📐 SAT
📝 ACT
🎓 AP Exams
About Contact Blog Privacy Policy

SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 13)

Drill 13 · Reading & Writing · Standard English Conventions

0 / 5
←
Previous drill
Drill 12
Next drill
Drill 14
→
More Sat Reading Writing Standard English Conventions drills
Drill 1 5 questions → Drill 2 5 questions → Drill 3 5 questions → Drill 4 5 questions → Drill 5 5 questions → Drill 6 5 questions → Drill 7 5 questions → Drill 8 5 questions → Drill 9 5 questions → Drill 10 5 questions → Drill 11 5 questions → Drill 12 5 questions →
Drill 13 — current you are here
Drill 14 5 questions → Drill 15 5 questions → Drill 16 5 questions → Drill 17 5 questions → Drill 18 5 questions → Drill 19 5 questions → Drill 20 5 questions → Drill 21 5 questions → Drill 22 5 questions → Drill 23 5 questions → Drill 24 5 questions → Drill 25 5 questions → Drill 26 5 questions → Drill 27 5 questions → Drill 28 5 questions → Drill 29 5 questions → Drill 30 5 questions →

About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 13) 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 questions cover joining two independent clauses with a semicolon, the past perfect for the earlier of two past events, dangling modifiers, the possessive pronoun for a singular antecedent, and semicolons separating list items that contain their own commas.

Questions & Explanations

Text
Mendeleev left gaps in his periodic table for elements that had not yet been ______ even predicted the properties of several of them.

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

  • A) discovered, he
  • B) discovered; he ✓
  • C) discovered he
  • D) discovered, however, he

Explanation: Two complete sentences meet at the blank, so a semicolon joins them: "discovered; he even predicted" (B). (A) puts only a comma between the two clauses, which is a comma splice. (C) fuses the two sentences with no punctuation between them. (D) adds "however" but still leaves a comma where a semicolon belongs, so the splice remains.

Text
By the time twentieth-century researchers began studying the desert plateau, the Nazca people ______ the enormous ground drawings more than a thousand years earlier.

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

  • A) had created ✓
  • B) created
  • C) were creating
  • D) have created

Explanation: The drawings were made long before modern researchers arrived, and both events are in the past, so the earlier one takes the past perfect "had created" (A). (B) simple past flattens the order of the two events. (C) frames the work as an unfinished scene rather than a completed action. (D) present perfect ties the work to the present, which "more than a thousand years earlier" rules out.

Text
Photographing stars near the darkened sun during the 1919 eclipse, ______

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

  • A) the bending of starlight was what Eddington's team confirmed.
  • B) it was Eddington's team that confirmed the bending of starlight.
  • C) the confirmation of the bending of starlight came from Eddington's team.
  • D) Eddington's team confirmed that starlight bends near the sun. ✓

Explanation: The opening phrase names whoever was doing the photographing, so the noun right after the comma has to be the people who did it. (D) puts "Eddington's team" in that spot. (A) makes "the bending of starlight" the photographer. (B) buries the team inside "it was," leaving the opening phrase with no noun to attach to. (C) makes "the confirmation" the photographer. (D) is the only version whose first noun can logically perform the action in the opening phrase.

Text
When ocean temperatures stay high for too long, each coral colony expels the symbiotic algae inside ______ tissues, and a once vivid reef turns bone white.

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

  • A) their
  • B) they're
  • C) its ✓
  • D) it's

Explanation: Each coral colony is singular, so the possessive that refers back to it is "its" (C). (A) "their" agrees with the nearer plural "algae" instead of the real antecedent. (B) "they're" means "they are." (D) "it's" means "it is." Only the possessive "its" fits before "tissues."

Text
Stretching south from the capital, the canal tied together three great cities: Beijing, the political ______ Suzhou, a hub of the silk trade; and Hangzhou, a thriving river port.

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

  • A) center; ✓
  • B) center,
  • C) center:
  • D) center; and

Explanation: Each item in this list already carries its own comma (Beijing, the political center / Suzhou, a hub of the silk trade / Hangzhou, a thriving river port), so the items are separated by semicolons; the printed "; and Hangzhou" sets the pattern. (A) matches it. (B) a comma blurs into the commas inside each item. (C) a colon would announce a second list, but none follows. (D) "and" belongs only before the final item, not the second.