Question ID 2af2016f

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Craft and Structure Text Structure and
Purpose

ID: 2af2016f
A study by Dr. Paul Hanel and colleagues concluded that people are more likely to behave politely when listening to ideas they disagree with if they think about values before they engage in a discussion. Study participants were assigned to one of two
groups. The experimental group spent a few minutes writing about one of their personal values before they had a group discussion on a controversial topic. And the control group spent a few minutes writing about a drink (tea, milk, etc.) before their
group discussion on that topic. Hanel and colleagues found that the experimental group’s discussion was more civil than the control group’s discussion was.

Which choice best describes the main purpose of the text?

A. To describe a widely held belief and how a study’s results support that belief

B. To argue that researchers were surprised by the results of a certain study

C. To suggest ways to improve a certain study’s experimental design

D. To explain a study’s conclusion and how a research team arrived at that conclusion
Question ID b13378c8
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Craft and Structure Text Structure and
Purpose

ID: b13378c8
Early in the Great Migration of 1910–1970, which involved the mass migration of Black people from the southern to the northern United States, political activist and Chicago Defender writer Fannie Barrier Williams was instrumental in helping other
Black women establish themselves in the North. Many women hoped for better employment opportunities in the North because, in the South, they faced much competition for domestic employment and men tended to get agricultural work. To aid
with this transition, Barrier Williams helped secure job placement in the North for many women before they even began their journey.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

A. To introduce and illustrate Barrier Williams’s integral role in supporting other Black women as their circumstances changed during part of the Great Migration

B. To establish that Barrier Williams used her professional connections to arrange employment for other Black women, including jobs with the Chicago Defender

C. To demonstrate that the factors that motivated the start of the Great Migration were different for Black women than they were for Black men

D. To provide an overview of the employment challenges faced by Black women in the agricultural and domestic spheres in the southern United States
Question ID 236fee8e
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Craft and Structure Text Structure and
Purpose

ID: 236fee8e
Archeological excavation of Market Street Chinatown, a nineteenth-century Chinese American community in San Jose, California, provided the first evidence that Asian food products were imported to the United States in the 1800s: bones from a
freshwater fish species native to Southeast Asia. Jinshanzhuang—Hong Kong–based import/export firms—likely coordinated the fish’s transport from Chinese-operated fisheries in Vietnam and Malaysia to North American markets. This route reveals
the (often overlooked) multinational dimensions of the trade networks linking Chinese diaspora communities.

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

A. It explains why efforts to determine the country of origin of the items mentioned in the previous sentence remain inconclusive.

B. It provides information that helps support a claim about a discovery’s significance that is presented in the following sentence.

C. It traces the steps that were taken to locate and recover the objects that are described in the previous sentence.

D. It outlines a hypothesis that additional evidence discussed in the following sentence casts some doubt on.
Question ID cef79fb9
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Craft and Structure Text Structure and
Purpose

ID: cef79fb9
The Bayeux Tapestry, from eleventh-century France, depicts 75 scenes over 250 feet of fabric. It was likely produced by workers embroidering in sections and then joining the resulting panels together. It’s plausible that the workshop that produced the
tapestry had never produced one so large, and some researchers claim that a close examination of the joins—the places where the panels are stitched together—suggests that the workers developed and refined their joining process over the course of
production. For example, the first join the workers completed exhibits a clear misalignment of the borders of the two panels, whereas the later joins are virtually invisible.

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

A. It identifies the people and events depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry.

B. It supports an argument about the workers who produced the Bayeux Tapestry.

C. It compares the Bayeux Tapestry with other tapestries from eleventh-century France.

D. It describes how researchers determined where the Bayeux Tapestry was produced.
Question ID 7d8224f9
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Craft and Structure Text Structure and
Purpose

ID: 7d8224f9
In 1154, Muhammad al-Idrisi completed a collection of maps of the lands known to medieval Arabic and European scholars. This collection was titled Al-Kitāb al-Rujārī (The Book of Roger), after the Norman king Roger II who hired him to create it. To
create the collection, al-Idrisi consulted Arabic and Greek maps and interviewed travelers about the lands they visited. He included these travelers’ stories alongside the map illustrations.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

A. To discuss the benefits of studying mapmaking

B. To explain how travelers created maps

C. To describe a collection of medieval maps and how it was created

D. To compare medieval Arabic and Greek mapmaking techniques

SAT Reading and Writing Craft and Structure Text Structure and
Purpose

ID: 2903a041
Using NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Mercedes López-Morales and colleagues measured the wavelengths of light traveling through the atmosphere of WASP-39b, an exoplanet, or planet outside our solar system. Different
molecules absorb different wavelengths of light, and the wavelength measurements showed the presence of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in WASP-39b’s atmosphere. This finding not only offers the first decisive evidence of CO₂ in the atmosphere of an
exoplanet but also illustrates the potential for future scientific breakthroughs held by the JWST.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

A. It discusses a method used by some researchers, then states why an alternative method is superior to it.

B. It describes how researchers made a scientific discovery, then explains the importance of that discovery.

C. It outlines the steps taken in a scientific study, then presents a hypothesis based on that study.

D. It examines how a group of scientists reached a conclusion, then shows how other scientists have challenged that conclusion.
Question ID 47598085
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Craft and Structure Text Structure and
Purpose

ID: 47598085
Yawn contagion occurs when one individual yawns in response to another’s yawn. Studies of this behavior in primates have focused on populations in captivity, but biologist Elisabetta Palagi and her colleagues have shown that it can occur in wild
primate populations as well. In their study, which focused on a wild population of gelada monkeys (Theropithecus gelada) in Ethiopia, the researchers further reported that yawn contagion most commonly occurred in males and across different social
groups instead of within a single social group.

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

A. It defines a phenomenon that is discussed in the text.

B. It introduces a problem that is examined in the text.

C. It makes a claim that is challenged in the text.

D. It presents a hypothesis that is evaluated in the text.

SAT Reading and Writing Craft and Structure Text Structure and
Purpose

ID: 4c4db685
On painter William H. Johnson’s return to the United States in 1938 after a decade in Europe, his style underwent an abrupt transformation. Turning away from landscapes painted in an expressionist style—a style that often involves using fluid,
distorted shapes and thick, textured brushstrokes to express the artist’s subjective experience of reality—Johnson began painting portraits of Black Americans in a bold new way. Evocative of African sculpture and American and Scandinavian folk art,
these portraits feature flat, deliberately oversimplified figures in a vibrant but limited color palette.

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

A. It elaborates on the previous sentence’s statement about a transitional moment in Johnson’s artistic career.

B. It provides information about Johnson’s travels in support of a claim about his artistic influences, which is advanced in the following sentence.

C. It recounts a moment in Johnson’s personal life that enabled the success of his subsequent career, which is summarized in the following sentence.

D. It presents evidence that calls into question the previous sentence’s characterization of Johnson’s artistic development.
Question ID 617a8a10
Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Craft and Structure Text Structure and
Purpose

ID: 617a8a10
Very little is known about the role nocturnal insects, such as moths, play in flower pollination because it is difficult to monitor insects at night. To address this problem, a team of scientists used time-lapse cameras to record pollinator visits to red
clover all day and night. The recordings showed that while most pollinator visits were by bumblebees, one-third of visits were by moths. Additionally, flowers that were visited by both moths and bees produced more seeds than flowers that were only
visited by bees.

Which choice best states the function of the underlined sentence?

A. To describe an approach a team of scientists used to study pollinators

B. To question a claim scientists make about pollinators

C. To explain why moths prefer red clover to other flowers

D. To announce an unexpected research finding about red clover

SAT Reading and Writing Craft and Structure Text Structure and
Purpose

ID: df46a2ee
The following text is from Joseph Conrad’s 1907 novel The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale. Mr. Verloc is navigating the London streets on his way to a meeting.
Before reaching Knightsbridge, Mr. Verloc took a turn to the left out of the busy main thoroughfare, uproarious with the traffic of swaying omnibuses and trotting vans, in the almost silent, swift flow of hansoms [horse-drawn carriages]. Under his hat,
worn with a slight backward tilt, his hair had been carefully brushed into respectful sleekness; for his business was with an Embassy. And Mr. Verloc, steady like a rock—a soft kind of rock—marched now along a street which could with every propriety
be described as private.

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

A. It qualifies an earlier description of Mr. Verloc.

B. It emphasizes an internal struggle Mr. Verloc experiences.

C. It contrasts Mr. Verloc with his surroundings.

D. It reveals a private opinion Mr. Verloc holds.