SAT Reading & Writing — Practice Test 1

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Section 1: Information and Ideas

Read each short passage and choose the best answer to the question that follows it.

1. The following text is adapted from a 2021 article in Coastal Ecology Today.

For decades, salt marshes along the Atlantic seaboard were managed as if their primary purpose were storm buffering. New work by the Pacific Wetlands Research Group, however, suggests that the most undervalued service these marshes provide may be carbon storage. By measuring the depth of organic sediment in undisturbed marsh cores, the team estimates that a single hectare of healthy salt marsh can sequester roughly twice the carbon of a comparable hectare of upland forest, and can hold that carbon for thousands of years if the marsh is left intact.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

2. The following text is adapted from a fictional 2018 short story by L. Reyes.

Marisol had been told the apartment came with a piano. What she had not been told was that the piano had not been tuned since the building's previous tenant — a quiet man named Owen, who, by every account she could find, had played beautifully and at length and at three in the morning. She sat down at the keyboard on her first night, pressed a chord, and heard, instead of music, the long sigh of an instrument that had been waiting, with admirable patience, for a stranger to apologize.

Which choice best describes the function of the final sentence in the text?

3. The following text is adapted from a 2020 paper in the Journal of Avian Behavior.

Researchers studying urban crows in Sendai, Japan, have noted that some birds appear to use cars to crack walnuts. The crows drop nuts onto crosswalks, wait for vehicles to roll over them, and then descend during the pedestrian phase to retrieve the kernels. Until recently, this behavior was assumed to be a fixed local custom. New observations from a research team led by Dr. H. Tanaka suggest, however, that crows in nearby districts that have never been seen using this technique have begun adopting it within weeks of being introduced to the crosswalk environment.

Based on the text, which choice best describes Dr. Tanaka's observations?

4. The following text is adapted from a fictional history monograph, The Quiet Engineers (2015).

By the time the Brooklyn-built suspension bridges of the late nineteenth century were celebrated in the popular press, the engineers most responsible for their stability — the cable-spinners and the caisson workers — had already vanished from public memory. The bridges were attributed to the named architects whose signatures appeared on the plans, while the workers who tested every twist of wire and every handful of mortar were recorded, if at all, only on payroll ledgers. The result is a history of engineering that names its theorists and forgets its hands.

Which choice best states the central claim of the text?

A 2022 review by the Cordillera Soils Institute reports that small-scale terraced rice farms in the northern Philippines lose less topsoil during typhoon season than nearby industrial-scale rice farms on similar slopes. The reviewers attribute this difference primarily to the dense network of stone-walled paddies built by hand over many generations, which slow runoff and trap sediment behind each terrace.

Which choice best describes what the text says about the terraced farms?

In a 2019 longitudinal study, the Northbridge Sleep Center followed 1,200 high-school students across two academic years. Schools that shifted their first-period start time from 7:30 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. saw a measurable rise in average reported sleep duration and a smaller but consistent rise in self-reported attentiveness during the first two periods of the school day. The shift produced no measurable change in evening bedtime among the students surveyed.

Which choice best describes a finding of the study?

A team of materials scientists has hypothesized that a new ceramic coating, applied to turbine blades, will substantially reduce blade wear in high-temperature jet engines. The coating is designed to bond more tightly to the underlying metal at temperatures above 900°C, where conventional coatings tend to flake.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the team's hypothesis?

Sociologist M. Okafor has argued that neighborhood "third places" — cafes, libraries, barbershops — strengthen civic trust because they bring residents into repeated, low-stakes contact with people they would not otherwise meet. Okafor predicts that residents in neighborhoods with more such places will report higher trust in their neighbors than residents in neighborhoods with fewer.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support Okafor's prediction?

An education researcher claims that giving middle-school students a brief structured reflection at the end of each math class — two minutes of writing about what was hard and what felt clearer — will improve unit-test scores compared with an unstructured dismissal.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the researcher's claim?

10.

A community group has proposed adding bike lanes along Maple Avenue, claiming that protected lanes will reduce serious cycling injuries on the corridor. To evaluate the proposal, the city compiled the following data on serious cycling injuries on Maple Avenue and on the parallel Cedar Avenue, which already has protected bike lanes:

Corridor	Lanes	Injuries / yr (avg.)
Maple Ave.	Unprotected	22
Cedar Ave.	Protected	6

Which choice most effectively uses the data to support the community group's claim?

11.

A nutrition team studied breakfast habits and afternoon energy in 400 office workers. Each worker was assigned, for two weeks each, to one of three breakfasts: a high-protein breakfast, a high-carbohydrate breakfast, and skipping breakfast. Workers self-reported their afternoon energy on a 1-10 scale.

Condition	Avg. afternoon energy (1-10)
High-protein	7.4
High-carbohydrate	5.8
Skipped	5.5

The team claims that, among the three options, a high-protein breakfast is associated with the highest reported afternoon energy.

Which choice most effectively uses the data to support the team's claim?

12.

A regional library system tested two summer reading programs. In Program A, students received a small prize for every five books logged. In Program B, students were paired with an older "reading buddy" with whom they discussed each book. The library tracked total books read per student and the share of students still reading at the end of August.

Program	Avg. books / student	Still reading in late Aug.
A (prizes)	9.0	28%
B (buddy)	7.6	61%

A librarian claims that the reading-buddy program does a better job sustaining engagement through the end of summer.

Which choice most effectively uses the data to support the librarian's claim?

13.

The following is adapted from a fictional 2017 essay by J. Halvorsen on amateur astronomy. The amateur astronomer who first reported the comet did so without sophisticated equipment, working from a homemade telescope on a driveway and verifying her sighting against publicly available star charts. Professional observatories confirmed the comet's existence two days later, and the discovery was credited to her.

Which choice best states what the text says about the discovery?

14.

A team of urban planners hypothesizes that adding street trees to a commercial corridor will increase pedestrian foot traffic, because shaded sidewalks will be more pleasant to walk along during summer months.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the planners' hypothesis?

Section 2: Craft and Structure

Read each short passage and choose the best answer to the question that follows it.

15.

The committee's proposal was, in the end, tenable — not because it solved every objection raised at the meeting, but because no member could supply a counterproposal that would withstand even gentle scrutiny.

As used in the text, the word tenable most nearly means —

16.

For a young engineer, the older designer's casual command of the room was daunting; she answered every question without looking at her notes and dismissed objections with a single sentence that the others, after a moment, were unable to argue with.

As used in the text, the word daunting most nearly means —

17.

The novelist's later style is far more spare than her early work; gone are the long, parenthetical asides, replaced by sentences trimmed almost to the bone.

As used in the text, the word spare most nearly means —

18.

The historian's account is nuanced, weighing the costs of the policy alongside its benefits and refusing to settle the matter with a single verdict.

As used in the text, the word nuanced most nearly means —

19.

To call the algorithm "intelligent" is to conflate two very different abilities: the capacity to recognize patterns in past data and the capacity to reason about a situation it has not seen before.

As used in the text, the word conflate most nearly means —

20.

(1) For most of the twentieth century, ornithologists assumed that bird migration routes were essentially fixed by genetics. (2) Recent satellite-tracking studies, however, suggest that some species adjust their routes in response to weather patterns observed in mid-flight. (3) The most striking case so far comes from a five-year tracking program of European storks, whose individual paths varied by hundreds of kilometers depending on wind conditions encountered over the Mediterranean. (4) The implication is that "migration route" may be a more flexible behavior than the textbook account suggests.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

21.

(1) The painter Ines Caro is best known for her vast, near-monochrome canvases. (2) Most of her career, however, was spent on small studies in colored pencil, hundreds of which she made privately and never exhibited. (3) These studies, recovered from her studio after her death, reveal a far more playful artist than the public ever saw. (4) Critics are now reassessing her career on the basis of this hidden archive.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

22.

(1) The early-twentieth-century engineer Lou Wei spent most of his career on a single problem: how to reinforce the foundations of buildings on soft river soil without sinking them further during construction. (2) His notebooks, which combine careful soil-pressure calculations with watercolor sketches of the riverbank, show a mind moving fluidly between technical and observational thinking. (3) The technique he eventually published became standard practice in delta cities for the next forty years.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

23.

(1) The argument that students learn better with handwritten rather than typed notes has gained wide currency. (2) The original studies on which this claim rests, however, involved small samples of college students performing artificial recall tasks under laboratory conditions. (3) Recent attempts to replicate the effect in real classrooms have produced mixed results, with handwritten advantages appearing in some settings and disappearing in others.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

24.

Text 1

The economist H. Bertrand has argued that universal basic income (UBI) experiments have so far been too short to test the policy's real effects. Most pilot programs run two to three years; meaningful changes in education, career risk-taking, and family formation, Bertrand argues, would require at least a decade of stable payments to appear.

Text 2

In a recent review, the economist M. Seo agrees that long-run effects matter, but argues that several short pilots have already produced clear, replicated short-run findings — small but real reductions in food insecurity and improvements in self-reported well-being. Seo writes that "dismissing the existing evidence as too short-run is its own kind of overreach."

Based on the texts, how would Seo (Text 2) most likely respond to Bertrand's claim in Text 1?

25.

Text 1

An influential review of language-learning apps argues that gamified streaks — daily-practice rewards — are the single most important driver of long-term learning, because they keep users practicing day after day for months on end.

Text 2

A recent randomized trial of 4,200 adult learners found that streak-based features did increase consecutive practice days, but they did not increase scores on standardized end-of-course proficiency tests. Learners with the highest test gains were instead those who used the apps' explicit error-review features, regardless of streak length.

How would the authors of Text 2 most likely respond to the claim in Text 1?

26.

Text 1

A widely cited essay claims that "open-plan" offices universally reduce employee focus, citing a meta-analysis of self-reported distraction across thirty companies.

Text 2

A 2022 study by the workplace researcher A. Mendez found that the focus penalty associated with open-plan offices is heavily mediated by acoustic design: in open offices with engineered sound-absorption, distraction scores were statistically indistinguishable from those in private-office controls. Mendez concludes that the office layout itself is not the decisive variable.

Based on Text 2, how would Mendez most likely respond to the claim in Text 1?

27.

The new edition of the textbook is more accessible than the previous one: dense paragraphs have been broken into shorter sections, technical vocabulary is defined in margins, and each chapter ends with a guided summary.

As used in the text, the word accessible most nearly means —

28.

(1) Most accounts of the Mississippi flood of 1927 focus on the federal response. (2) Far less attention has been paid to the local mutual-aid networks — church groups, neighborhood committees, and small civic clubs — that fed and housed displaced residents while federal aid was still being negotiated. (3) Recent oral-history projects have begun to recover this layer of the story, drawing on interviews with descendants and on previously unexamined parish records.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

29.

(1) The mathematician R. Vasquez published only a handful of papers in her lifetime. (2) Each was, however, dense enough that her colleagues spent decades unpacking the implications. (3) What looked at first like a slim body of work turned out, on closer reading, to contain at least three results that would later become the foundations of distinct subfields. (4) Today she is regularly cited in three areas of research that, during her career, did not yet exist as named specialties.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

Section 3: Expression of Ideas

Read each set of notes or short passage and choose the best answer to the question that follows.

30. While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

The Pacific giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) is one of the fastest-growing organisms on Earth.
Under ideal conditions it can grow up to two feet per day.
Individual fronds can reach over 150 feet in length.
It anchors entire underwater ecosystems off the coast of California.

The student wants to emphasize the kelp's remarkable growth rate. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

31. While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

The Mongolian throat-singing tradition is called khoomei.
Singers produce two distinct pitches at once.
The technique requires precise control of the throat and mouth cavity.
It is traditionally associated with herders and is performed at family gatherings as well as at large festivals.

The student wants to specify the defining technical feature of khoomei. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

32. While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

The architect Lina Bo Bardi designed the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), completed in 1968.
The building is suspended on two massive concrete spans.
The ground beneath the building is left open as a public plaza.
The plaza is regularly used for protests, markets, and concerts.

The student wants to emphasize how the museum's design supports civic life. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

33. While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

The Voyager 1 spacecraft launched in 1977.
It crossed into interstellar space in 2012.
It still transmits faint data back to Earth.
The radio signal now takes more than 22 hours to reach Earth one way.

The student wants to emphasize the extreme distance Voyager 1 has reached. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

34. While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

The naturalist Margaret Morse Nice studied song sparrows on a single small lot in Ohio.
She tracked the same individual birds across multiple years.
Her observations overturned the assumption that backyard species were too well known to require careful new study.
Her techniques became a model for later behavioral ecology.

The student wants to highlight the broader significance of Nice's backyard study. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

35. While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

Bicycle helmets were rare in the United States in the 1970s.
By the early 2000s, they were standard equipment for most child riders.
Studies during this period documented sharp drops in serious head injuries among helmeted child cyclists.
Public-health campaigns and state laws contributed to the rise in helmet use.

The student wants to summarize what changed about helmet use in the United States between the 1970s and the early 2000s. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

36.

The early Romantic poets often emphasized the imagination as a creative force. ______ many later critics have argued that the same emphasis carried with it a tendency to neglect the social conditions in which the poems were actually written.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

37.

Sea otters consume large quantities of sea urchins. ______ kelp forests, which would otherwise be overgrazed by urchins, often flourish in waters where sea-otter populations are healthy.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

38.

Many introductory programming courses focus heavily on syntax memorization. ______ research suggests that students who spend more time tracing the behavior of small programs by hand develop stronger problem-solving skills than students who focus mainly on memorizing keywords.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

39.

The new bridge was designed to expand and contract several inches with seasonal temperature changes. ______ the steel rails embedded in its deck were intentionally cut into short segments rather than installed as one continuous piece.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

40.

Most readers assume that early printed books closely imitated the look of handwritten manuscripts. ______ the earliest printed Bibles deliberately mimicked the script, page layout, and even the deliberate "errors" of contemporary scribes, in order to appear familiar to their first buyers.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Section 4: Standard English Conventions

Choose the option that conforms to the conventions of Standard English.

41.

The garden behind the library has three notable features ______ a stone bench, a young magnolia, and a small fountain that runs only on weekends.