Up Your Score by Larry Berger & Michael Colton, Michael Colton, Manek Mistry, Paul Rossi, Workman Publishing Read Free Book Online Page A

are ________ by traps, poison, and shotguns, predators ________ to feast on flocks of sheep.
    (A) lured . . . refuse
    (B) destroyed . . . cease
    (C) impeded . . . continue
    (D) encouraged . . . attempt
    (E) harmed . . . hesitate
    The correct answer here is (C). Any time you see
although,
the sentence will have two parts. The first part will say “blah blah blah.” The second part of the sentence will say something that you wouldn’t expect considering that “blah blah blah” is true. In the above example, the first part of the sentence says, “Nasty things are trying to stop these predators from pigging out.” Therefore, you would expect that they would decide not to pig out. However, the
although
indicates that the second part of the sentence will say the opposite of what you expected it to say. So you have to choose an answer that indicates that they are still pigging out. The only answer that would fit this idea is (C).
    As a scientist, Leonardo da Vinci was capable of ________, but his mistakes are remarkably few in light of his ________.
    (A) error . . . accomplishments
    (B) artistry . . . failures
    (C) genius . . . works
    (D) trivia . . . lapses
    (E) innovation . . . achievements
    In the same way that
although
was the key word in the previous example,
but
is the key word in this example. You should be able to figure out that the two missing words should be in the combination “bad thing . . . good thing.” In other words, you should think to yourself, “As a scientist, Leo made some bad mistakes,
but
his screwups seem pretty minor when you look at the good things he did.” Scanning the list of possible answers, you see that
    (A) is “bad” . . . “good”
    (B) is “good” . . . “bad”
    (C) is “good” . . . “irrelevant”
    (D) is “irrelevant” . . . “bad”
    (E) is “good” . . . “good”
    Therefore, the correct answer must be (A).
    Following are other key words (like
although
and
but
) that can change the logic of a sentence:
despite
except
far from (
Far from
doing blah blah, the thing has done almost the opposite of blah blah.)
in spite of
instead of
nevertheless
unless
while (
While
that is true, it is also true that this is true.)
yet (That is true,
yet
we must also recognize that this is true.)
A Couple of Tricks
    In the sentence completion section, as you will see in the reading comprehension section, the ETS tries to be politically correct. So if you see a sentence that mentions women or minorities, it is probably saying something good about them. For instance:
    Although few in number, women in Congress have had ________ impact on a variety of issues.
    (A) an arbitrary
    (B) a negligible
    (C) a substantial
    (D) a minor
    (E) an inadvertent
    You could get this problem right without even reading more than the first few words in the sentence. All you have to realize is that “substantial” is the only positive word among the answer choices.

    The ETS thinks that just knowing that congresswomen are influential on Capitol Hill will help every girl in SAT-Land do well on the test, get into her top-choice college, and then excel in her career.
    Using the principle that the questions at the beginning of a subsection are easy, you should avoid choosing difficult vocabularywords at the beginning of a sentence completion subsection. For example, this question is the second one in its subsection:
    Just as congestion plagues every important highway, so it ________ the streets of every city.
    (A) delimits
    (B) delays
    (C) clogs
    (D) obviates
    (E) destroys
    Delimits
and
obviates
are difficult vocabulary words. If you had to know the meanings of these two words to answer this question correctly, then this question would be difficult and it would not be the second problem in the section. So eliminate (A) and (D). The correct answer is (C).
C RITICAL R EADING P ASSAGES
Definition
:
Passages followed by questions.
Priority
:
Do these last.
Comment
:
Each consecutive passage is harder than the one