Trần Vũ Mạnh Đức SAT Writing & Language

dSAT Reading exercises

Inferences
..1..-———————————————————————————————-
In recommending Bao Phi's collection Sông I Sing, a librarian noted that
pieces by the spoken-word poet don't lose their ______ nature when printed:
the language has the same pleasant musical quality on the page as it does
when performed by Phi.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or

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phrase?

A. jarring
B. scholarly
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C. melodic
D. personal
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Trần Vũ Mạnh Đức SAT Writing & Language

..2..-———————————————————————————————-
Many animals, including humans, must sleep, and sleep is known to have a
role in everything from healing injuries to encoding information in long-
term memory. But some scientists claim that, from an evolutionary
standpoint, deep sleep for hours at a time leaves an animal so vulnerable that
the known benefits of sleeping seem insufficient to explain why it became so
widespread in the animal kingdom. These scientists therefore imply that
______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. it is more important to understand how widespread prolonged deep sleep

is than to understand its function.
B. prolonged deep sleep is likely advantageous in ways that have yet to be

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discovered.
C. many traits that provide significant benefits for an animal also likely pose
risks to that animal.
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D. most traits perform functions that are hard to understand from an
evolutionary standpoint.
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Trần Vũ Mạnh Đức SAT Writing & Language

..3..-———————————————————————————————-
Companies whose products are similar to competing products often pursue
a marketing strategy of brand differentiation, trying to get consumers to
associate their brand with unique attributes (e.g., to think of their brand of
rice as the healthy brand, when in fact there is little difference among brands
of the same type of rice). Jaywant Singh and Francesca Dall'Olmo Riley
investigated consumer perceptions of such products, finding that consumers
view competing brands as having largely the same attributes and that any
differences in the strength of consumers' associations of brands with
attributes are explained by differences in market share—the more popular a
brand is, the stronger people's associations with it are—suggesting that
______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

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A. consumers tend to perceive products with high market share more
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positively than they perceive products with low market share.
B. marketing aimed at brand differentiation influences consumers’
perceptions of branded products but not consumers’ purchasing behavior.
C. marketing efforts focused on brand differentiation do not have much
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effect on consumers’ perceptions of branded products’ attributes.

D. differences in consumers’ perceptions of products’ attributes are less
influenced by brand differentiation than by actual differences between
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products.
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Trần Vũ Mạnh Đức SAT Writing & Language

..4..-———————————————————————————————-
Biologist Natacha Bodenhausen and colleagues analyzed the naturally
occurring bacterial communities associated with leaves and roots of wild
Arabidopsis thaliana, a small flowering plant. The researchers found many of
the same bacterial genera in both the plants' leaves and roots. To explain this,
the researchers pointed to the general proximity of A. thaliana leaves to the
ground and noted that rain splashing off soil could bring soil-based bacteria
into contact with the leaves. Alternatively, the researchers noted that wind,
which may be a source of bacteria in the aboveground portion of plants,
could also bring bacteria to the soil and roots. Either explanation suggests
that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

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A. A. thaliana leaves and roots are especially vulnerable to harmful bacteria.
B. bacteria carried by wind are typically less beneficial to A. thaliana than
soil-based bacteria are.
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C. many bacteria in A. thaliana leaves may have been deposited by means
other than rain.
D. some bacteria in A. thaliana leaves and roots may share a common
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source.
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Trần Vũ Mạnh Đức SAT Writing & Language

..5..-———————————————————————————————-
Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about detective Sherlock Holmes were
published between 1887 and 1927. They have inspired countless successful
adaptations, including comic strips, movies, and a television series Sherlock
Hound, directed by Hayao Miyazaki, who is celebrated for his animated
movies. Until 2014, these stories were copyrighted. The right to adapt was
only available to those who could afford the copyright fee and gain approval
from the strict copyright holders of Doyle's estate. Some journalists predict
that the number of Sherlock Holmes adaptations is likely to increase since
the end of copyright means that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. producing adaptations will become easier and less expensive.

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B. people will become more interested in detective stories than they were in
the 1800s.
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C. the former copyright holders of Doyle's estate will return fees they
collected.
D. Doyle's original stories will become hard to find.
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Trần Vũ Mạnh Đức SAT Writing & Language

..6..-———————————————————————————————-
Tides can deposit large quantities of dead vegetation within a salt marsh,
smothering healthy plants and leaving a salt panne—a depression devoid of
plants that tends to trap standing water—in the marsh's interior. Ecologist
Kathryn Beheshti and colleagues found that burrowing crabs living within
these pannes improve drainage by loosening the soil, leading the pannes to
shrink as marsh plants move back in. At salt marsh edges, however, crab-
induced soil loosening can promote marsh loss by accelerating erosion,
suggesting that the burrowing action of crabs ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. can be beneficial to marshes with small pannes but can be harmful to

marshes with large pannes.

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B. may promote increases in marsh plants or decreases in marsh plants,
depending on the crabs' location.
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C. tends to be more heavily concentrated in areas of marsh interiors with
standing water than at marsh edges.
D. varies in intensity depending on the size of the panne relative to the size
of the surrounding marsh.
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Trần Vũ Mạnh Đức SAT Writing & Language

..7..-———————————————————————————————-
In her 2021 article "Throwaway History: Towards a Historiography of
Ephemera," scholar Anne Garner discusses John Johnson (1882–1956), a
devoted collector of items intended to be discarded, including bus tickets
and campaign pamphlets. Johnson recognized that scholarly institutions
considered his expansive collection of ephemera to be worthless—indeed, it
wasn't until 1968, after Johnson's death, that Oxford University's Bodleian
Library acquired the collection, having grasped the items' potential value to
historians and other researchers. Hence, the example of Johnson serves to
______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. represent the challenge of incorporating examples of ephemera into the

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collections of libraries and other scholarly institutions.
B. illustrate both the relatively low scholarly regard in which ephemera was
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once held and the later recognition of ephemera's possible utility.
C. lend support to arguments by historians and other researchers who
continue to assert that ephemera holds no value for scholars.
D. demonstrate the difficulties faced by contemporary historians in
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conducting research at the Bodleian Library without access to ephemera.

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Trần Vũ Mạnh Đức SAT Writing & Language

..8..-———————————————————————————————-
In many cultures, a handshake can create trust between people. Engineer
Jo?o Avelino and his team are designing a robot to shake hands with a
human in order to improve human-robot interactions. The robot hand
adjusts its movements and pressure to better imitate the feel of a human
hand. The researchers want the robot's handshake to feel realistic because
______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. people are less likely to interact with robots that don't look like humans.
B. it's easier to program a robot to perform handshakes than it is to program
a robot to perform some other types of greetings.
C. the robot in the researchers' study may have uses other than interacting

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with humans.
D. lifelike handshakes may make people more comfortable interacting with
robots.
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..9..-—————————————————————————————— —
Researchers Suchithra Rajendran and Maximilian Popfinger modeled varying
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levels of passenger redistribution from short-haul flights (flights of 50 to 210

minutes, from takeoff to landing) to high-speed rail trips. Planes travel faster
than trains, but air travel typically requires 3 hours of lead time for security,
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baggage handling, and boarding that rail travel doesn't, so short-haul routes
take similar amounts of time by air and by rail. However, the model suggests
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that as rail passenger volumes approach current capacity limits, long lead
times emerge. Therefore, for rail to remain a viable alternative to short-haul
flights, ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. rail systems should offer fewer long-haul routes and airlines should offer
more long-haul routes.
B. rail systems may need to schedule additional trains for these routes.
C. security, baggage handling, and boarding procedures used by airlines may
need to be implemented for rail systems.
D. passengers who travel by rail for these routes will need to accept that lead
times will be similar to those for air travel.
Trần Vũ Mạnh Đức SAT Writing & Language

..10..-———————————————————————————————
As the name suggests, dramaturges originated in theater, where they continue
to serve a variety of functions: conducting historical research for directors,
compiling character biographies for actors, and perhaps most importantly,
helping writers of plays and musicals to hone the works' stories and characters.
Performance scholar Susan Manning observes that many choreographers, like
playwrights and musical theater writers, are concerned with storytelling and
characterization. In fact, some choreographers describe the dances they create
as expressions of narrative through movement; it is therefore unsurprising
that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. some directors and actors rely too heavily on dramaturges to complete

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certain research tasks.
B. choreographers developing dances with narrative elements frequently
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engage dramaturges to assist in refining those elements.
C. dramaturges can have a profound impact on the artistic direction of plays
and musicals.
D. dances by choreographers who incorporate narrative elements are more
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accessible to audiences than dances by choreographers who do not.

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Trần Vũ Mạnh Đức SAT Writing & Language

..11..-———————————————————————————————
Off-off-Broadway theaters emerged in the late 1950s as a rebellion against
mainstream Broadway theaters in New York, freeing artists to create
productions that were more experimental than typical Broadway shows. One
such artist was playwright María Irene Fornés. Working with off-off
Broadway theaters enabled Fornés not only to direct her own plays but also to
direct them exactly as she intended them to be staged, regardless of how
strange the results might have seemed to audiences accustomed to Broadway
shows. In this way, Fornés ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. would have been more famous if she had created plays that were
mainstream instead of experimental.

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B. recognized that staging an off-off-Broadway play was more complicated
than staging a Broadway play.
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C. wrote plays that would have been too expensive to produce if someone else
had directed the production.
D. illustrates the artistic opportunity offered by off-off Broadway theaters.
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Trần Vũ Mạnh Đức SAT Writing & Language

..12..-———————————————————————————————
Gestures in painting are typically thought of as bold, expressive brushstrokes.
In the 1970s, American painter Jack Whitten built a 12-foot (3.7-meter) tool
he named the "developer" to apply paint to an entire canvas in one motion,
resulting in his series of "slab" paintings from that decade. Whitten described
this process as making an entire painting in "one gesture," signaling a clear
departure from the prevalence of gestures in his work from the 1960s. Some
art historians claim this shift represents "removing gesture" from the process.
Therefore, regardless of whether using the developer constitutes a gesture,
both Whitten and these art historians likely agree that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. any tool that a painter uses to create an artwork is capable of creating

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gestures.
B. Whitten's work from the 1960s exhibits many more gestures than his work
from the 1970s does.
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C. Whitten became less interested in exploring the role of gesture in his work
as his career progressed.
D. Whitten's work from the 1960s is much more realistic than his work from
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the 1970s is.

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Trần Vũ Mạnh Đức SAT Writing & Language

..13..-———————————————————————————————
In their book Smart Pricing, Jagmohan Raju and Z. John Zhang consider
musicians' use of the nontraditional "pay as you wish" pricing model. This
model generally offers listeners the choice to pay more or less than a suggested
price for a song or album—or even to pay nothing at all. As the authors note,
that's the option most listeners chose for an album by the band Harvey
Danger. Only about 1% opted to pay for the album, resulting in earnings
below the band's expectations. But the authors also discuss musician Jane
Siberry, who saw significant earnings from her "pay as you wish" online music
store as a result of many listeners choosing to pay more than the store's
suggested prices. Hence, the "pay as you wish" model may ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

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A. hold greater financial appeal for bands than for individual musicians.
B. cause most musicians who use the model to lower the suggested prices of
their songs and albums over time.
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C. prove financially successful for some musicians but disappointing for
others.
D. more strongly reflect differences in certain musicians' popularity than
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traditional pricing models do.

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Trần Vũ Mạnh Đức SAT Writing & Language

..14..-———————————————————————————————
Martin Dančák, Wewin Tjiasmanto, and colleagues have identified a new
carnivorous plant species (Nepenthes pudica) in Indonesia. Like other
carnivorous plants, N. pudica has pitfall traps, or pitchers, that capture prey,
but unlike others, the pitchers of N. pudica are located underground. The
researchers unearthed the new species on fairly dry ridges with surfaces that
host few other plants and animals. Therefore, the researchers hypothesize that
the N. pudica species likely ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. is buried by nearby animals as they forage along the ridges for food.
B. evolved to have underground traps to access more prey than would surface
traps.

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C. formed pitchers early in development to absorb more moisture.
D. represents one of many undiscovered carnivorous plant species in the
region.
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Trần Vũ Mạnh Đức SAT Writing & Language

1. B
2. B
3. C
4. D
5. A
6. B
7. B
8. D
9. B
10. B
11. D
12. B
13. C
14. B

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