And then finally, we have “It illustrates an idea that is introduced in the previous sentence.” And that to me seems best because in the previous sentence, it says that she could be keenly sensitive to a scene, and this is a specific example of how she could be keenly sensitive to a scene. This sentence really is illustrating—meaning giving a specific example of—this idea. And again, C is probably the second best, because it does kind of make an assertion, but the assertion seems to be higher up in the paragraph.
But you see again, what I’m doing is I’m playing this game of abstract to concrete, abstract to concrete, and I’m trying to figure out in my mind which of these is closest to the best answer choice. The other thing that I’d like to say is that, again, when I come up with my perfect answer first and see a relationship between the information that’s clear and more lucid, that’s probably more likely to be the relationship, and I can frame this out in my own way. And again, if I frame it out in my own way, I can see that the best answer here is going to be D. So again, tackling the difference between abstracts and concretes, understanding how to classify frameworks, and framing out what functions things are functioning as are what’s going to help you guys with these kinds of questions.
I hope you guys found this helpful!
