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SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 30)

Drill 30 · Reading & Writing · Standard English Conventions

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Drill 30 — current you are here

About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 30) 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.

Five hard Standard English Conventions questions covering the comma after an introductory clause, dangling modifiers, possessive pronouns, dashes around an inserted phrase, and agreement with "neither."

Questions & Explanations

Text
Although Louis Braille lost his sight after a childhood ______ he later devised a system of raised dots that blind readers could feel with their fingertips.

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

  • A) accident;
  • B) accident.
  • C) accident
  • D) accident, ✓

Explanation: The opening "Although Louis Braille lost his sight after a childhood accident" cannot stand alone, so it has to attach to the main clause with a comma, which is what (D) supplies. (A) uses a semicolon, but a semicolon needs a complete sentence on its left, and an "Although" clause is not one. (B) puts a period after it, which strands the opening as a fragment. (C) uses no mark at all, so the two clauses run straight together.

Text
Carved through mountains and tropical swamps over a decade of brutal labor, ______

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

  • A) workers finally opened the canal to ships in 1914.
  • B) the canal finally opened to ships in 1914. ✓
  • C) it was in 1914 that the canal finally opened to ships.
  • D) there was at last an opening to ships in 1914.

Explanation: The opening phrase "Carved through mountains and tropical swamps" has to describe whatever the main clause starts with, and the thing that was carved is the canal. (B) puts "the canal" right after the comma, so it is correct. (A) starts with "workers," which says the workers were carved through the swamps. (C) and (D) begin with "it was" and "there was," so the carved thing never appears as the subject, leaving the phrase attached to nothing. Only (B) names the canal as the subject the phrase describes.

Text
A slime mold has no brain and no nervous system, yet despite being a single cell with many nuclei, it can spread ______ network through a maze and settle on the shortest path to food.

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

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

Explanation: The thing spreading the network is "a slime mold," which is singular, so the possessive has to be the singular "its," the right pick in (C). (A) "their" is plural and reaches back to "nuclei" instead of to the mold itself. (B) "it's" means "it is," and (D) "they're" means "they are," so neither is a possessive at all. The sentence needs a word that shows the network belongs to the mold.

Text
The Higgs boson—a particle associated with the field thought to explain how some fundamental particles acquire ______ finally detected in 2012, nearly fifty years after physicists first predicted it.

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

  • A) mass—was ✓
  • B) mass, was
  • C) mass was
  • D) mass; was

Explanation: The phrase "a particle associated with the field thought to explain how some fundamental particles acquire mass" is set into the middle of the sentence and opens with a dash, so it has to close with a matching dash; (A) does that. (B) closes with a comma, which does not pair with the opening dash. (C) leaves the phrase open, so it collides with "was finally detected." (D) uses a semicolon, which cannot close an inserted phrase and would need a full sentence after it.

Text
Mars is circled by two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, but neither of them ______ massive enough for its own gravity to pull it into a round shape.

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

  • A) are
  • B) were
  • C) have been
  • D) is ✓

Explanation: In formal usage, "neither" is treated as singular, even when it is followed by "of them" and points back to two moons. A singular subject takes "is," so (D) is correct. (A) "are," (B) "were," and (C) "have been" are all plural and get pulled toward "them" rather than "neither." The plural word sitting next to the verb does not change the fact that "neither" means not one.