SAT EVIDENCE BASED READING & WRITING (V2)

WRITING & LANGUAGE

SV1

SV2

Read each sentence carefully and determine whether the underlined portion is correct or whether it
needs to be improved.

1. There is many challenges associated with starting one’s own business.

a. NO CHANGE
b. is many challenges to associate
c. are many challenges associated
d. are many challenges with associate

2. Although the exact cause of type 2 diabetes is unknown, experts say that for some people improper
diet and lack of exercise contributes to the onset of the disease.
a. NO CHANGE
b. exercise, they contribute
c. exercise contribute
d. exercise contributing
 SAT EVIDENCE BASED READING & WRITING (V2)

3. The main reasons students give for failing to participate in the political process is that they have
demanding assignments and work at part-time jobs.
a. NO CHANGE
b. are demanding assignments and they work at
c. is having demanding assignments and having to work at
d. are demanding assignments, in addition to working at

4. The harmful effects of smoking on the vascular system is increasingly well documented.
a. NO CHANGE
b. are increasingly well documented
c. are increasingly in better documentation
d. has increased better documentation

5. The poem’s colorful images and its verbal wit give the reader pleasure.
a. NO CHANGE
b. gives pleasure to the one who reads it
c. give one pleasure in the reading of it
d. gives one pleasure in reading it

Read the passages carefully and determine whether the underlined portion is correct or whether it
needs to be improved

The critic Edmund Wilson was not a self-conscious letter writer or one who tied to sustain studied
mannerisms. Nor did he resort to artifice or entangle himself in circumlocutions. The young, middle-
aged, and old Wilson speak directly through his letters, which are informal for the most part and which
undisguisedly is reflecting his changing moods. On occasion in response, perhaps, to the misery of a
friend or a public outrage or a personal challenge-he can become eloquent, even passionate, but that is
not his prevailing tone.

6.
a. NO CHANGE
b. speaks
c. are speaking
d. is being spoken
7.
a. NO CHANGE
b. reflects
c. reflect
d. having been reflecting
 SAT EVIDENCE BASED READING & WRITING (V2)

The idea that a number of people per square mile is a key determinant of population pressure is as
widespread as it is wrong. The key issue in judging overpopulation is not how many people can fit into
any given space but whether Earth can be able to supply the population’s long term requirement for
food, water, and other resources. Most of the “empty” land in the United States, for example, either
grows the food essential to our well-being or supplies us with raw materials. Densely populated
countries and cities can be crowded only because the rest of the world is not.

8.
a. NO CHANGE
b. the number of people per square mile is
c. the number of people per square mile are
d. the numbers of people per square mile is

9.
a. NO CHANGE
b. Earth can supply the population long term requirement for food, water, and other resources
c. Earth‘s populations can supply
d. Earth can supply the population’s long term requirement for food, water, and other resources

Write the noun that who, which, or that refers to and underline the correct form of the verb in
parentheses

1. The television set has become a home-entertainment center for Americans who (seeks, seek)
recreation during their leisure time.
2. The family of four that usually (goes, go) to a movie theater once or twice a week can now save
money, watching cable television at home.
3. People with videotape cassette recorders, which (plugs, plug) into the television set, schedule
their favorite programs at hours most convenient for the family.
4. Instead of going to a videogame arcade, many consumers play videogames that (hooks, hook)
up to their own televisions.
5. And, of course, commercial television, which (has, have) been keeping Americans at home for
years, continues to consume one billion hours of their time each day.

R1
 SAT EVIDENCE BASED READING & WRITING (V2)

SF1

Change the fragments into complete sentences.

 My last year in high school I studied for hours every night. Getting ready for college entrance tests.

 Some of the students from abroad, not being used to central heating, and also wearing heavy
clothes

P
 SAT EVIDENCE BASED READING & WRITING (V2)

P1

P2
 SAT EVIDENCE BASED READING & WRITING (V2)

READING
Passage 1:

This excerpt from a novel by a Chinese American author is about a Chinese American woman named
June. During a family dinner party attended by some of June’s Chinese American friends, Waverly, a tax
attorney, discusses an advertisement that June wrote for her.

Waverly laughed in a lighthearted way. “I mean, really, June.” And then she started in a deep television-
announcer voice: “Three benefits, three needs, three reasons to buy……Satisfaction guaranteed….”

She said this in such funny way that everybody thought it was a good joke and laughed. And then, to
make matters worse, I heard my mother saying to Waverly: “True, one can’t teach style. June is not
sophisticated like you. She must have been born this way.”

I was surprised at myself, how humiliated I felt. I had been outsmarted by Waverly once again, and now
betrayed by my own mother.

Five months ago, sometime after the dinner, my mother gave me my “life’s importance,” a jade pendant
on a gold chain. The pendant was not a piece of jewelry I would have chosen for myself. It was almost
the size of my little finger, a mottled green and white color, intricately carved. To me, the whole effect
looked wrong: too large, too green, too garishly ornate. I stuffed the necklace in my lacquer box and
forgot about it.

But these days, I think about my life’s importance. I wonder what it means, because my mother died
three months ago, six days before my thirty-sixth birthday. And she’s the only person I could have asked
to tell me about life’s importance, to help me understand my grief.

I now wear that pendant every day. I think the carvings mean something, because shapes and details,
which I never seem to notice until after they’re pointed out to me, always mean something to Chinese
people. I know I could ask Auntie Lindo, Auntie An-mei, or other Chinese friends, but I also know they
would tell me a meaning that is different from what my mother intended. What if they tell me this
curving line branching into three oval shapes is a pomegranate and that my mother was wishing me
fertility and posterity? What if my mother really meant the carvings were a branch of pears to give me
purity and honesty?

And because I think about this all the time, I always notice other people wearing these same jade
pendants – not the flat rectangular medallions or the round white ones with holds in the middle but
ones like mine, a two-inch oblong of bright apple green. It’s as though we were all sworn to the same
secret covenant, so secret we don’t even know what we belong to. Last weekend, for example, I saw a
bartender wearing one. As I fingered mine, I asked him, “Where’d you get yours?”
“My mother gave it to me,” he said.

I asked him why, which is a nosy question that only one Chinese person can ask another; in a crowd of
Caucasians, two Chinese people are already like family.
 SAT EVIDENCE BASED READING & WRITING (V2)

“She gave it to me after I got divorced. I guess my mother’s telling me I’m still worth something.”
And I knew by the wonder in his voice that he had no idea what the pendant really meant.

RT13

10. For June, a significant aspect of what happened at the dinner party is that
a. her mother had taken great pains to make Waverly feel welcome
b. her mother had criticized her for arguing with Waverly
c. her mother had sided against her in front of family and friends
d. Waverly had angered June's mother

RT14

11. In the context of the passage, the statement "I was surprised at myself"(line 6) suggests that June
a. had been unaware of the extent of her emotional vulnerability
b. was exasperated that she allowed Waverly to embarrass her in public
c. was amazed that she could dislike anyone so much
d. had not realized that her mother admired her friend Waverly
 SAT EVIDENCE BASED READING & WRITING (V2)

12. June's observation in line 6 ("I had . . . again") suggests that

a. June had expected Waverly to insult her
b. June had hoped to embarrass Waverly this time
c. Waverly had made June feel inadequate on previous occasions
d. Waverly was a more talented writer than June was

13. The description of June's encounter with the bartender primarily serves to suggest that
a. the relationship of mother and son is different from that of mother and daughter
b. June is not the only one who ponders the meaning of a jade pendant
c. June finally understands the true meaning of her jade pendant
d. strangers are easier to talk to than family members and friends

14. The passage indicates that the act of giving a pendant can best be described as
a. a widely observed tradition
b. a mother's plea for forgiveness
c. an example of a mother's extravagance
d. an unprecedented act of generosity
 SAT EVIDENCE BASED READING & WRITING (V2)

Passage 2:

This passage is adapted from a speech delivered by Congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Texas on July 25,
1974, as a member of the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives. In the
passage, Jordan discusses how and when a United States president may be impeached, or charged with
serious offenses, while in office. Jordan’s speech was delivered in the context of impeachment hearings
against then president Richard M. Nixon.

Today, I am an inquisitor. An hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate
the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And
I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of
the Constitution.

“Who can so properly be the inquisitors for the nation as the representatives of the nation
themselves?” “The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of
public men.”* And that’s what we’re talking about. In other words, [the jurisdiction comes] from the
abuse or violation of some public trust.

It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution for any member here to assert that for a
member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the
President should be removed from office. The Constitution doesn’t say that. The powers relating to
impeachment are an essential check in the hands of the body of the legislature against and upon the
encroachments of the executive. The division between the two branches of the legislature, the House
and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse and to the other the right to judge—the framers
of this Constitution were very astute. They did not make the accusers and the judges...the same person.

We know the nature of impeachment. We’ve been talking about it a while now. It is chiefly designed
for the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is designed to “bridle” the
executive if he engages in excesses. “It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of
public men.”* The framers confided in the Congress the power, if need be, to remove the President in
order to strike a delicate balance between a President swollen with power and grown tyrannical, and
preservation of the independence of the executive.

The nature of impeachment: a narrowly channeled exception to the separation of powers maxim.
The Federal Convention of 1787 said that. It limited impeachment to high crimes and misdemeanors,
and discounted and opposed the term “maladministration.” “It is to be used only for great
misdemeanors,” so it was said in the North Carolina ratification convention. And in the Virginia
ratification convention: “We do not trust our liberty to a particular branch. We need one branch to
check the other.”

...The North Carolina ratification convention: “No one need be afraid that officers who commit
oppression will pass with immunity.” “Prosecutions of impeachments will seldom fail to agitate the
passions of the whole community,” said Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, number 65. “We divide into
parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused.”* I do not mean political parties in that sense.
 SAT EVIDENCE BASED READING & WRITING (V2)

The drawing of political lines goes to the motivation behind impeachment; but impeachment must
proceed within the confines of the constitutional term “high crime[s] and misdemeanors.” Of the
impeachment process, it was Woodrow Wilson who said that “Nothing short of the grossest offenses
against the plain law of the land will suffice to give them speed and effectiveness. Indignation so great
as to overgrow party interest may secure a conviction; but nothing else can.”

Common sense would be revolted if we engaged upon this process for petty reasons. Congress has a
lot to do: appropriations, tax reform, health insurance, campaign finance reform, housing,
environmental protection, energy sufficiency, mass transportation. Pettiness cannot be allowed to stand
in the face of such overwhelming problems. So today we’re not being petty. We’re trying to be big,
because the task we have before us is a big one.

*Jordan quotes from Federalist No.65 an essay by Alexander Hamilton, published in 1788, on the powers of the United States Senate,
including the power to decide cases of impeachment against a president of the United States.

RT15

15. The stance Jordan takes in the passage is best described as that of
a. an idealist setting forth principles.
b. an advocate seeking a compromise position.
c. an observer striving for neutrality.
d. a scholar researching a historical controversy.

RT16

e.
f.
g.
 SAT EVIDENCE BASED READING & WRITING (V2)

16. The main rhetorical effect of the series of three phrases beginning in line 3 (“the diminution, the
subversion, the destruction”) is to
a. convey with increasing intensity the seriousness of the threat Jordan sees to the Constitution.
b. clarify that Jordan believes the Constitution was first weakened, then sabotaged, then broken.
c. indicate that Jordan thinks the Constitution is prone to failure in three distinct ways
d. propose a three-part agenda for rescuing the Constitution from the current crisis.

RT17

h.
i.
j.

17. As used in line 22, “channeled” most nearly means

a. worn
b. sent
c. constrained
d. siphoned

RT18
 SAT EVIDENCE BASED READING & WRITING (V2)

RT19

18. In lines 29 - 31 (“Prosecutions...sense”), what is the most likely reason Jordan draws a distinction
between two types of “parties”?

a. To counter the suggestion that impeachment is or should be about partisan politics

b. To disagree with Hamilton’s claim that impeachment proceedings excite passions

c. To contend that Hamilton was too timid in his support for the concept of impeachment

d. To argue that impeachment cases are decided more on the basis of politics than on justice

RT20

k.
l.
m.

20. Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to the previous question?
a. Lines 9–11 (“It...office”)
b. Lines 14–16 (“The division...astute”)
c. Lines 32–33 (“The drawing...misdemeanors”)
d. Lines 37–39 (“Congress...transportation”)