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.
http://sat.collegeboard.org/practice/sat-question-of-the-day?questionId=20140318&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. The topic of the sentence is how Elizabeth knew what others were thinking. So, predict a word that is consistent with the topic. I thought of insight, intuition, cleverness, and shrewdness. When I looked at the answers, symbiosis, malevolence, and consternation were immediately eliminated. Those are words most students would know. With a little thought, you could eliminate punctiliousness because it is similar to punctual. They both have to be about being precise. Punctual is about being on time and punctiliousness is about doing things properly and in an accurate way. Even if you couldn’t give a precise definition of punctiliousness, you would have a sense that it did NOT mean insight or intuition (my prediction). That leaves us with the correct answer, perspicacity. Use your prediction to eliminate wrong words in addition to using it to find the correct word. Even though these are difficult vocabulary words, a bit of analysis and focus on the topic will help you eliminate wrote answers and reduce your choices.
Remember the Wizard’s Sentence Completion rule: the right answer must be consistent with the topic of the sentence.
I wonder if the ACT folks have something new 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 C. It is the best sentence to transition from the last sentence in the previous paragraph to the next paragraph about her early life in France.
These kinds of questions (sequencing) take up a lot of time compared to other questions (simple grammar corrections) . A way to get through them more quickly is to glance at the answers and you’ll see that all the answers start with a different sentence. Just find the best first sentence! The question boils down to which sentence in paragraph #4 makes the best transition or topic sentence. Don’t worry about the sequence of the next two sentences! Once you pick the transition/topic sentence, the other two sentences are irrelevant.
As you prepare for the tests, remember the words of Norman Vincent Peale: “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.”
Bob Alexander, the “SAT and ACT Wizard”
