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=20130914&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 E. This is a relatively easy question; almost 3/4 of the visitors to the website are getting it correct. All you have to do is focus on the topic of the sentence and predict a word for the blank. The oil platforms (the subject of the sentence) are “the heaviest objects”… We know they are heavy. So, I predicted a word that meant they are “heavy.” (Often I predict a word that is in the sentence–that makes it quick and easy.) Looking at the answers, only immense works. I’m ready to move on.
Let’s use this question to learn what NOT to do on test day. Purported (Answer B) is a good example of how students often make a mistake. All the other words are pretty common and most students will know those four words. Purported is the hard word or “SAT word” among the answers. Students often say to themselves, “Oh look! This is a word I don’t know. The SAT people are trying to trap me with it. I’ll trick them by picking it.” No, no, no. Don’t ever pick a word just because it looks like an “SAT word,” that is, one that you don’t know. Hard words aren’t any more likely to be right than other words. Don’t fall into this way of thinking. Just use my strategy of identifying the topic and predicting an answer and you’ll be fine. Review video #2.
Let’s see what the ACT folks have for us today.
ACT Question of the Day: Use your “back” button to return to my website after reading the ACT Question of the Day.
Right after I finish cutting down the forest in yesterday’s Science question, I’m going to work on radio towers! Now that the ACT folks are outselling the SAT folks (more students took the ACT last year than the SAT for the first time in history) and making plenty of money, certainly they can afford to provide us with some new questions.
The answer is H. The original sentence is flawed because “possibilities” can’t see(“saw clearly”) anything! G is not clear because we don’t know what saw clearly”; “some” in that answer is ambiguous and the “organizations” in that answer is senseless. J is silly because “commercials of a medium” wouldn’t make sense.
I attack these questions by reading the sentence while plugging in the answers. Very often, as in this case, the wrong answers just sound stupid and then I worry about the grammar rules. For me, that sure speeds things up.
I hope you came through Friday the 13th unscathed. Enjoy your Saturday the 14th. I’m going fishing.
The SAT & ACT Wizard
