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, do the SAT Question of the Day by clicking on this link:
http://sat.collegeboard.org/practice/sat-question-of-the-day?questionId=20131116&oq=1 (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 B. The winning strategy for Sentence Completions is to 1) read the sentence while covering the answers, 2) determine the topic of the sentence, 3) predict a word for each blank, 4) find synonyms for your prediction, and 5) check your work by reading the sentence using your answer. (Watch Video #2 for a full explanation and do the related practice questions.)
This sentence is about Dahntay’s happiness (prediction for the first blank) or some other positive word related to winning the prize which was reduced (prediction for the second blank) by his father’s absence from the ceremony. Here’s the cool part: use one of the two predictions to eliminate as many answers as possible before considering the second blank. I started with “happiness.” Answer is A is out because it isn’t related to happiness (and you could see the stem word (incred) which is the same as incredible if you didn’t know what incredulity means). For Answer B, many students won’t know what ebullience means; so, let’s pretend for now that we don’t and leave it because you should never choose or eliminate an answer just because you don’t know what it means. Answer C is out because bashful sure doesn’t have anything to do with the prediction of happiness. The same is true for both D, satisfaction, and E, relief. That leaves us with B even if we had no idea what it means because none of the other first words had anything to do with being happy. The reality is we don’t even need to worry about the second words to get the right answer! However, let’s see what’s going on anyway. Check the second blank for B, tempered. Many students will have trouble with its meaning. Just to confirm the choice of Answer B, look at the other words. None of them mean reduced, the prediction for the second blank. All done. Circle B in the test booklet and then bubble in your answer.
As a side note, you could have started with the prediction for the second blank, reduced, and not had to worry about the meanings of the words for the first blank! None of the words other than tempered mean reduced. My point is pretty simple: rather than work on answers by considering both blanks at the same time, you can save a lot of time by just using one of the two blanks to eliminate as many answers as possible and then worry about the other blank.
Let’s see what the ACT folks have for us this morning.
ACT Question of the Day: Use your “back” button to return to my website after reading the ACT Question of the Day.
The answer is G. Use my reading strategy PICK to answer the ACT Science Reasoning Test questions. F, H, and J all disagree with the information you are given when you Insert them into the passage. That was sure easy.
I was reading some comments the other day about the ACT test that could sure mislead a student. The test prep “expert” was talking about the differences between the ACT and SAT math tests and suggested students don’t worry so much about “data interpretation” for the ACT because there aren’t as many data analysis questions on the ACT Math Test as there are on the SAT. Perhaps that is true but so what? The whole Science Test is just littered with them! So, even if it is true for the ACT math it is very wrong for the ACT as a whole. In fact, reading charts and graphs is far more important for your overall ACT score than it is for your SAT score.
Congrats to you for working on your ACT and SAT scores on a Saturday. The more practicing you do, the more you’ll increase your score. Just make sure that you use practice questions to learn about the test rather than worry about whether you get individual practice questions right or wrong. None of them will be on your actual test but they sure help eliminate surprises on test day.
The SAT & ACT Wizard
