SAT ? of the Day

Part of the following sentence is underlined; beneath the sentence are five ways of phrasing the underlined material. Select the option that produces the best sentence. If you think the original phrasing produces a better sentence than any of the alternatives, select choice A.

Woody Guthrie wrote and adapted more than a thousand songs, many of them are about the struggles of workers and the poor in the United States.

1. many of them are


2. many of which are


3. many are


4. which are, many of them,


5. and many of them that are

Choice (2) is correct. It avoids the comma-splice error of the original by using the pronoun “which” in place of the pronoun “them,” thereby turning what was originally an independent clause (“many of them are … United States”) into a relative clause that modifies “songs.”

Question Type: Improving Sentences
(Writing)

SAT ? of the Day

Read the following SAT test question, then click on a button to select your answer.

A 25-foot ladder is placed against a vertical wall of a building, with the bottom of the ladder standing on concrete 7 feet from the base of the building. If the top of the ladder slips down 4 feet, then the bottom of the ladder will slide out

1. 4 feet


2. 5 feet


3. 6 feet


4. 7 feet


5. 8 feet

The ladder, the wall, and the ground form a right triangle with a 25-foot hypotenuse. At first, the bottom of the ladder is 7 feet from the base of the building, so one leg of the right triangle measures 7 feet; the length of the other leg, x, can be found by solving 7² + x² = 25², which is the Pythagorean theorem. From this, you can figure out that the other leg measures 24 feet.

After the ladder slips down 4 feet, the 24-foot leg of the right triangle becomes 20 feet long. The other leg then has to be 15 feet long. This length is found by solving 20² + y² = 25², which is again the Pythagorean theorem.

Since the distance between the bottom of the ladder and the base of the building increases from 7 feet to 15 feet, the amount that the bottom of the ladder slides out is 8 feet.

Difficulty: Hard

Question Type: Standard Multiple Choice

(Mathematics)

SAT ? of the Day

Read the following SAT test question, then click on a button to select your answer.

Every student who studies art in a certain school receives exactly one of the grades A, B, C, or D. If of the students receive A’s, receive B’s, receive C’s, and 10 students receive D’s, how many students in the school study art?

1. 30


2. 60


3. 100


4. 200


5. 500

The students who receive A’s, B’s, and C’s account for + + of the students, that is, . This leaves of the students receiving D’s. You know that 10 students receive D’s, so 10 is of the total. This means that the total number of students is 10 times 20, or 200.

Difficulty: Medium

SAT ? of the Day

The following sentence contains either a single error or no error at all. If the sentence contains an error, select the one underlined part that must be changed to make the sentence correct. If the sentence contains no error, select choice E.

Besides	conserving	forest resources, recycling
	A

produces fewer pollutants	than does	the
	B

conventional pulping and bleaching processes

that	are normally used	to create	paper.	No error
C		D		E

1. (A)


2. (B)


3. (C)


4. (D)


5. (E)

The error in this sentence occurs at (B), where there is subject-verb disagreement. The singular verb “does” does not agree with the plural noun “processes.” The plural verb “do” is needed instead.