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SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 7)

Drill 7 · Reading & Writing · Standard English Conventions

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Standard English Conventions (Drill 7) 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 questions on using a colon after a complete clause, placing a conjunctive adverb, subject-verb agreement with a long subject, the past perfect for sequencing two past events, and separate possessive apostrophes.

Questions & Explanations

Text
Recovered in 1901 from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, the corroded bronze device baffled scholars for decades, until later imaging finally revealed what its dozens of interlocking gears had been built to ______ the positions of the sun and the moon and the timing of eclipses.

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

  • A) do: track ✓
  • B) do, track
  • C) do; track
  • D) do track

Explanation: (A) is right because the words before the blank form a complete clause, and a colon is the mark that introduces the explanation of what the gears were built to do. (B) drops in a comma, which cannot set up an explanation this way. (C) uses a semicolon, but a semicolon joins two complete clauses, and "track the positions of the sun and the moon and the timing of eclipses" cannot stand on its own. (D) runs the two parts together, so the reader loses the signal that an explanation is coming.

Text
A lichen looks like a single organism, but it is really a partnership between a fungus and an ______ two are so tightly fused that biologists once mistook them for one species.

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

  • A) alga, however, the
  • B) alga; however, the ✓
  • C) alga, however; the
  • D) alga however the

Explanation: "However" belongs with the second statement, and when it opens a complete clause that follows another complete clause, it takes a semicolon before it and a comma after it, so (B) is correct. (A) puts a comma on both sides, which leaves two complete clauses spliced together. (C) keeps the semicolon but slides the comma to the wrong spot, cutting "however" off from the clause it introduces. (D) gives "however" no punctuation at all, fusing the two clauses.

Text
A hoard of more than a thousand silver coins, buried in a field and turned up by a startled farmer, ______ the most significant find of the decade.

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

  • A) is ✓
  • B) are
  • C) remain
  • D) were

Explanation: The subject is "hoard," which is singular, so the verb is "is," making (A) correct. (B) "are" and (C) "remain" both match the nearer plural "coins," but that noun is not the subject. (D) "were" is plural too, and it shifts the sentence into the past for no reason. Strip out the describing phrases and you are left with "A hoard is," which confirms it.

Text
Before Edward Jenner published his findings on vaccination in 1798, he ______ a boy with material from a cowpox sore two years earlier and later confirmed that the child did not develop smallpox after exposure.

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

  • A) inoculates
  • B) inoculated
  • C) had inoculated ✓
  • D) has inoculated

Explanation: Two past actions are in play. Jenner published in 1798, and he had treated the boy two years before that, so the earlier action takes the past perfect and (C) "had inoculated" is correct. (B) "inoculated" is simple past, which flattens the order and makes both events sound simultaneous. (A) "inoculates" is present tense and clashes with the 1798 setting. (D) "has inoculated" is present perfect, which cannot pin down a finished moment like "two years earlier."

Text
Historians piecing together the 1804–1806 expedition lean on two overlapping accounts of the same events, since ______ journals were kept separately and often describe a single day in strikingly different terms.

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

  • A) Lewis and Clark's
  • B) Lewis's and Clark
  • C) Lewises' and Clark's
  • D) Lewis's and Clark's ✓

Explanation: The sentence says the journals were kept separately, so each man owned his own, and both names take an apostrophe and "s," which makes (D) correct. (A) "Lewis and Clark's" marks only the second name, pointing to joint possession rather than the separate journals the sentence describes. (B) leaves "Clark" with no apostrophe at all. (C) writes "Lewises'" as though pluralizing the surname, which is not what the sentence means.