SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Transitions (Drill 7)

Question 1. The Greenland shark grows so slowly, barely a centimeter a year, that a single animal can live for centuries, an almost unbelievable lifespan for a vertebrate. The figure is no exaggeration drawn from legend. ______ radiocarbon dating of proteins in their eye lenses suggests that some individuals swimming today may be nearly four centuries old, with the oldest estimates stretching well past three hundred years. Few creatures with backbones come anywhere close to such a span, which makes this slow northern shark a genuine outlier among them.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Nevertheless,
• B) Indeed, ✓
• C) In contrast,
• D) Meanwhile,

Explanation: (B) "Indeed" confirms and intensifies the prior claim: the lifespan sounds unbelievable, and the dating evidence -- some individuals may be nearly four centuries old -- shows it is real and even more striking than stated. The base-rate close ("few creatures come close") seals the outlier status the blank reinforces. "Nevertheless" is the planted trap, baited by the gap between a few centuries and the everyday lifespans readers expect. It misses because the evidence does not push back against the claim; it backs it up, so no contrast exists to mark. "In contrast" likewise calls for a contrast, but the dating supports rather than opposes the long-life claim. "Meanwhile" suggests a parallel event in time, and nothing else is unfolding alongside the measurement.

Question 2. Soil scientists once treated the fine fungi threading through a forest floor as minor tenants of the ecosystem, useful for breaking down litter but essentially peripheral. Careful tracing of carbon and nutrients through forest soils has complicated that view, revealing that the fungal networks can move resources between roots and may link neighboring trees in intricate ways. ______ these buried threads are now mapped as living infrastructure in their own right, surveyed and protected much as a city planner would treat the pipes and cables beneath a street rather than the plain soil around them.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) For example,
• B) In other words,
• C) As such, ✓
• D) Conversely,

Explanation: (C) "As such" carries the finding into the action it prompted: because the networks proved far more important than once thought, scientists now map and protect them as infrastructure. The blank links a changed understanding to the changed practice that follows from it. "For example" would turn the mapping into an instance of the prior claim, but it is a consequence of that claim, not a sample of it. "In other words" announces a restatement, and treating fungi as city infrastructure is a new downstream practice, not a paraphrase -- this is the one students fall for when they read the analogy as mere rewording. "Conversely" signals a reversal, yet the second sentence flows directly from the first rather than opposing it.

Question 3. The conductor and teacher Nadia Boulanger believed that a young composer learned far more from analyzing a single Bach chorale in exhaustive depth than from skimming dozens of scores in a hurry. She wanted her students to feel how every inner voice earned its place in the harmony before they ever set down a bar of their own. ______ she would assign one short passage for an entire week, returning to it from a fresh analytical angle each day until its logic had become second nature to everyone in the room.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Even so,
• B) Previously,
• C) In comparison,
• D) With this in mind, ✓

Explanation: (D) "With this in mind" ties Boulanger's aim -- students feeling how each voice earns its place -- to the method designed to reach it, a week on one passage. The blank connects a goal to the practice undertaken in service of it. "Even so" sets up a concession, but the weeklong assignment carries out her belief rather than working against it. "Previously" places the method earlier in time, and the passage presents it as the deliberate expression of the goal just stated, not a prior phase -- the tempting misread for those who treat the two sentences as a timeline. "In comparison" asks the reader to weigh two things side by side, yet only one approach is described here.

Question 4. For years, local guides told visitors that the bright turquoise of certain alpine lakes came from colored minerals dissolved in the water, as if the vivid hue were a kind of permanent stain soaked through it. Closer study tells a rather different story. The color is not dissolved into the water at all; ______ it comes from fine rock flour, ground by glaciers upstream and held in suspension, which scatters incoming light back toward the surface. Filter off that floating powder in a glass and the striking color vanishes along with it.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) rather, ✓
• B) similarly,
• C) for instance,
• D) as a result,

Explanation: (A) "rather" performs the correction the passage builds toward: not dissolved minerals but suspended rock flour. The blank follows a negation ("not dissolved at all") and supplies the true cause in its place, which is exactly the swap this word performs. "Similarly" claims the second explanation matches the first, but the passage rejects the first outright. "For instance" would frame suspended flour as an example of dissolved minerals, which contradicts the very distinction being drawn. "As a result" reads the true cause as an effect of the false one, and that is the closest trap, since the sentence does describe a cause. It breaks down because the rock flour is the corrected explanation, not a consequence of the mineral idea the passage discards.

Question 5. When a beaver dam raises the water level behind it, the pooled water spreads sideways into the surrounding soil and slows its own headlong rush downhill. The soaked ground then stores moisture that would otherwise run off in a single sudden pulse after every heavy storm. ______ streams below the dam keep flowing steadily through dry spells that would leave an undammed channel cracked and bare, so a structure built by one family of beavers ends up steadying the water supply of a whole valley.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) For one thing,
• B) In turn, ✓
• C) Admittedly,
• D) To illustrate,

Explanation: (B) "In turn" carries the chain one link further: stored moisture leads, in its turn, to streams that keep flowing in drought. Each sentence is a step whose effect feeds the next, and the blank marks that hand-off down the sequence. "For one thing" would open a list of separate reasons, yet the sustained flow is the next link in one causal chain, not the first of several parallel points. "Admittedly" concedes a point against the argument, and the passage keeps building the same case without conceding anything. "To illustrate" promises an example of the prior idea, whereas the dry-spell flow is the further result of it -- the misstep for readers who treat a downstream effect as a mere illustration.