If you are reading this in an email you received from me, do not click the link to sat.collegeboard.org below. Use the link to my website that is farther down on the email. If you are seeing this in my blog, dco the SAT Question of the Day by clicking on this link:
http://sat.collegeboard.org/practice/sat-question-of-the-day?src=R&questionId=20130529 (This link takes you to today’s question. If you use my archive, you will see the question related to my SAT explanation for that date.)
The answer is D. This Sentence Completion Question is standard stuff. Just use my strategy and you’ll get the right answer in record time!
Determine the topic: the world expects negative things (“rioting and bloodshed”) BUT this time the transition wasn’t negative. So, my predictions were “negative stuff” and “not negative.” Since there are two blanks, I kicked in my time-saving technique of using one blank to eliminate as many answers as possible before looking at the other blank. Starting with the first blank, “negative stuff,” I crossed out answers B, C, and E. That left me only A and D to check for the second blank. (That’s what saved me time.) My prediction for the second blank, “not negative,” eliminated A. I circled D, bubbled it in on the answer sheet, and moved on.
Let’s move on to the ACT question.
http://www.act.org/qotd/ (The ACT staff does not put a date on their questions so if you click on an archived blog, you’ll get today’s question and the old explanation. Sorry. The SAT staff has dated their questions; so, the archive is helpful. The ACT folks simply don’t do that.)
The answer is G. As Ms. Murphy always said, “Shorter is better as long as you don’t eliminate important information.” Who cares if it was “both semesters of the two-semester year?” That leaves me with the right answer, G.
The only word of caution is to make sure while you shorten the underlined portions of passages, don’t eliminate relevant information. A “year” is important since it provides a time frame; “both semesters of a two-semester year” is irrelevant. Eliminate it and move on to the next question.
Have you seen the new commercial with the camel? It is all about “hump day”–Wednesday. You are over the “hump” and it’s all down hill from here! Enjoy the rest of the week.
The Wizard
