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SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 1)

Drill 1 · Reading & Writing · Standard English Conventions

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 1) is a Reading & Writing practice drill covering Standard English Conventions. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

These five hard questions cover sentence punctuation, subject-verb agreement, modifier placement, and possessives. Each answer includes a full explanation.

Questions & Explanations

Text
In the 1960s, chemist Stephanie Kwolek was assigned to find a strong, lightweight fiber for car ________ that one polymer solution she produced looked unexpectedly cloudy and thin, she pushed to have it tested rather than thrown out.

Question 1. Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

  • A) tires. Noticing ✓
  • B) tires, noticing
  • C) tires and noticing
  • D) tires noticing

Explanation: Read past the blank and two complete sentences appear. The first is "In the 1960s, chemist Stephanie Kwolek was assigned to find a strong, lightweight fiber for car tires." The second is "Noticing that one polymer solution she produced looked unexpectedly cloudy and thin, she pushed to have it tested rather than thrown out," where the subject and verb are "she pushed" and the "Noticing..." phrase only describes her. Two full sentences need a full stop between them, so the period in (A) is the only choice that works. (B) joins them with a comma, a comma splice. (C) places "and" before "noticing," which pulls the participle into the first clause and leaves "she pushed to have it tested" with no clean connection, so the sentence runs together. (D) runs them together with no punctuation at all, a fused sentence.

Text
The collection of fossils unearthed at the Burgess Shale, a site in the Canadian Rockies famous for its exceptional preservation of soft-bodied organisms from the Cambrian period, ______ scientists' understanding of how early animal life diversified.

Question 2. Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

  • A) reshape
  • B) reshaping
  • C) has reshaped ✓
  • D) have reshaped

Explanation: The subject is "collection," which is singular; the plural nouns between it and the blank, "fossils" and "organisms," do not control the verb. The sentence needs the singular finite verb "has reshaped," so (C) is correct. (A) "reshape" and (D) "have reshaped" are plural, agreeing with the decoy nouns rather than the subject. (B) "reshaping" is a participle, not a finite verb, so it leaves the sentence with no main verb, a fragment.

Text
Marine biologists have long wondered why most deep-sea animals that make their own light glow blue rather than red, yellow, or ________ of all the colors in the visible spectrum, blue light penetrates seawater better than the rest, so a blue glow can reach prey and predators across greater distances in the dark.

Question 3. Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

  • A) green
  • B) green,
  • C) green and
  • D) green: ✓

Explanation: Everything before the blank, "most deep-sea animals... glow blue rather than red, yellow, or green," is a complete clause, and everything after it explains why blue is the usual color. A colon introduces an explanation that follows a complete clause, so (D) is right. (A) leaves the two clauses fused with nothing between them, a run-on. (B) puts only a comma between them, a comma splice. (C) uses "and," which simply adds the second clause instead of showing that it explains the first, which is the relationship the colon marks.

Text
Painted directly onto a layer of wet plaster so that the colors become part of the wall as it sets, ______

Question 4. Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

  • A) the technique known as buon fresco produced some of the Italian Renaissance's most enduring images.
  • B) some of the Italian Renaissance's most enduring images were created using the technique known as buon fresco. ✓
  • C) there are enduring images from the Italian Renaissance that were made using buon fresco.
  • D) the Italian Renaissance's most enduring images' creators relied on the technique known as buon fresco, per the passage's account.

Explanation: The opening phrase, "Painted directly onto a layer of wet plaster so that the colors become part of the wall as it sets," can describe only something that is itself painted onto plaster, namely the images. The clause has to begin with them, so (B), which puts "some of the Italian Renaissance's most enduring images" right after the modifier, is correct. (A) places "the technique known as buon fresco" next to the modifier, which says the technique was painted onto plaster. (C) opens with the empty "there," giving the modifier nothing to attach to. (D) places "creators" immediately after the modifier, so the sentence describes the creators, not the images, as painted onto wet plaster. All three are dangling modifiers.

Text
Although later critics often grouped them together, ______ founding manifestos set out aims that were, in important respects, opposed: one celebrated speed and the machine, the other the unconscious and the dream.

Question 5. Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

  • A) Futurisms and Surrealisms
  • B) Futurism and Surrealism's
  • C) Futurism's and Surrealism's ✓
  • D) Futurism's and Surrealisms as used in the sentence

Explanation: The sentence refers to the founding manifestos of two separate movements, Futurism and Surrealism, and because each movement has its own manifesto, each name needs its own possessive form: "Futurism's and Surrealism's." That makes (C) correct. (A) makes both names plain plurals, so neither one owns the manifestos. (B) puts the possessive only on the second name, "Futurism and Surrealism's," which treats the manifestos as shared by the two movements and does not fit a sentence that contrasts two separate movements. (D) gives Futurism a possessive but turns Surrealism into a bare plural, so only one of the two owns anything.