SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Transitions (Drill 9)

Question 1. When a desert receives one of its rare heavy rains, seeds that have lain dormant in the ground for years germinate within days, racing to flower and set seed before the precious moisture disappears. The plants compress an entire life cycle into a few short weeks of bloom. ______ certain desert shrimp hatch from tough eggs that survive long droughts buried in the dry, cracked mud, springing suddenly to life when a temporary pool forms and completing their whole breeding cycle before the shallow water evaporates again beneath the sun.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

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

Explanation: (B) "Similarly" links two cases that behave the same way: desert plants and desert shrimp both race through a full life cycle in the brief window that water allows. The blank joins parallel examples of one survival strategy, which is the match the relationship this word names. "However" signals contrast, but the shrimp do not differ from the plants; they illustrate the same pattern. "As a result" makes the shrimp a consequence of the plants, and the two are independent organisms, not cause and effect. "In particular" signals a narrowing to one case of the first, which tempts because the shrimp are a specific example. It is wrong because they are a separate parallel case, not a subset of the plant behavior just described.

Question 2. Maps from the age of sail often show a vast southern continent sprawling across the bottom of the world, drawn with confident, unbroken coastlines and inviting natural harbors. One might reasonably assume that such precise detail rested on direct observation by sailors who had actually landed there. ______ no navigator had seen the place at all; geographers had simply reasoned that a great southern landmass must exist to balance the known continents of the north, then sketched its shores from theory rather than from any recorded voyage.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Accordingly,
• B) Likewise,
• C) Specifically,
• D) In reality, ✓

Explanation: (D) "In reality" overturns the natural assumption -- that the maps rested on observation -- with the fact that no one had seen the continent. The blank pivots from what one might suppose to what was actually true, the correction this connector delivers. "Accordingly" would cast the absence of observers a logical result of the detailed maps, but it is the opposite, an unexpected reversal of them. "Likewise" claims agreement, and the second sentence contradicts the assumption rather than echoing it. "Specifically" sets up a sharper version of the prior point, which is the trap, since the sentence does add detail about the geographers. It fails because that detail refutes the assumption instead of refining it.

Question 3. Studies of how people actually read on screens have found that very long lines of text tire the eye, which must jump back across a wide blank gap to find the start of each new line and often loses its place somewhere along the way. Shorter measures let the eye return cleanly to the margin, sustaining a reader's focus over many pages. ______ many digital publications now set their body text in deliberately narrow columns, leaving wide empty margins that a print designer of an earlier era might once have rushed to fill.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Accordingly, ✓
• B) By contrast,
• C) For instance,
• D) Granted,

Explanation: (A) "Accordingly" carries the research finding into the practice it prompted: because short lines aid reading, publications now set narrow columns. The blank links a discovery to the deliberate design choice made in light of it. "By contrast" wants a clash of ideas, but the narrow columns follow from the finding rather than opposing it. "For instance" would turn the columns into an example of the finding, and they are instead a response to it -- the design adopted because of the result, not a sample of the result itself. "Granted" concedes a point against the argument, yet the passage keeps building one case, with the layout confirming the finding rather than qualifying it -- the lure for readers expecting a concession after evidence.

Question 4. The Antikythera mechanism, recovered by sponge divers from a Roman-era shipwreck, has astonished historians because it models the motions of the heavens with a precision that few expected from a device of its great age. Its corroded bronze gears do not merely turn at a steady rate; they reproduce subtle irregularities in the moon's path across the night sky. ______ one clever train of gears speeds and slows the moon's modeled motion to mirror the way it actually races and lingers, a refinement that would not reappear in European clockwork for many centuries.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Nevertheless,
• B) In comparison,
• C) To be exact, ✓
• D) In practice,

Explanation: (C) "To be exact" narrows from the broad claim -- the gears reproduce subtle irregularities -- to the precise mechanism, a gear train that speeds and slows the moon's motion. The second sentence specifies exactly what the first described in general, the sharpening move it performs. "Nevertheless" sets up a contrast, but the detailed gear train confirms the claim of precision rather than working against it. "In comparison" asks the reader to weigh two things, and only one device is under discussion here. "In practice" would set theory against real-world behavior, but the sentence is not drawing that line; it drills deeper into the same mechanism, sharpening the detail rather than testing it against practice.

Question 5. A new volcanic island first rises from the sea as bare, sterile rock, far too hostile and exposed for most forms of life to gain any foothold. Windblown spores settle onto it first, and hardy pioneering lichens slowly begin to break the bare stone into a thin soil that can hold a little moisture. Ferns and low shrubs then take root in that soil, and seabirds arriving from older islands drop seeds in their wake; ______ a green forest may cloak slopes that began as nothing but cooling, lifeless lava.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) by contrast,
• B) in the end, ✓
• C) in other words,
• D) for example,

Explanation: (B) "in the end" names the final stage of a long succession: bare rock to lichens to ferns to, at last, forest. The passage is a staged process across time, and the blank marks its culmination after the earlier steps have been laid out in order. "By contrast" calls for a contrast, but the forest is the endpoint of the sequence, not its opposite. "In other words" points to a restatement, and a mature forest is the outcome of the process, not a rewording of the earlier steps -- the snare for readers who hear the closing image as a summary. "For example" would frame the forest as an instance of the seed-dropping just mentioned, whereas it is the later result that the whole succession builds toward.