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SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Rhetorical Synthesis (Drill 15)

Drill 15 · Reading & Writing · Hard Rhetorical Synthesis

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Rhetorical Synthesis (Drill 15) is a Reading & Writing practice drill covering Hard Rhetorical Synthesis. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

Hard Rhetorical Synthesis questions present a set of research notes and a specific writing goal, then ask you to choose the sentence that best accomplishes that goal using only the notes. The wrong answers are usually accurate statements that serve a different purpose than the one asked for, or that subtly misstate the notes. Match the rhetorical task exactly.

Questions & Explanations

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • Tempera is a fast-drying paint made by mixing colored pigment with egg yolk as the binder. • Oil paint, by contrast, mixes the same kind of pigment with a slow-drying vegetable oil. • Tempera sets within minutes as the water in it evaporates, so a painter builds an image in many thin, hatched strokes. • Oil paint dries slowly over days as the oil reacts with the air, which lets a painter blend colors and rework an area long after laying it down. • Tempera also keeps its color well over centuries, while some oil paints yellow as they age.

Question 1. The student wants to convey the key difference between tempera and oil paint in how each one dries. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) Tempera holds its color well across centuries, whereas some oil paints take on a yellow cast as they grow old.
  • B) Tempera is made by mixing pigment with egg yolk, while oil paint mixes that same pigment with a slow-drying oil.
  • C) Because oil paint stays workable for days, a painter can blend its colors and rework an area far more easily than with tempera.
  • D) Tempera sets within minutes as its water evaporates, while oil paint dries slowly over days as the oil reacts with the air. ✓

Explanation: Choice D is the best answer. The sentence states the core difference the goal targets, fast drying by evaporation in tempera versus slow drying by reaction with air in oil. Choice A contrasts how well the two paints keep their color over time, not the difference in how each dries. Choice B contrasts the two paints only by their binders, stopping short of how each one dries. Choice C describes a consequence of oil's slow drying, the chance to blend and rework, rather than stating the difference in drying itself.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • A tide mill grinds grain using the rise and fall of the sea instead of a flowing river. • At high tide, seawater flows through a gate into a holding pond and is then trapped behind it. • As the tide falls, the gate is opened and the stored water rushes out, turning a waterwheel that drives the millstones. • This lets the mill run twice a day, on a schedule set by the tides rather than by rainfall. • Tide mills were a familiar sight in some coastal towns, where they stood beside the harbor.

Question 2. The student wants to introduce the tide mill to readers who already understand how an ordinary river watermill works. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) In some coastal towns the tide mill was a familiar sight, standing beside the harbor for all to see.
  • B) A tide mill works like a river watermill, except it turns its wheel with seawater stored at high tide and released as the tide falls. ✓
  • C) At high tide, seawater passes through an open gate into a holding pond beside the mill, where it is then trapped behind the gate once the gate has been closed.
  • D) A tide mill is able to operate twice each day, on a timetable set by the tides rather than by the rainfall.

Explanation: Choice B is the best answer. The sentence introduces the tide mill by building on what the reader already knows about a river mill and naming the key change, stored tidal water in place of a flowing river. Choice A notes where tide mills stood, giving no introduction to how the mill works. Choice C describes one step in the cycle rather than introducing the mill against the familiar river-mill model. Choice D states how often the mill runs but never connects it to the river watermill the reader already understands.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • The harbor of an old trading city silted up over centuries until large ships could no longer reach the docks. • Records from the time describe merchants moving their business downriver to a new port with deeper water. • Within a generation, the old city's market squares emptied and its warehouses fell into disuse. • A chronicle of the period laments that grass grew in streets once crowded with traders. • The new downriver port, meanwhile, expanded quickly as trade gathered there.

Question 3. The student wants to provide historical context for why the old city declined. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) A chronicle of the period laments that grass came to grow in the city's streets, the very streets that had once been crowded with traders.
  • B) The new port downriver, for its part, grew quickly as trade gathered at its deeper docks.
  • C) As the harbor silted up over centuries, large ships could no longer reach the docks, and merchants moved their trade downriver to a deeper port. ✓
  • D) Within a single generation, the old city's market squares stood empty and its warehouses fell out of use.

Explanation: Choice C is the best answer. The sentence supplies the causal background the goal wants, the silting harbor that shut out big ships and pushed merchants to a deeper port downriver. Choice A quotes a vivid lament about the decline's effect, not the context that caused it. Choice B describes the rival port's growth rather than why the old city declined. Choice D reports the result of the decline, empty squares and idle warehouses, without the context behind it.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • A flying buttress is a stone arch that braces the outside wall of a tall building. • The arch reaches from the upper part of the wall down to a heavy support pier standing apart from it. • It catches the outward push of the high roof and carries that force down into the pier and the ground. • This let builders raise thinner, taller walls with large windows that could not stand on their own. • The same buttresses are often carved and decorated so they add to the building's appearance.

Question 4. The student wants to define what a flying buttress is. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) A flying buttress is an outside stone arch that carries the roof's outward push into a separate pier and to the ground. ✓
  • B) The arch extends from high on the wall down to a massive support pier that stands apart from the building.
  • C) These buttresses are frequently carved and ornamented so that they enhance the building's overall appearance.
  • D) Thinner and taller walls set with large windows, unable to stand on their own, became possible once builders began adding this external bracing.

Explanation: Choice A is the best answer. The sentence defines the flying buttress directly, an external arch that channels the roof's outward thrust into a separate pier and to the ground. Choice B describes the arch's span toward the pier, part of the structure, but is not framed as a definition. Choice C notes that buttresses are often decorated, unrelated to defining what one is. Choice D states what flying buttresses made possible rather than defining what one is.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • Columns of basalt rock sometimes stand packed together in tall, many-sided pillars. • They form when a thick sheet of lava cools and slowly shrinks, cracking as it contracts. • The cracks tend to meet at angles that split the rock into long columns, many with six sides. • A formation of these columns can look so regular that early observers thought it must have been built rather than formed by nature. • One traveler's journal calls a famous basalt headland a staircase fit for giants.

Question 5. The student wants to explain the significance of the basalt columns' strikingly regular shape. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) Columns of basalt sometimes stand close together in tall pillars with many sides.
  • B) A famous headland of these basalt columns is described in one early traveler's journal as a great staircase fit for giants.
  • C) The columns looked so regular that early observers thought they must have been built rather than formed naturally. ✓
  • D) The cracks in the cooling lava tend to meet at angles that break the rock into long columns, many of them six-sided.

Explanation: Choice C is the best answer. The sentence states why the regular shape matters, it was so orderly that early observers assumed human construction, which is the significance the goal seeks. Choice A describes the columns' appearance without addressing why their regularity is significant. Choice B quotes a colorful nickname for the formation, not the significance of its regular shape. Choice D explains how the cracking produces the columns, the mechanism, not the significance of their regularity.