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SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Rhetorical Synthesis (Drill 16)

Drill 16 · Reading & Writing · Hard Rhetorical Synthesis

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Rhetorical Synthesis (Drill 16) 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 often true statements drawn from the notes that simply do not serve the stated goal, so read the goal with care.

Questions & Explanations

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • A foghorn is a device that warns ships of hazards near a coast when fog hides the shore from view. • The diaphone, a foghorn type once common, sounded a low note from compressed air driven through a slotted piston. • A keeper at a remote station would start the engines as fog rolled in, then wait beside the sounding horn through the night. • The diaphone's call ended in a short, abrupt drop in pitch, a feature sailors used to tell one station from another. • Newer stations replaced these horns with electronic emitters that need no compressed-air engines.

Question 1. The student wants to begin a narrative with a vivid scene of a foghorn keeper at work. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) A foghorn warns ships of coastal hazards at moments when a bank of fog has hidden the shore from a pilot's view.
  • B) As fog closed over the station that evening, the keeper started the engines and settled in beside the horn. ✓
  • C) The diaphone produced its low note by forcing compressed air through a piston that was fitted with narrow slots.
  • D) Many later stations swapped the old air-driven horns for electronic emitters that required no engines at all.

Explanation: Choice B is the best answer. The sentence opens on a specific moment, the keeper starting the engines and settling in beside the horn as the fog arrives. Choice A states the general definition of a foghorn rather than placing a keeper in a particular moment. Choice C explains how the diaphone made its sound, a mechanism detail rather than a narrative scene. Choice D points to a later technical change at the stations, exposition with no keeper or scene in it.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • Both the cob wall and the rammed-earth wall are building methods that raise thick walls from earth dug near the site. • A cob wall is built up by hand in soft lifts of clay-rich earth mixed with straw, each lift left to firm before the next. • A rammed-earth wall is made by compacting slightly damp earth in hard layers inside a sturdy timber form. • Both kinds of wall are thick enough to hold warmth from the day and release it slowly after dark. • Cob walls are often shaped with gentle curves, while rammed-earth walls usually rise straight from their forms.

Question 2. The student wants to emphasize a similarity between cob and rammed-earth walls. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) Both cob and rammed-earth walls are thick enough to store the day's warmth and give it back slowly once night falls. ✓
  • B) A cob wall is raised by hand in soft lifts of strawy clay, each lift left to firm before another is added on top.
  • C) Rammed-earth walls are made by packing damp earth in firm layers inside a strong timber form built to shape them.
  • D) Cob walls are often given gentle curves, whereas rammed-earth walls usually rise in straight planes from their forms.

Explanation: Choice A is the best answer. The sentence names a property the two methods share, thick walls that store the day's warmth and release it slowly after dark. Choice B describes only how a cob wall is built, a feature of one method rather than a shared one. Choice C describes only how a rammed-earth wall is made, again a single method rather than a similarity. Choice D draws a contrast in shape between the two, the opposite of the shared trait the goal calls for.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • Marquetry and parquetry both set thin pieces of wood veneer into a surface to make a pattern. • Marquetry arranges veneers of differing color and grain into pictures, such as flowers, birds, or scenes. • Parquetry instead arranges veneers into repeating geometric figures, such as stars, cubes, or lattices. • A worker cuts the shapes, fits them edge to edge like a puzzle, then glues the assembled sheet to a base. • The richest marquetry pictures may draw on a dozen or more wood species chosen for their natural tints.

Question 3. The student wants to explain the difference between marquetry and parquetry. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) In both marquetry and parquetry, thin wood veneers are cut to shape and set into a surface to form a pattern.
  • B) Marquetry arranges its veneers into pictures such as flowers or birds, while parquetry arranges them into repeating geometric figures. ✓
  • C) A worker cuts the veneer shapes, fits them edge to edge like puzzle pieces, and glues the finished sheet onto a base.
  • D) The finest marquetry pictures can call on a dozen or more different kinds of wood, each one picked for its own natural color.

Explanation: Choice B is the best answer. The sentence sets the defining contrast side by side, pictorial images in marquetry against repeating geometric figures in parquetry, which is the difference the goal targets. Choice A states what the two crafts share rather than how they differ. Choice C covers a step common to both crafts, not a point of difference between them. Choice D adds a detail about marquetry alone, with no comparison to parquetry.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • The trebuchet is a medieval siege engine that hurls a heavy projectile using a long pivoting arm. • A massive weighted box hangs from the short end of the arm; the projectile rides in a sling at the long end. • When the box is released, it drops and swings the long arm upward, flinging the sling's load toward a distant target. • In tests, a counterweight trebuchet can throw a stone of roughly a hundred kilograms across a few hundred meters. • A crew had to reset the engine after each shot by winching the heavy box back to its raised starting position.

Question 4. The student wants to introduce the trebuchet to readers unfamiliar with it and convey what powers its throw. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) A crew reset the trebuchet between shots by winching the heavy weighted box back up to its raised starting point.
  • B) In trials, a counterweight trebuchet can fling a stone of about a hundred kilograms over a distance of several hundred meters.
  • C) A weighted box hangs from the arm's short end, while the projectile sits in a sling fixed at the long end of the arm.
  • D) The trebuchet, a medieval siege engine, hurls a projectile when its falling weighted box swings the long arm upward. ✓

Explanation: Choice D is the best answer. The sentence names the device for a new reader and ties its throw to the falling weighted box, meeting both parts of the goal at once. Choice A describes only the resetting of the engine, telling a newcomer neither what it is nor what drives the throw. Choice B reports how far it can throw, a result that skips both what the engine is and what powers it. Choice C lays out where the box and projectile hang but never says the falling box is what drives the throw.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • People once held that swallows vanished each autumn by burying themselves in pond mud to sleep through the winter. • A study fitted tiny geolocators to swallows and tracked individual birds as they traveled south and returned. • The recovered tracks showed the same birds wintering thousands of kilometers away, not lying dormant in any pond. • The birds leave when cold weather cuts off the flying insects they feed on and come back when mild weather returns. • Swallows do skim low over water to drink and snatch insects, which may have helped the old pond story take hold.

Question 5. The student wants to correct the mistaken belief that swallows spend the winter dormant in pond mud. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) Tracking data showed the same swallows wintering thousands of kilometers away, not lying dormant in pond mud. ✓
  • B) Swallows often skim low across the surface of a pond to drink and to snatch insects from just above the water.
  • C) A study attached tiny geolocators to swallows so that individual birds could be followed throughout their travels.
  • D) Swallows leave once cold weather cuts off the flying insects they eat, then return again when milder weather arrives.

Explanation: Choice A is the best answer. The sentence refutes the pond-mud belief directly with the tracking evidence that the birds winter far away, which is what the goal asks for. Choice B describes the skimming behavior that fed the myth without correcting it. Choice C reports the method of the study but not the finding that overturns the belief. Choice D explains why the birds leave, a true point that still does not address the dormancy claim head on.