SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Rhetorical Synthesis (Drill 10)

Question 1. The student wants to present the study's findings. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

• A) The study found that letting its body temperature rise during the day sharply cut the water a camel lost to sweat. ✓
• B) Camels are well known for being able to cross very long stretches of open desert without stopping to drink any water along the way.
• C) The study set out to examine how a camel manages to retain the water in its body during the long journeys it makes across the open desert without drinking.
• D) When a camel does reach water, it can take in a large quantity all at once.

Explanation: Choice A is the best answer. The sentence reports the study's finding: a rise in body temperature sharply reduced the camel's water loss to sweat. Choice B gives background on what camels can do and states no finding. Choice C describes the study's aim rather than its result. Choice D adds a separate fact about how much a camel drinks, not a finding of this study.

Question 2. The student wants to make and support a generalization about the link between a volcano's shape and how it erupts. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

• A) One of the broad, gently sloped volcanoes in the survey released runny lava in a long series of quiet, steady flows down its sides.
• B) The survey also set down the height of each of the volcanoes above the level of the sea.
• C) A steep, cone-shaped volcano of the kind in the survey tends to erupt with sudden violence, hurling out clouds of ash and chunks of broken rock.
• D) A volcano's shape tends to track how it erupts: broad, gentle slopes give quiet lava flows, while steep cones erupt violently with ash and rock. ✓

Explanation: Choice D is the best answer. The sentence states the generalization, shape tracks eruption style, and supports it with the contrasting types the notes give. Choice A offers a single example with no general claim drawn from it. Choice B reports the heights the survey recorded, a detail unrelated to the shape-eruption link. Choice C describes only the steep cone, one case rather than a supported generalization.

Question 3. The student wants to explain the difference between the two methods of preserving fish. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

• A) Long before refrigeration existed, people had already found a number of ways to preserve fish so that it would last for many months.
• B) In salting, the fish is packed tightly in salt, which slowly pulls the moisture out of the flesh and keeps it from spoiling for a long time.
• C) Salting removes moisture by packing fish in salt, while drying removes it by hanging the fish in moving air until enough has evaporated. ✓
• D) Both ways of preserving fish leave it lighter at the end than it was when it was fresh.

Explanation: Choice C is the best answer. The sentence contrasts the two methods on the point that distinguishes them: how each removes the fish's moisture. Choice A gives general background on preserving fish and names neither method, so it draws no distinction. Choice B describes only salting, with nothing about drying to differ from. Choice D points to something the two methods share rather than how they differ.

Question 4. The student wants to give an audience unfamiliar with the topic a sense of how the windmill spread across medieval Europe. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

• A) Used mainly at first for grinding grain, windmills spread from a few medieval European regions across much of the continent. ✓
• B) In low-lying regions, builders later reworked the windmill so that it could pump water off flooded land.
• C) Early windmills were put to work mainly grinding grain into flour for the surrounding area.
• D) Some of these medieval windmills can still be found standing in the countryside today.

Explanation: Choice A is the best answer. The sentence traces how the windmill spread for an unfamiliar reader, from its first use grinding grain to its expansion across much of the continent. Choice B describes one later adaptation rather than the broader course of the spread. Choice C notes the mills' early use but does not convey how they spread across Europe. Choice D gives a fact about surviving mills, not the story of how the design spread.

Question 5. The student wants to introduce the kiva to an audience unfamiliar with it and convey what kind of structure it is. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

• A) Many of these kivas were constructed close to the living quarters of a settlement.
• B) A bench runs along the inner wall of the round chamber, and a fire pit is set into the floor at the very center where the community would gather.
• C) These chambers served the community as places for gatherings and for ceremonies.
• D) A kiva is a round chamber, set partly below ground and entered through an opening in its roof, that the Ancestral Puebloans used for gatherings. ✓

Explanation: Choice D is the best answer. The sentence names the structure and tells an unfamiliar reader what it is: a partly underground round chamber, entered from the roof, used for gatherings. Choice A gives a fact about where kivas were placed without saying what a kiva is. Choice B describes the inside of the chamber but never introduces the kiva or says what kind of structure it is for a reader meeting it for the first time. Choice C states what kivas were used for without explaining what kind of structure a kiva is.