SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Transitions (Drill 21)

Question 1. When the violinmaker Antonio Stradivari was working in Cremona, his instruments earned admiration for their carrying power, and later writers often credited a secret varnish recipe that was supposedly lost to time. ______ chemical studies of the surviving instruments find little that is unusual in the finish itself. But the density and graining of the spruce he selected, shaped over many seasons of slow drying in the workshop, are among the factors researchers now weigh more heavily than any lost recipe.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Until then,
• B) That said, ✓
• C) In effect,
• D) For instance,

Explanation: (B) "That said" concedes the appeal of the varnish-secret legend before the following "But" introduces evidence that complicates it; the blank sets up a concession the next sentence pushes against. "Until then" would mark a span of time before some later event, but no sequence of moments is at issue. "In effect" would restate the legend in plainer terms, yet the next sentence contradicts rather than rephrases it. "For instance" would make the chemical studies an example of the secret recipe, when they actually undercut it.

Question 2. Determined to map the ocean floor at a time when most charts simply marked deep water as featureless blank space, the geologist Marie Tharp set out to render the Atlantic seabed as actual terrain rather than as empty depth. ______ she translated thousands of sounding measurements into careful cross-sectional profiles, drawing ridges and valleys by hand across long sheets of paper. The mid-ocean rift she traced in those drawings would later help persuade many doubtful geologists that the seafloor was slowly spreading apart.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Even then,
• B) In any case,
• C) Predictably,
• D) To this end, ✓

Explanation: (D) "To this end" links Tharp's stated goal of rendering the seabed as terrain to the method she adopted to reach it, converting soundings into hand-drawn profiles; the relationship runs from purpose to means. "Even then" signals concession, but the second sentence advances the goal rather than working against it. "In any case" would brush the goal aside as not mattering, when the method exists precisely to serve it. "Predictably" would frame the method as an expected outcome, not as the deliberate step taken toward the aim.

Question 3. Histories of early aviation often present the glider experiments of Otto Lilienthal as a straightforward prelude to powered flight, a tidy first chapter to be turned before the engine finally arrives on the scene. ______ his careful records of lift and wing curvature were studied closely by later designers, who treated them as working data rather than as a quaint rehearsal. Read in that light, the experiments look less like a brief preface and more like a foundation that powered flight was actually built upon.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Likewise,
• B) Then again, ✓
• C) As a result,
• D) In short,

Explanation: (B) "Then again" reopens the tidy first-chapter framing and qualifies it with a competing view in which the records were serious data; the blank introduces a correction to the opening claim. "Likewise" would add a parallel point, but the second sentence pushes against the first rather than echoing it. "As a result" would draw a consequence from the opening claim, yet the passage revises that claim instead. "In short" would compress the same point, when the sentence instead shifts to an opposing reading.

Question 4. Studying the seeds buried in old soil layers, botanists on a meadow restoration project found that the site's original wildflowers had left a dormant seed bank still viable after decades underground; ______ the team chose not to sow any commercial seed across the ground at all. Instead they cleared away the invasive cover and simply waited through a season, letting the buried stock germinate on its own and slowly reproduce the meadow that had grown there long before the field was abandoned.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) on that basis, ✓
• B) all the same,
• C) by comparison,
• D) meanwhile,

Explanation: (A) "On that basis" makes the decision to skip commercial seed a consequence of the finding that a viable bank survived; the blank moves from evidence to the action it warranted. "All the same" would press on despite the finding, but the finding is exactly what shapes the decision. "By comparison" would set two cases side by side, when only one situation and its result are described. "Meanwhile" would mark a simultaneous, separate event rather than a result of the discovery.

Question 5. The medieval scribes who copied manuscripts in monastic workrooms did far more than reproduce text: they ruled the guidelines, mixed the inks, and prepared the parchment surface so that the letters would sit evenly within their columns. ______ many of them added marginal notes correcting errors they happened to notice in the copies they were working from, refining the texts as they went. The finished books therefore carried both the original work and a thin layer of the scribe's own editorial judgment.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Instead,
• B) Conversely,
• C) In sum,
• D) Beyond that, ✓

Explanation: (D) "Beyond that" adds the scribes' editorial corrections to the physical preparation already listed, extending the range of their work; the blank stacks a further contribution onto the first. "Instead" would replace the preparation work with the corrections, but the sentence keeps both. "Conversely" sets the two activities in opposition, when they are complementary parts of the same labor. "In sum" would summarize the preceding point, yet a new and distinct activity is being introduced.