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SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Rhetorical Synthesis (Drill 8)

Drill 8 · Reading & Writing · Hard Rhetorical Synthesis

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Rhetorical Synthesis (Drill 8) 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 bird's beak shape is closely tied to the food it eats. • A field guide described several species to show the pattern. • A finch with a short, thick beak cracks hard seeds, while a warbler with a slender beak picks insects from bark. • A heron's long, pointed beak spears fish, and a hummingbird's thin, tube-like beak reaches nectar deep in flowers. • Beak color, by contrast, has little to do with what a bird eats.

Question 1. The student wants to make and support a generalization about the relationship between beak shape and diet. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) A finch's short, thick beak is well suited to cracking the hard seeds that make up much of its diet.
  • B) Beak color, unlike beak shape, turns out to have little connection to what a bird eats.
  • C) A bird's beak shape tends to match its diet: thick beaks crack seeds, slender ones take insects, pointed ones spear fish, and tube-like ones reach nectar. ✓
  • D) A heron uses its long, pointed beak to spear fish in shallow water, and a hummingbird draws nectar from deep inside flowers through a thin, tube-like beak.

Explanation: Choice C is the best answer. The sentence states a generalization, beak shape matches diet, and backs it with the range of examples the notes supply. Choice A gives a single example with no general claim drawn from it. Choice B makes a point about beak color, not the relationship between beak shape and diet. Choice D lists two more examples but never states the pattern they illustrate.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • Tall stone cathedrals must keep their high walls from being pushed outward by the weight of the roof. • Two cathedrals were examined together. • The first braces its walls with flying buttresses, arched supports that reach from the upper wall to outer piers. • The second, built in a different country a century later, braces its walls with flying buttresses of much the same kind. • The two buildings differ in many decorative details of their carved fronts.

Question 2. The student wants to highlight a similarity between the two cathedrals. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) A tall stone cathedral has to keep the weight of its roof from pushing its high walls outward.
  • B) The carved fronts of the two cathedrals differ in many of their decorative details.
  • C) Flying buttresses are arched stone supports that reach from the upper part of a cathedral's wall out to freestanding piers some distance away.
  • D) Built a century apart and in different countries, both cathedrals brace their high walls with flying buttresses of much the same kind. ✓

Explanation: Choice D is the best answer. The sentence identifies what the two buildings share: both use flying buttresses of much the same kind despite their differences. Choice A gives background on the structural problem and names neither building, so it points to no shared trait. Choice B stresses how the two cathedrals differ, the opposite of the similarity the goal asks for. Choice C defines flying buttresses without saying that both cathedrals use them.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • A historic pipe organ in a concert hall had fallen silent after decades without repair. • Many of its wooden pipes had warped and its leather valves had cracked, so it could no longer play. • A team of specialists rebuilt the cracked valves and trued the warped pipes over several years. • When the work was finished, the organ could once again play across its full range of notes. • The instrument had first been built by a well-known organ maker.

Question 3. The student wants to introduce the restoration project to readers who already know the organ and to emphasize what the restoration achieved. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) This historic pipe organ had originally been built by a well-known organ maker of its day.
  • B) The restoration returned this familiar organ to playing across its full range of notes once again. ✓
  • C) Years of neglect had left the organ's many wooden pipes warped and its leather valves cracked and brittle, so the instrument gradually fell silent.
  • D) A team of specialists rebuilt the cracked leather valves and trued the warped wooden pipes over the course of several years.

Explanation: Choice B is the best answer. The sentence presents the project to readers who know the organ and foregrounds its result: the instrument plays its full range again. Choice A gives a fact about the organ's origin and says nothing about the restoration or its result. Choice C describes the damage that silenced the organ rather than what the restoration accomplished. Choice D reports the work performed but stops short of what it achieved.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • A water clock measures the passing of time by the steady movement of water. • Water flows at a constant rate from an upper basin into a lower one through a small opening. • As the lower basin fills, a float resting on the surface rises with the water. • The rising float moves a pointer along a marked scale, and the mark it reaches shows how much time has passed. • Some water clocks were decorated with elaborate figures around the basin.

Question 4. The student wants to explain the process by which a water clock measures time. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) A water clock keeps time by relying on the steady, even movement of water from one place to another.
  • B) Some of these water clocks were ornamented with elaborate carved figures arranged in a ring around the rim of the lower basin.
  • C) As the lower basin gradually fills with the water flowing into it, a float resting on the surface is carried steadily upward with it.
  • D) Water flows in at a steady rate, lifting a float whose rise moves a pointer along a scale to mark the time passed. ✓

Explanation: Choice D is the best answer. The sentence lays out the sequence the goal asks for: steady inflow raises a float, which drives a pointer that marks elapsed time. Choice A states what a water clock does in general but does not walk through how it works. Choice B describes decoration on some clocks, unrelated to the process of measuring time. Choice C captures one step, the float rising, without the rest of the process that registers the time.

Notes
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: • A common saying holds that lightning never strikes the same place twice. • A study tracked strikes on a set of tall towers over several storm seasons. • Several of the towers were struck on more than one occasion during that time. • One tower in the study recorded multiple strikes within a single storm. • The study's records also noted the time of day of each strike.

Question 5. The student wants to use the notes to refute the common saying about lightning. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

  • A) A familiar saying claims that lightning will never strike the same place twice.
  • B) The study's records contradict the saying: several towers were struck more than once, and one was struck repeatedly within a single storm. ✓
  • C) Records from the study also noted the time of day at which each lightning strike occurred.
  • D) Over the course of several storm seasons, the study followed the lightning strikes that landed on a group of tall towers standing in an open area.

Explanation: Choice B is the best answer. The sentence refutes the saying with the study's evidence: towers struck more than once, and one struck repeatedly in a single storm. Choice A restates the saying the goal asks you to refute rather than challenging it. Choice C adds a detail about timing that does nothing to contradict the saying. Choice D describes the study's method without presenting the evidence that refutes the claim.