SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Transitions (Drill 20)

Question 1. The pianist and composer Clara Schumann became famous across Europe as one of the great performers of her age, a reputation that could easily make her own compositions seem secondary to the celebrated works audiences flocked to the concert hall to hear. ______ early in her career she sometimes placed a piece of her own beside the showpieces and sonatas on a printed program, letting a hall that had arrived for familiar repertoire also encounter, if only briefly, music she herself had written.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) All the while,
• B) To counter that, ✓
• C) As expected,
• D) All the same,

Explanation: (B) The first sentence sets up a problem -- her fame as a performer could overshadow her own music -- and the blank introduces her response to it. "To counter that" links the difficulty to the step she took against it. (A) "All the while" marks something going on throughout a span of time, but the sentence introduces a deliberate response to a worry, not a simultaneous background activity. (C) "As expected" frames the action as a predicted outcome, yet it is a purposeful response to a worry, not a foregone result. (D) "All the same" concedes against the prior point, while her strategy follows from that point instead of holding despite it.

Question 2. Early builders who tried to roof a wide room in stone ran into a stubborn limit: a flat stone beam cracks through the middle once it grows long, because stone resists being squeezed far better than it resists being stretched apart; ______ as the beam lengthens, its mounting weight bears down ever harder on the walls and columns beneath it, so a simple flat slab could bridge only a narrow gap before some arched or trussed form of roofing became unavoidable for anything wider.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) worse still, ✓
• B) by contrast,
• C) in conclusion,
• D) for this purpose,

Explanation: (A) "Worse still" piles a second, separate problem on the first: beyond cracking through the middle, the lengthening beam loads down the walls and columns that carry it. A new drawback is added to the earlier one, sharpening the difficulty. (B) "By contrast" sets up an opposition, but the weight problem extends the first difficulty rather than offsetting it. (C) "In conclusion" signals a closing summary, yet the clause introduces a further problem instead of wrapping the point up. (D) "For this purpose" announces a means toward a goal, while no goal is in view -- the clause names another flaw, not a purpose.

Question 3. The textile artist Anni Albers found that weaving forced every idea through a strict grid, since a thread could only ever pass over or under another and never blur softly between the two. Rather than chafe against that hard rule, she chose to treat it as the very source of her designs; ______ her woven pictures grew directly out of the loom's own logic, their patterns assembled from the simple over-under binary the threads allowed and never from anything the structure plainly forbade.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) even then,
• B) instead,
• C) appropriately, ✓
• D) meanwhile,

Explanation: (C) The result grows straight out of the constraint that shaped it: having embraced the loom's over-or-under rule, her designs follow fittingly from that logic. "Appropriately" captures how aptly the work suits its medium. (A) "Even then" concedes that something holds despite a condition, but nothing is being conceded -- the designs flow from the rule, not against it. (B) "Instead" replaces one course with another, yet the sentence confirms the approach just described rather than substituting a different one. (D) "Meanwhile" places two events in the same span of time, while the clause judges how well the work matches the loom, not what happened alongside it.

Question 4. When swallows gather by the hundreds on telephone wires and then wheel away together south in autumn, it is easy to imagine that a sudden snap of cold weather is what drives them off. The birds do indeed leave as the season turns chilly. ______ careful study has shown that shortening daylight sets the broad seasonal schedule, even as passing weather can still nudge the exact day of departure, since the length of the day shifts on a fixed astronomical cycle that no warm or cold spell can shift.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Similarly,
• B) As a result,
• C) In particular,
• D) More accurately, ✓

Explanation: (D) "More accurately" corrects the tempting explanation with a fuller one: the cold looks like the trigger, but day length does more to set the season's schedule. A surface guess gives way to the better-supported cause. (A) "Similarly" signals agreement, but the second idea overturns the temperature explanation rather than echoing it. (B) "As a result" draws a consequence, yet the daylight finding does not follow from the cold as an effect; it corrects the assumption about it. (C) "In particular" narrows to a detail of the prior claim, while this sentence overturns that claim instead of zooming in on it.

Question 5. A single grain of volcanic glass can record how fast it once cooled, since slow cooling gives crystals time to grow within the melt while a sudden chill freezes it smooth and clear before any can form. Some obsidian cooled so quickly, against the chilled edge of a flow or in cold water, that it holds no crystals at all. ______ lava that oozes out and cools over days or weeks fills with countless tiny mineral grains, a common texture that makes crystal-free glass the exception.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) On the contrary,
• B) All the same,
• C) Typically, ✓
• D) In any case,

Explanation: (C) "Typically" introduces the usual case against which the rarity shows: most lava cools slowly and fills with crystals, so glass with none is unusual. How the ordinary rock behaves is what marks the crystal-free kind as exceptional. (A) "On the contrary" would deny the prior sentence, but the slow-cooling norm supports the claim about fast-cooled glass rather than refuting it. (B) "All the same" holds a point firm against a counterweight, yet the common texture reinforces the previous sentence instead of resisting it. (D) "In any case" waves the prior point aside as no longer mattering, while the ordinary texture is precisely what makes the glass exceptional.