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SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Rhetorical Synthesis (Drill 29)

Drill 29 · Reading & Writing · Hard Rhetorical Synthesis

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Rhetorical Synthesis (Drill 29) 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: • A semaphore telegraph carried messages across country using a chain of towers, each within sight of the next. • On each tower stood a set of movable arms whose positions stood for letters and signals. • An operator read the arms of the tower ahead through a telescope, then set his own arms to match and pass the message on. • In this way a short message could leap from tower to tower far faster than a rider on horseback could carry it. • Because each tower had to see the next, the lines followed hilltops and went dark in fog or at night.

Question 1. The student wants to introduce the semaphore telegraph to readers who have never heard of it. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) The semaphore telegraph relayed messages along a chain of sightline towers, where operators copied movable arm signals from one tower to the next so a message traveled onward faster than a rider. ✓
  • B) An operator read the arms of the tower ahead through a telescope before setting his own arms to match them.
  • C) Because every tower in the chain had to keep the very next one in plain sight all along the route, the towers clung to bare hilltops and fell entirely useless in thick fog or after nightfall.
  • D) A short message could leap from one tower to the next far faster than a rider on horseback could carry it.

Explanation: Choice A is the best answer. The sentence introduces the system as a whole, relay towers passing arm signals onward faster than a rider, which is what the goal asks for. Choice B gives a single operating step, a detail rather than an overview. Choice C dwells on a limitation of the lines, a drawback rather than an introduction. Choice D states one advantage, a narrow point rather than a full introduction.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • An overshot wheel takes water at the top, where it pours into buckets along the rim. • The weight of the water filling those buckets pulls the overshot wheel around, so it runs on the water's weight. • An undershot wheel sits low in a stream, its flat paddles dipping into the current at the bottom. • The moving current pushes against those bottom paddles, so the undershot wheel runs on the water's motion rather than its weight. • Because a falling weight delivers more usable energy than a passing current, the overshot wheel is the more efficient of the two.

Question 2. The student wants to convey the difference between the two wheels in both where the water meets the wheel and which property of the water drives it. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) The overshot wheel is the more efficient of the two, since a falling weight of water delivers more usable energy than a passing current does.
  • B) The overshot wheel takes water at the top and turns on its weight, while the undershot wheel takes the current at the bottom and turns on its motion. ✓
  • C) An undershot wheel sits low in the stream so that its flat paddles dip into the passing current at the bottom of the wheel.
  • D) The overshot wheel fills top buckets while the undershot wheel dips bottom paddles into the stream below it.

Explanation: Choice B is the best answer. The sentence gives both bases the goal names, water at the top driving by weight versus water at the bottom driving by motion, for each wheel. Choice A reports the efficiency outcome, a consequence rather than the two-part difference. Choice C describes only the undershot wheel on only the placement base, not the paired contrast. Choice D contrasts where the water meets each wheel but omits which property of the water drives it.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • The student is drafting a fictionalized printer's manual, modeled on historical sources, whose quoted lines are invented. • A woodblock prints from the raised surface: the cutter clears away the blank areas and inks the lines left standing. • A copperplate prints from incised lines: the whole plate is inked, the surface is wiped clean, and ink stays only in the grooves. • The student wants a line that captures this opposition, that one method prints from what stands up and the other from what is cut in. • One invented manual line reads: "The block gives its raised lines to the page; the plate gives only what is cut beneath its wiped face."

Question 3. The student wants to quote the manual to capture how the two methods place ink on opposite parts of the surface. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) As the manual puts it, "the patient cutter clears the block until the design alone stands ready for the roller's ink."
  • B) As the manual notes, "copperplate work rewards a steady hand, since each incised line must be cut cleanly the first time."
  • C) As the manual observes, "both the block and the plate must be inked and pressed to paper before any image appears."
  • D) As the manual puts it, "the block gives its raised lines to the page; the plate gives only what is cut beneath its wiped face." ✓

Explanation: Choice D is the best answer. The sentence quotes the line that captures the opposed placement, raised lines on the block against incised lines on the plate, which is the contrast the goal asks for. Choice A quotes a line about the woodblock alone, emphasizing one method rather than the contrast. Choice B quotes a remark on the skill copperplate demands, not where the ink sits. Choice C quotes a shared requirement of both methods rather than the difference between them.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • A grain mill uses two round stones: a fixed bedstone below and a turning runner stone above. • The grinding faces are cut, or "dressed," with deep grooves called furrows separating flat areas called lands. • Grain is fed through a hole at the center, called the eye, of the runner stone. • As the runner turns, the furrow edges of the two stones pass each other like scissor blades and shear the grain into ever finer bits. • The furrows also sweep the grain outward toward the rim, where the closest part of the stones grinds it into flour.

Question 4. The student wants to summarize how a dressed millstone grinds grain into flour. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) The grinding faces of the two stones are dressed with a pattern of deep grooves, called the furrows, that separate the flat grinding areas between them, which are known as the lands.
  • B) As the runner stone turns above the bedstone, the sharp leading furrow edges of the two stones cross past each other much like the closing blades of a pair of shears.
  • C) Grain fed in at the runner's central eye is sheared finer by the passing furrow edges and swept out to the rim, where the close stones grind it to flour. ✓
  • D) A grain mill pairs a fixed bedstone below with a turning runner stone above it.

Explanation: Choice C is the best answer. The sentence condenses the whole process, grain entering at the eye, sheared by the furrows, and swept out to be ground at the rim, which is the summary the goal asks for. Choice A covers only the dressing of the stones, one part rather than the process. Choice B dwells on the scissor-like shearing as though it were the entire account rather than one stage of it. Choice D names the two stones, the parts rather than how they grind.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • Pemmican is made by drying lean meat hard, pounding it to a powder, and mixing it with melted fat in roughly equal parts. • Drying removes the moisture that bacteria and mold need, and the cooled fat seals the meat from air. • Together those two steps let pemmican keep for years without any refrigeration. • That keeping quality let Indigenous peoples of North America carry concentrated food through long journeys and lean winters. • Later, fur traders and polar explorers relied on pemmican for the same reason.

Question 5. The student wants to convey why pemmican mattered as a way to preserve food for travel. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) Because it kept for years without any refrigeration, pemmican let Indigenous peoples of North America carry concentrated food through their long journeys and lean winters. ✓
  • B) Pemmican is made by drying lean meat hard, pounding the dried meat to a fine powder, and mixing that powder with melted fat in roughly equal parts by weight.
  • C) The hard drying first removes the moisture that bacteria and mold would need in order to grow, while the cooled layer of fat then seals the pounded meat off from the surrounding air.
  • D) Later on, beyond its Indigenous origins, fur traders crossing the continent and even polar explorers came to rely on pemmican as a staple of their own.

Explanation: Choice A is the best answer. The sentence states why pemmican mattered, that its years-long keeping without refrigeration made long travel and winter survival possible, which is the significance the goal asks for. Choice B describes how pemmican is made, a method rather than its importance. Choice C explains the preserving mechanism, how it works rather than why it mattered. Choice D notes one later group of users, a single instance rather than the broad significance.