SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Transitions (Drill 23)

About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Transitions (Drill 23) is a Reading & Writing practice drill covering Hard Transitions. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

Hard SAT Transitions questions ask you to choose the word or phrase that captures the exact logical relationship between ideas. The answer is rarely the most familiar connector; difficulty comes from three distractors that each fit a different, plausible relationship, with only one matching what the passage actually does.

Questions in This Drill

1. Restoring a centuries-old stained-glass window is painstaking, deliberate work: a conservator must test tiny areas to learn which cleaning methods will lift the grime and corrosion crusts without etching the fragile painted enamel fired onto the glass. ______ the team has to chart every pane that a later hand replaced over the years, since those substituted pieces differ in chemistry from the medieval glass and respond differently to each treatment. Only after both surveys are complete does any actual cleaning begin on the glass.
   
   Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
2. To dye wool a deep, lasting blue with woad, a craftsperson first ferments the chopped leaves in a covered vat for several days, until the liquid turns a murky yellow-green and gives off a sharp, unmistakable smell. The pale cloth is dipped into that strangely un-blue bath and then lifted back out still looking pale; ______ as the soaked fibers meet the open air, the dye oxidizes before the dyer's eyes and the blue rises to the surface, deepening steadily with each fresh exposure to the air.
   
   Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
3. Wanting to record birdsong in the open field at a time when sound equipment was bulky and hard to move, researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology needed a reliable way to capture calls that often lasted only a second or two. ______ they adapted motion-picture sound equipment for outdoor use, converting the sound vibrations into a wavering visual trace along a strip of film. Played back and measured later in the lab, those traces let them compare the songs of individual birds with a precision that written descriptions could never reach.
   
   Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
4. In very cold, oxygen-poor lake bottoms, fallen organic matter can sink and settle undisturbed for thousands of years, building thick, even layers that preserve a long, fine record of ancient pollen, charcoal, and volcanic ash. ______ in warm, well-stirred shallows, that same falling material is churned by currents and broken down by burrowing creatures almost as fast as it arrives on the bed. The sharp contrast is why researchers seeking deep climate archives strongly favor deep, still basins over lively coastal flats.
   
   Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
5. Tracking newly tagged gray seals, biologists discovered that the pups born on one island scattered across a far wider stretch of ocean than anyone had assumed, mingling freely with colonies hundreds of miles away and crossing into the coastal waters of several other nations. For years the agency managing the breeding island had protected only that single haul-out site; ______ it widened the area it sought to safeguard, reasoning that guarding one shoreline could no longer be enough, and it now coordinates with authorities along several adjacent coastlines.
   
   Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?