SAT Reading and Writing Medium practice

The text reads: "After the championship game ended, the ____ jerseys were collected and sent to the cleaners." Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

While researching pollinator-dependent plants in Mexico, a student took the following notes:

• Botanist Idris Adekoya studied agave plants in northern Mexico for 12 years.
• Adekoya's central hypothesis was that agave seed production depends on a specific moth species that visits the flowers at night.
• During the study period, local populations of the moth declined by roughly 60 percent.
• Across Adekoya's study sites, agave seed yields dropped by approximately 40 percent over the same period.

The student wants to summarize the evidence that links the moth decline to the decline in agave seed yields. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to achieve this goal?

Monarch butterflies migrate as much as 3,000 miles from Canada to central Mexico each fall, returning to the same small cluster of oyamel fir groves where their great-grandparents wintered. They navigate using the position of the sun and an internal time compensation that adjusts for the sun's apparent movement across the sky throughout the day. The journey takes between four and five months, and no single butterfly makes the round trip.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text overall?

When Galileo turned his improved telescope toward Jupiter in 1610, he saw four small bright points whose positions changed from night to night and that occasionally disappeared entirely from view. After recording their positions over several weeks, he concluded that the points were moons orbiting Jupiter, not background stars.

Which choice describes a conclusion about Galileo's reasoning that is most strongly supported by the text?

Along stretches of the Pacific coast, kelp forests had thinned dramatically by the late twentieth century as sea-urchin populations, freed from predation, grazed unchecked on the young kelp. The recovery of sea otters — which prey on urchins — has been followed by a rebound in kelp cover within a decade in many bays, though kelp recovery has been uneven and incomplete in others.

Which inference about the relationship between sea otters, urchins, and kelp is most strongly supported by the text?

While researching the history of patchwork quilting in the United States, a student took the following notes:

• The pieced-quilt tradition in the United States emerged in the late 1700s.
• Early quilters used scraps of leftover fabric from clothing and household linens.
• 19th-century pattern books standardized many quilt block designs.
• The Log Cabin pattern was first published in a national pattern book in 1869.
• Contemporary quilters often purchase new fabric specifically designed and printed for piecing.

The student wants to generalize about how the quilt tradition has changed over time. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to achieve this goal?

The text reads: "The collection of antique cameras displayed in the second-floor gallery ____ from the 1950s and 1960s." Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

Architectural historian Lina Marquez argues that the Gothic style, often described as a uniform European phenomenon, in fact developed independent regional variations driven by local stone, local craft traditions, and the building practices of particular regional schools of masons. Her case rests heavily on a comparative analysis of vaulting techniques in cathedrals built between 1180 and 1260.

Which finding, if confirmed by additional research, would most directly support Marquez's argument?

The text reads: "Walking through the old-growth forest at dawn, ____ admired the way mist clung to the moss-covered branches." Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

Some urban-planning researchers have proposed that increased street-tree canopy lowers neighborhood temperatures during summer heat waves. To convincingly establish the claim, they would need to compare temperatures across neighborhoods that resemble one another in their populations, infrastructure, and built density but differ chiefly in canopy cover.

Which finding would best support the claim that increased street-tree canopy lowers summer temperatures?

While researching evidence for the theory of seafloor spreading, a student took the following notes:

• In the early 1970s, oceanographer Walter Pitman recorded a sequence of magnetic stripes preserved in the rock of the Atlantic seafloor.
• The stripes record the direction of Earth's magnetic field at the moment each section of seafloor rock cooled and hardened.
• Pitman found that the stripe pattern on the western side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge was a near-perfect mirror image of the pattern on the eastern side.
• The mirror-symmetric pattern provided independent confirmation of the theory that new seafloor is created at mid-ocean ridges and spreads outward.

The student wants to introduce Pitman's finding to an audience already familiar with the theory of seafloor spreading. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to achieve this goal?

Microbiologist Henry Park studied the growth rate of one strain of bacteria at four temperatures. The table below reports the number of viable cells per milliliter after 24 hours at each temperature.

A student claims: This bacterial strain grows best at temperatures close to human body temperature and is sharply limited by either cool or hot extremes.

Which choice best uses data from the table to support the student's claim?

The text reads: "By the time the rescue team reached the ridge, the hikers ____ shelter under an overhanging rock and started a small fire to keep warm." Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A team surveying songbirds in two adjacent restored prairies recorded the number of individuals of each species observed across a two-week period in May. The table summarizes their counts.

Prairie A has been managed for denser ground litter and taller native bunchgrasses than Prairie B. A researcher hypothesizes: Restored prairies managed for denser litter and taller grass support disproportionately more bobolinks and grasshopper sparrows than otherwise similar prairies with shorter, sparser vegetation.

Which choice from the table most directly supports the researcher's hypothesis?

Paleontologists dating ancient deposits typically combine two complementary methods. Radiometric techniques yield absolute ages by measuring the decay of radioactive isotopes; biostratigraphic dating assigns relative ages by comparing the species of fossils present in a layer to species whose lifespans are already known from other dated deposits. In layers where one method produces a clear date but the other produces no usable signal, researchers prefer to report a range of plausible ages rather than a single number.

Which inference about dating practice is best supported by the text?