Question ID 618d94c4

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Boundaries Hard

Conventions

ID: 618d94c4
In 2018, a team of researchers led by Dr. Caitlin Whalen compiled every available measurement of ocean
mixing rates from the past two decades. With this novel data set, the team was able to determine how
current-driven mixing varies across ______ and what impact it has on the distribution of heat and nutrients in
the ocean.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. regions,

B. regions:

C. regions;

D. regions
Question ID a1a0066e
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Boundaries Hard

Conventions

ID: a1a0066e
In paleontology, the term “Elvis taxon” gets applied to a newly identified living species that was once
presumed to be extinct. Like an Elvis impersonator who might bear a striking resemblance to the late musical
icon Elvis Presley himself, an Elvis taxon is not the real thing, ______ is a misidentified look-alike.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. however but it

B. however it

C. however, it

D. however. It
Question ID bff1d6df
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure, and Hard
Conventions Sense

ID: bff1d6df
Planetary scientist Briony Horgan and her colleagues have determined that as much as 25 percent of the
sand on Mars is composed of impact spherules. These spherical bits of glass form when asteroids collide
with the planet, ejecting bits of molten rock into the atmosphere that, after cooling and solidifying into glass,
______ back onto Mars’s surface.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. to rain

B. raining

C. having rained

D. rain
Question ID ff4676f7
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure, and Hard
Conventions Sense

ID: ff4676f7
Ten of William Shakespeare’s plays are classified as histories. Although each one of these plays, which
include Henry V and Richard III, ______ on a single historical figure (specifically, an English king), some, such
as Henry VI Part One and Henry VI Part Two, feature different episodes from the same monarch’s life.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. focuses

B. focus

C. are focused

D. were focused
Question ID a243dfaa
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure, and Hard
Conventions Sense

ID: a243dfaa
When they were first discovered in Australia in 1798, duck-billed, beaver-tailed platypuses so defied
categorization that one scientist assigned them the name Ornithorhynchus paradoxus: “paradoxical bird-
snout.” The animal, which lays eggs but also nurses ______ young with milk, has since been classified as
belonging to the monotremes group.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. they’re

B. their

C. its

D. it’s
Question ID 638832ee
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure, and Hard
Conventions Sense

ID: 638832ee
In 1994, almost 200 years after the death of Wang Zhenyi, the International Astronomical ______ the
contributions of the barrier-breaking 18th-century astronomer and author of “Dispute of the Procession of the
Equinoxes,” naming a crater on Venus after her.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. Union would finally acknowledge

B. Union to finally acknowledge

C. Union, having finally acknowledged

D. Union, finally acknowledging

Question ID 84225518
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Boundaries Hard

Conventions

ID: 84225518
With some 16,000 in attendance, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and ______ or FESTAC
‘77, as the event was more commonly known—became the largest pan-African event on record. FESTAC drew
people from around the world to Lagos, Nigeria, for a monthlong celebration of Black and African art,
scholarship, and activism.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. Culture:

B. Culture—

C. Culture,

D. Culture
Question ID e97999ac
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Boundaries Hard

Conventions

ID: e97999ac
In a 2016 study, Eastern Washington University psychologist Amani El-Alayli found that, among the study
participants who experienced frisson (a physiological response akin to goosebumps or getting the chills)
while listening to music, there was one personality trait that they scored particularly ______ openness to
experience.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. high. On

B. high on;

C. high on

D. high on:
Question ID c1ddb039
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure, and Hard
Conventions Sense

ID: c1ddb039
A second-generation Japanese American, Wataru Misaka ______ in World War II (1941-45) and won two
amateur national basketball championships at the University of Utah when he joined the New York Knicks for
the 1947-48 season, becoming the first non-white basketball player in the US’s top professional league.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. already served

B. was already serving

C. already serves

D. had already served

Question ID 8f2d7e11
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Boundaries Hard

Conventions

ID: 8f2d7e11
Quantum particles of light—photons—provide an unhackable means of transmitting encryption keys over
networks, as attempts to observe particles in quantum states will invariably alter the particles ______
dismantle any information they transmit.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. and in the process,

B. and, in the process,

C. and in the process—

D. and, in the process

Question ID bd907188
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Boundaries Hard

Conventions

ID: bd907188
The field of geological oceanography owes much to American ______ Marie Tharp, a pioneering
oceanographic cartographer whose detailed topographical maps of the ocean floor and its multiple rift
valleys helped garner acceptance for the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. geologist,

B. geologist

C. geologist;

D. geologist:
Question ID f3a157b1
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure, and Hard
Conventions Sense

ID: f3a157b1
Known as Earth’s “living skin,” biocrusts are thin layers of soil held together by surface-dwelling
microorganisms such as fungi, lichens, and cyanobacteria. Fortifying soil in arid ecosystems against erosion,
______

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. a recent study’s estimate is that these crusts reduce global dust emissions by 60 percent each year.

B. an estimated 60 percent reduction in global dust emissions each year is due to these crusts, according to
a recent study.

C. these crusts reduce global dust emissions by an estimated 60 percent each year, according to a recent
study.

D. a recent study has estimated that these crusts reduce global dust emissions by 60 percent each year.
Question ID d9d4d944
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure, and Hard
Conventions Sense

ID: d9d4d944
The artistic talents of Barbara Chase-Riboud, most known for her 1979 historical novel Sally Hemings and
the conversation it inspired, ______ limited to the realm of prose: she first excelled in sculpture, where her
affinity for bronze—a material she described as “timeless” due to its use across eras and cultures—became
part of her artistic identity.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. hasn’t been

B. wasn’t

C. isn’t

D. aren’t
Question ID f852bcbd
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure, and Hard
Conventions Sense

ID: f852bcbd
In the canon of North African literature, Moroccan author Driss Chraïbi’s 1954 novel The Simple Past (Le
Passé simple) looms large. A coming-of-age story, a social meditation, and a sober gaze into the dark maw
of French colonialism, ______ interrogates systemic power with memorable intensity.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. Morocco gained its independence two years before the publication of Chraïbi’s debut novel, which

B. Chraïbi’s debut novel, published two years before Morocco gained its independence,

C. Chraïbi wrote a debut novel that, published two years before Morocco gained its independence,

D. published two years before Morocco gained its independence, Chraïbi wrote a debut novel that
Question ID 36e0f3e2
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Boundaries Hard

Conventions

ID: 36e0f3e2
The Tantaquidgeon Museum in Uncasville, Connecticut, was founded in 1931 with the goal of showcasing
the culture and history of the Mohegan ______ today, nearly a century later, it is the oldest Native-owned and -
operated museum in the country.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. Tribe, and

B. Tribe

C. Tribe and

D. Tribe,
Question ID ae88a59f
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Boundaries Hard

Conventions

ID: ae88a59f
Using satellite remote sensing, Dr. Catherine Nakalembe, director of NASA’s Harvest Africa initiative, gathers
important data on crop health. Nakalembe doesn’t just compile the ______ she also shares her findings with
African farmers, enabling them to make data-driven decisions about managing critical food crops.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. information, though;

B. information, though,

C. information; though

D. information though,
Question ID 60c74aa0
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure, and Hard
Conventions Sense

ID: 60c74aa0
In 2015, a team led by materials scientists Anirudha Sumant and Diana Berman succeeded in reducing the
coefficient of friction (COF) between two surfaces to the lowest possible level—superlubricity. A nearly
frictionless (and, as its name suggests, extremely slippery) state, ______

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. when their COF drops below 0.01, two surfaces reach superlubricity.

B. two surfaces, when their COF drops below 0.01, reach superlubricity.

C. reaching superlubricity occurs when two surfaces’ COF drops below 0.01.

D. superlubricity is reached when two surfaces’ COF drops below 0.01.

Question ID b3eebd97
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure, and Hard
Conventions Sense

ID: b3eebd97
Rabinal Achí is a precolonial Maya dance drama performed annually in Rabinal, a town in the Guatemalan
highlands. Based on events that occurred when Rabinal was a city-state ruled by a king, ______ had once been
an ally of the king but was later captured while leading an invading force against him.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. Rabinal Achí tells the story of K’iche’ Achí, a military leader who

B. K’iche’ Achí, the military leader in the story of Rabinal Achí,

C. the military leader whose story is told in Rabinal Achí, K’iche’ Achí,

D. there was a military leader, K’iche’ Achí, who in Rabinal Achí

Question ID 3152fbb0
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Boundaries Hard

Conventions

ID: 3152fbb0
Researcher Lin Zhi developed a process for increasing the tensile strength—measured in gigapascals, or GPa
—of silkworm ______ dissolving and reweaving the silk in a solution of iron metal ions, zinc, and sugar, Zhi
increased the amount of force required to stretch it from approximately 0.5 GPa to 2 GPa.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. silk, by

B. silk by

C. silk and by

D. silk. By
Question ID 6b4c8b42
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Boundaries Hard

Conventions

ID: 6b4c8b42
The 1977 play And the Soul Shall Dance depicts two Japanese American farming families in Depression-era
Southern California. Critics have noted the way pioneering ______ compares the experiences of issei
(Japanese nationals who emigrated to America) and nisei (their American-born children).

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. playwright, Wakako Yamauchi,

B. playwright, Wakako Yamauchi

C. playwright Wakako Yamauchi,

D. playwright Wakako Yamauchi

Question ID e93dd6f3
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure, and Hard
Conventions Sense

ID: e93dd6f3
In the 1970s, Janaki Ammal, a prominent botanist, emerged as a powerful voice in India’s environmental
conservation movement. Her exhaustive chromosomal survey of plants in Silent Valley, a pristine tropical
forest in Kerala, India, that is home to nearly 1,000 species of native flora (many of which are endangered),
______ instrumental in the government’s decision to preserve the forest.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. are

B. were

C. have been

D. was
Question ID 4dc1b152
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Boundaries Hard

Conventions

ID: 4dc1b152
In discussing Mary Shelley’s 1818 epistolary novel Frankenstein, literary theorist Gayatri Spivak directs the
reader’s attention to the character of Margaret Saville. As Spivak points out, Saville is not the protagonist of
Shelley’s ______ as the recipient of the letters that frame the book’s narrative, she’s the “occasion” of it.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. novel

B. novel,

C. novel; rather,

D. novel, rather,