In this blog, I’m going to cover some of the toughest Blue Book questions out there. How do I know they’re the toughest? Well, we have an online course at SuperTutorTV where students have the opportunity to import their Blue Book test results and get a whole data report on everything they missed. So, because we have all that Blue Book data, I compiled it and took a look at it to find the questions that students are missing most. I will admit this data might be a little bit dirty, so to speak, because it’s just my students as well as people using our online course who might be students who’ve watched more of our YouTube videos. But in any case, I’m pretty sure these are some of the hardest questions on the SAT. Spoiler alert: these are from Blue Book official exams. So if you don’t want to watch this video now, you could bookmark it, and after you’ve taken the Blue Book Tests 4, 5, and 6, you can come back here and see if you solve them how I solve them. About over half of the students that took these exams missed these questions, so you can come back here and review.
We’re going to start with Blue Book Test 4. And I’m going to cover Module 1, question number 20, which a lot of students missed.
A model created by biologist Luis Valente predicts that the rate of speciation—the rate at which new species form—on an isolated island located approximately 5,000 kilometers from the nearest mainland _____ triple the rate of speciation on an island only 500 kilometers from the mainland.
Which choice completes the text so it conforms to the conventions of standard English?
A) being
B) to be
C) to have been
D) will be
First, I’m going to get rid of as much unnecessary stuff as I can so I get it down to what I call the bare-bones sentence. What I’m trying to do is really isolate what I am looking at so I can match up my subjects and my verbs. If I look down this list right now, I can see that there are a lot of different verb forms here. So, it could be verb tense, but it also could be verb form here as a being or to be. Now many of my students choose “to be,” because they omit the “that.” If I said, “A model predicts the rate of speciation to be,” that would be correct. But when I read “A model predicts that the rate of speciation,” I need a main verb, because this is a dependent marker that starts a new clause, essentially. So, now I need another subject and another verb. And if I say “to be,” that’s an infinitive phrase. I can’t say “the rate of speciation to be triple the rate of speciation on an island only 500 kilometers from the mainland” and get a complete clause. So, I’m going to come up with a tip here for you guys, which is when you see the word “that” or “which,” circle them, because they have the requirement that you have a complete clause after them. So, when you see those words, circle and investigate them. And obviously, the more you cross off in between that’s intervening, the easier it is going to be for your ear to hear how weird it sounds. Choice C is also weird when you say it out loud. Choice D, “will be,” is in main verb form, and so that works. We also know the word predicts is about the future, so it makes sense that we’re in future tense. So, that’s why the answer here is “will be.” But like I said, I think the biggest thing that happens is there’s so much intervening text that when you read it fast, your brain sometimes omits that “that,” and then you’re looking at “to be” because it sounds pretty good, and that will get you in trouble. Beware of the “that.”
Now we’re going to jump to another question in Blue Book Test 4, and this one is kind of fun because my students tend to get this question wrong less often than students in general. So I’m excited about this question because it means it’s something I teach very often, and so my students tend to get it right. This is a good kind of what I call a low-hanging fruit question, meaning that it’s easy to learn to get right if you know what’s up. This is question 23 in Blue Book Test 4.
The Arctic-Alpine Botanic Garden in Norway and the Jardim Botânico of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil are two of many botanical gardens around the world dedicated to growing diverse plant _____ fostering scientific research; and educating the public about plant conservation.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A) species, both native and nonnative,
B) species, both native and nonnative;
C) species; both native and nonnative,
D) species both native and nonnative,
A quick tip, guys: if you see a semicolon in front of “and,” most of the time, you’re looking at what we call a super comma. That’s when we use a colon like a comma because one of the interstitial elements that you’re separating in your list has a comma in it already. But a secret trick to find these really quickly is if you have a semicolon in front of an “and.” The other way you can find it is that you might have two things in the list, and the semicolon might be between those. And this is one of the options, but they’re already divided by a semicolon and the semicolon is not dividing two independent clauses. There’s only two ways to use a semicolon: the same as a period or as the super comma. In this question, there is a comma phrase that explains what kind of species. It’s a nonessential phrase that’s let off with a comma, and that’s what we want. This is parallelism because the three things in a list take the same form, and so we want to end this right here with a semicolon. When you see that semicolon—and be careful—we’re in a super comma situation, and so the answer is B. C doesn’t work because everything after it is not a complete thought independent clause. When we have that semicolon planted in front of the “and,” we have to use a semicolon for the other item in that list because we have three items in that list all ending with that ING word.
The next question is a transitions question: number 24, Blue Book Test number 5. What I will say about transitions questions is that my favorite way to do this is actually to go over and analyze the relationship before the blank and after the blank first so that I really understand that relationship and then go over to the word. So I spent a little bit of extra time, and hopefully that will help me anchor myself.
A turtle shell appears external to the animal, protecting its body like armor. ______ the shell is often incorrectly assumed to be an exoskeleton, a rigid outer casing like that of a crustacean or an insect, when in fact it is an endoskeleton, a part of the turtle’s internal bone structure, more akin to a spine or a pair of ribs.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
A) That being said,
B) However,
C) For instance,
D) Hence,
The idea that it’s external and like armor and the idea that it’s an exoskeleton are actually similar. So, a perfect word to put here is “understandably.” This transitions us to the idea that it’s part of its internal bone structure even though it looks like an external armor. “That being said” could be possible; let’s say it is a maybe. Then I have “however,” and my perfect word was “understandably,” which doesn’t align. Don’t just plug it in and think blindly; analyze what’s in the paragraph, and then you’re going to be able to nix things that really aren’t working. “For instance” is when we have a claim that’s broad and then we go down to something that’s more narrow. But I don’t think this is a “for instance” because I don’t know that the first part is a broad claim and then the second is an example of that claim. It’s more of a continuation. Finally, hence means thus, and I know some of you don’t know what hence means, and that’s why people get this wrong. That’s why this one is so hard. Hence essentially means thus and that’s pretty close to my accordingly, understandably, thus, cause and effect, etc. So, hence is going to be correct.
The number one missed question in Blue Book Test 6 across my students and those on our online course is question 11, Blue Book Test 6, module 2, and this is a Quant Command of Evidence question. This question includes a graph, so be sure to go to the video above to see the question.
So with Quant Command of Evidence, I usually start with the main question. After reading that, I know I’m going to need to figure out what their conclusion is using what’s given. The paragraph states, “Although they found that climate change would negatively affect growth, they concluded that anthropogenic nitrogen deposition could more than offset that effect, provided that change is moderate rather than extreme.” So, I know that in the graph, we want moderate, not extreme. I always have this policy of “read when you need” because sometimes these are easy enough that I don’t need to read everything, but for this one, I think I’m going to need to read everything. First, I’m going to try to orient myself to this graph a little bit. The y-axis says radial growth, so we’re looking at tree growth. And we have climate scenarios with nitrogen and without nitrogen. Then, I can go back to reading the paragraph and try to understand the context a bit more. Once I read through, I can say that they’re saying if we fertilize the soil, the trees here grow more than they would if we didn’t have the nitrogen. In fact, we’re even better off in moderate change than we are currently. If we just fertilize a little bit, we’re going to get more tree growth than we would have right now if we didn’t do the fertilizer. We’re going to be able to make up for this downturn in growth from climate change. But if climate change gets really bad and our trees only grow a little and we try to feed them nitrogen, we’re still pretty low on tree growth. Let’s get to choice D, because what I’m looking for is comparing growth with nitrogen under moderate change exceeding growth without nitrogen under the current climate. And that’s mentioned in D. So, you see how if I go in knowing what I’m looking for, I’m in much better shape, because when I start to read all these, if I don’t know what I’m looking for, I’m all over the place because it’s confusing and dizzying. If I anticipate the answer a little bit, I can kind of figure this out, and I know which three bars are my key bars.
I hope you guys enjoyed this blog, and I hope this was helpful!
