SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Transitions (Drill 22)

Question 1. When the choreographer Martha Graham first built her early solos, some critics described the angular, sharply contracted movements as cold and withholding, more anatomical diagram than dance; ______ many audiences returning to those very same works found them charged with feeling once they stopped expecting the long, flowing lines of classical ballet. The vocabulary that had at first looked severe came to read, for a great many viewers, as a remarkably direct way of putting inner states onto the open stage.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) all the same, ✓
• B) as expected,
• C) in particular,
• D) for one thing,

Explanation: (A) "All the same" holds the critics' cold-and-clinical verdict in place while turning to the opposite audience response; the blank marks a contrast between two readings of the same movement. "As expected" would present the warm response as predicted by the cold reviews, but it runs against them. "In particular" would zoom in on the same point, when the sentence pivots to a competing reaction. "For one thing" would begin a list of reasons supporting the first claim, not reverse it.

Question 2. Astronomers had long known that some stars brighten and dim again on a regular schedule, but Henrietta Leavitt noticed something far more useful in one particular class of them. ______ she found that the time a Cepheid variable takes to complete a single cycle is tied to its true brightness, so that its period quietly reveals how luminous the star really is. That relationship handed observers a long-sought way to gauge the vast distances to the faint star fields where such variables appear.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Even then,
• B) Conversely,
• C) More precisely, ✓
• D) After all,

Explanation: (C) "More precisely" sharpens the loose opening idea that some stars vary on a schedule into Leavitt's exact finding about period and brightness; the blank narrows a general statement into a specific one. "Even then" would concede a limit despite the finding, but nothing is being conceded here. "Conversely" sets up an opposite case, yet the second sentence refines rather than reverses the first. "After all" would justify the opening claim, when the sentence instead specifies what Leavitt actually discovered.

Question 3. Bell founders pouring large bronze bells learned that the exact pitch could never be tuned reliably while the metal was still molten, since the final tone depended on the cooled casting's thickness and overall shape. ______ they cast each bell slightly thick on purpose, leaving themselves a margin of metal to work with. Once the casting had set hard, they carefully shaved metal from the inside on a lathe, lowering the note by tiny amounts until the bell at last rang exactly true.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Otherwise,
• B) So, ✓
• C) All the while,
• D) Similarly,

Explanation: (B) "So" makes casting the bell deliberately thick the result of the fact that pitch could not be set in molten metal; the blank moves from a fixed constraint to the practice it forced on the founders. "Otherwise" would describe what happens if the constraint were ignored, but the sentence states what founders actually did. "All the while" would mark something going on at the same time, yet the practice follows from the constraint rather than running alongside it. "Similarly" would add a parallel case, when only one casting method is under discussion.

Question 4. The naturalist illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian traveled to Suriname to draw tropical insects directly from life, and a few of the strange metamorphoses she recorded were later questioned by specialists who could not readily reproduce them. ______ a number of her observations of which caterpillars fed on which particular plants did look unusual for her time. Still, modern entomologists have since confirmed many of those pairings, and her plates are now read as early field ecology rather than as mere decoration.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) True enough, ✓
• B) In turn,
• C) As a result,
• D) Likewise,

Explanation: (A) "True enough" grants the doubts raised about Merian's recorded metamorphoses, after which the later "Still" swings back to her vindication; the blank opens a concession the passage then answers. "In turn" would mark a next step in a sequence, but the sentence concedes a point rather than advancing one. "As a result" would make the unusual observations a consequence of the doubts, which they are not. "Likewise" would add a parallel, when the sentence instead acknowledges a complicating fact.

Question 5. A suspension bridge carries its long roadway on cables that hang in a gentle curve, and the tall towers feel that load mainly as a downward push they can pass straight into the bedrock below. ______ a stone arch turns the weight resting above it into a squeeze that runs along the curve and out to the solid supports at each end. Both forms work by guiding force into shapes that the chosen material can comfortably bear in either compression or tension.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) On the contrary,
• B) For that reason,
• C) In short,
• D) Likewise, ✓

Explanation: (D) The two structures handle their loads by the same underlying principle, so the transition must mark a parallel; "Likewise" presents the stone arch as a second case obeying the rule the closing sentence states outright. "On the contrary" would deny the first description, but the arch illustrates the same idea rather than opposing it. "For that reason" would make the arch a consequence of the bridge, yet the two are independent examples of one principle, not cause and effect. "In short" would sum up the bridge sentence, when a new and parallel example is introduced instead.