SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Transitions (Drill 13)

Question 1. Barbara McClintock's painstaking work on maize in the 1940s revealed that genes are not always fixed in a single place along a chromosome, as the textbooks of her day assumed. Watching kernel after kernel, she found that certain segments could move from one position to another, switching nearby genes on and off and visibly altering the color patterns that appeared. ______ heredity was not the rigid sequence of immovable units that the genetics of the period took for granted, but something far more mobile, flexible, and responsive than anyone had pictured.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) For example,
• B) Nonetheless,
• C) Then again,
• D) Put differently, ✓

Explanation: (D) "Put differently" restates the finding in plainer terms: what the moving segments mean is that heredity is mobile, not rigid. The blank rewords the prior sentence's result rather than adding to it. "For example" promises an instance, but the sentence generalizes the finding rather than illustrating it. "Nonetheless" concedes against an expectation, yet the sentence agrees with the discovery and recasts it. "Then again" signals a reconsidering pivot, but the sentence reinforces the finding instead of qualifying or reversing it.

Question 2. For most of the nineteenth century, a navigator fixed a ship's longitude with a delicate marine chronometer that had to be wound on schedule, shielded from every temperature swing, and constantly compared against careful star sightings to catch any drift. A single jolt or a missed winding could throw off a reckoning by miles. ______ a vessel at sea could check its clocks against a precise time signal broadcast by radio from a shore station, and the old dependence on one fragile, easily disturbed instrument slowly began to fade.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) By the same token,
• B) Before long, ✓
• C) In short,
• D) All the same,

Explanation: (B) "Before long" advances the timeline from the era of fragile chronometers to the later arrival of radio time signals. The blank marks what came next in a sequence. "By the same token" claims the second sentence runs parallel to the first, but the radio signal changes the situation rather than matching the chronometer method. "In short" promises a summary, yet a new later development is being introduced. "All the same" concedes against an expectation, but the radio signal does not push back on the prior sentence; it succeeds it in time.

Question 3. The teacher Nadia Boulanger believed a young composer could not write convincingly until she could hear an entire score in her head, every line and harmony, without touching an instrument. She wanted her students to internalize harmony so completely that the printed page would become almost unnecessary to them, a mere record of what they already heard inside. ______ she drilled them in sight-singing and figured bass for hours on end, often making them work out a passage in the mind before confirming the sound at the keyboard.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Even then,
• B) On the other hand,
• C) Toward that goal, ✓
• D) That said,

Explanation: (C) "Toward that goal" connects Boulanger's stated aim -- students who could hear music internally -- to the method she used to reach it: sight-singing, figured-bass work, and mental hearing before checking the sound at the keyboard. The blank supplies the means for the goal. "Even then" concedes a limit despite some condition, but no such limit is in play; the drilling simply serves the aim. "On the other hand" sets up opposition, yet the training advances her goal rather than opposing it. "That said" signals a qualification or pivot, but nothing is being walked back here.

Question 4. Testing the metal alloys used in early aircraft, engineers discovered that a part could survive thousands of perfectly safe loadings and then fail with almost no warning, undone by fatigue cracks too fine to see during a routine inspection. A wing spar that passed every static strength test on the ground might still tear apart in the air after enough flights had quietly weakened it. ______ inspectors adopted fixed service lifetimes, retiring critical components on a set schedule rather than waiting for a visible flaw that might appear only too late.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Thus, ✓
• B) Otherwise,
• C) If anything,
• D) In particular,

Explanation: (A) "Thus" ties the troubling finding -- hidden fatigue cracks that defeat inspection -- to the decision it forced: scheduled retirement of parts. The action follows from the result. "Otherwise" describes what would happen under a different condition, but the sentence reports what inspectors actually did. "If anything" strengthens or adjusts a prior claim, yet the sentence draws a practical consequence rather than refining the finding. "In particular" narrows to a detail of the prior claim, when the sentence instead draws a consequence from it.

Question 5. Critics have long dismissed the medieval astrolabe as a charming curiosity, a brass toy soon left behind by sharper and more specialized instruments; ______ the device could not match a modern sextant for raw accuracy when a navigator needed one precise reading. Still, a single astrolabe could tell the time of day, find a latitude, and model the turning of the visible sky all at once, a versatility that very few of the later tools matched in one small, portable object a traveler could hang from a thumb.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) for this reason,
• B) to be sure, ✓
• C) as a result,
• D) in the same vein,

Explanation: (B) "to be sure" concedes the critics' point -- the astrolabe was less accurate -- before the following "Still" pivots to its remarkable versatility. The later "Still" is what reveals the turn. "for this reason" draws a consequence, but the blank grants a point rather than deriving an effect. "as a result" likewise reads the clause as an effect of the topic sentence, when it is a concession. "in the same vein" claims a parallel, yet the "Still" that follows shows a contrast is being set up, not an echo.