Question ID 3580533b 1.

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 3580533b
In recent years, economists around the world have created new tools that quantify the overall well-being of a
country’s citizens. Economists in India, for example, use an Ease of Living Index. This tool ______ economic
potential, sustainability, and citizens’ quality of life.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. measures
B. had measured
C. would have measured
D. will have been measuring
Question ID b7363ba2 1.2

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: b7363ba2
Mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz used the metaphor of the “butterfly effect” to explain how
seemingly minor events can have major impacts on future weather. According to Lorenz’s metaphor, the wind
from a butterfly flapping ______ in Brazil might eventually grow into a storm elsewhere across the globe.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. its wings
B. its wings’
C. it’s wing’s
D. it’s wings’
Question ID dbd78791 1.3

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: dbd78791
Led by Syrian American astronomer Shadia Habbal, the Solar Wind Sherpas are an intrepid team of scientists who
travel the globe to study solar winds, the streams of particles emanating from the Sun that are only visible from
certain locations during a total solar eclipse. When such an eclipse is imminent, the Sherpas pack up their
telescopes and ______ ready.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. get
B. had gotten
C. got
D. were getting
Question ID 77bf77cd 1.4

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 77bf77cd
Farouk El-Baz, a geologist and space scientist, ______ part of the team that selected the lunar landing sites for
the Apollo program during the 1960s and 1970s.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. are
B. was
C. have been
D. were
Question ID 57998dd3 1.5

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 57998dd3
Obsidian is a kind of volcanic glass formed when lava cools so quickly that the atoms inside it cannot arrange
themselves in a crystalline structure. You ______ more about obsidian’s structure, which is classified as
amorphous, in a later chapter.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. had learned
B. had been learning
C. will learn
D. have learned
Question ID db4e3819 1.6

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: db4e3819
Midway through her 1968 jazz album A Monastic Trio, Alice Coltrane switches instruments, swapping the piano for
the harp. With the same fluid style that Coltrane was famous for on piano, she ______ her fingers across the harp
strings and creates a radiant sound.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. sweep
B. are sweeping
C. were sweeping
D. sweeps
Question ID d47bb0a4 1.7

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: d47bb0a4
Objects ranging from the Kikkoman soy sauce bottle to the Yamaha VMAX motorcycle to the Komachi bullet train
______ designed by twentieth-century industrial designer Kenji Ekuan.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. was
B. is
C. has been
D. were
Question ID 69f031ab 1.8

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 69f031ab
While exploring Nevada’s Gypsum Cave in 1930, Seneca and Abenaki archaeologist Bertha Parker made her most
famous discovery: the skull of a now-extinct ground sloth (Nothrotheriops shastensis) alongside human-made
tools. Parker’s crucial finding was the first ______ humans in North America as far back as 10,000 years ago.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. places
B. placed
C. place
D. to place
Question ID f4fd123c 1.9

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: f4fd123c
The African Games Co-production Market, one of over 180 annual international conferences supporting video
game development, ______ the growth of the African gaming industry by helping start-up studios in Africa find
partners.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. promote
B. are promoting
C. promotes
D. have promoted
Question ID b260c65a 1.10

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: b260c65a
Earth is not a perfect sphere. Due to the ______ gravitational pull, Earth bulges out on the sides closest to and
farthest from the Moon. This distorting pull is known as a tidal force, and it is responsible for the changes in water
levels that are called high and low tides.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. Moon’s
B. Moons
C. Moons’
D. Moon
Question ID 7c48a6dd 1.11

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 7c48a6dd
In the late 1960s, inspired in part by the sight of laundry hanging on a clothesline, African American abstract
painter Sam Gilliam began to create his iconic “Drape” paintings. He applied bold, saturated hues to large
canvases and ______ them from ceilings or walls, causing the drooping fabric to cascade in dramatic loops and
curves.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. to have suspended
B. suspending
C. to suspend
D. suspended
Question ID fff4c7f4 1.12

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: fff4c7f4
American poet Emily Dickinson wrote many of her poems on scraps of paper, but she also took steps to collect
these works. From 1858 to around 1864, for example, she copied more than 800 of ______ into forty homemade
booklets (known as fascicles).
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. them
B. this
C. that
D. it
Question ID e2759b92 1.13

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: e2759b92
Occupying a significant part of modern-day Nigeria, the Kingdom of Benin was one of the major powers in West
Africa between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries. It ______ ruled by Oba Ewuare I from 1440 to 1473.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. is
B. will be
C. has been
D. was
Question ID 175df826 1.14

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 175df826
In the 2011 documentary The Barber of Birmingham, civil rights activist James Armstrong recounts how his
barbershop in Birmingham, Alabama, ______ as a political hub for members of the Black community during the
1950s.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. serving
B. having served
C. served
D. to serve
Question ID 31362d2d 1.15

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 31362d2d
If simple sugars such as ribose and glycolaldehyde ______ Earth from elsewhere and survived impact—a
possibility astrophysicist Nicolle Zellner outlined in a 2020 study—the sugars could have reacted with other
molecules that were already present on the planet to form the nucleotides that are the structural components of
RNA and DNA.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. reach
B. had reached
C. will reach
D. are reaching
Question ID 1d971f75 1.16

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 1d971f75
Photographer Ansel Adams’s landscape portraits are iconic pieces of American art. However, many of the ______
of landscapes were intended not as art but as marketing; a concessions company at Yosemite National Park had
hired Adams to take pictures of the park for restaurant menus and brochures.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. photographer’s early photo’s
B. photographers early photo’s
C. photographer’s early photos
D. photographers early photos
Question ID f40ca576 1.17

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: f40ca576
Each year in the fall, when the weather starts to cool in the northern hemisphere, millions of North American
monarch butterflies journey south. Searching for food and warmer habitats, they ______ thousands of miles—from
as far north as Canada all the way down to Mexico—on this annual migration.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. flew
B. were flying
C. had flown
D. fly
Question ID 4c9a2aee 1.18

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 4c9a2aee
Wanda Diaz-Merced is an astrophysicist who lost her sight when she was young. Diaz-Merced’s condition inspired
her to develop software that can translate scientific data into sound. Sound-based tools ______ scientists to
detect subtle patterns in data. Such patterns may not be evident in traditional graphs.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. has enabled
B. enable
C. is enabling
D. enables
Question ID 42cc9236 1.19

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 42cc9236
If you try on one of artist Nick Cave’s signature Soundsuits, you can expect to swish, rustle, or clang every time
you move. Cave makes his suits out of found objects, everything from ceramic birds to broken record players. He
carefully considers the sound an object makes before using ______ in a suit.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. this
B. that
C. these
D. it
Question ID 81ac953e 1.20

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 81ac953e
In 1899, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius developed an equation to answer a long-standing question: why do
chemical reactions speed up at higher temperatures? The Arrhenius equation, named for its creator, ______ an
important concept in modern chemistry.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. have remained
B. remain
C. remains
D. are remaining
Question ID ec08463d 1.21

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: ec08463d
Botanists recognize over fifty different species of sunflower. One species, the silverleaf sunflower, ______ both an
early-flowering ecotype that tends to grow in coastal areas and a late-flowering ecotype that grows inland.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. having included
B. including
C. to include
D. includes
Question ID 4a90a978 1.22

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 4a90a978
In 1990, California native and researcher Ellen Ochoa left her position as chief of the Intelligent Systems
Technology Branch at a NASA research center ______ the space agency’s astronaut training program.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. to join
B. is joining
C. joined
D. joins
Question ID 59e41600 1.23

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 59e41600
Why are Rome’s famous concrete structures, such as the Colosseum, still standing after 2,000-plus years, when
modern concrete may not even last for fifty? Scientists ______ that the secret to Roman concrete’s durability was
its unique blend of ingredients, which included volcanic ash and seawater.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. explain
B. having explained
C. explaining
D. to explain
Question ID 588887b9 1.24

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 588887b9
In 1881, French chemist Camille Faure redesigned the rechargeable lead-acid battery. Faure’s design greatly
increased the amount of electricity that the original battery, which the French physicist Gaston Planté ______
fifteen years earlier, could hold.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. is inventing
B. will invent
C. invents
D. had invented
Question ID 96e5da01 1.25

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 96e5da01
The alga species Chlorella vulgaris is very efficient at making oxygen. For this reason, scientists are currently
exploring ways to use this species in space. C. vulgaris might be used, for example, to build future biological air
exchange systems that ______ oxygen for astronauts.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. are producing
B. produced
C. produce
D. have produced
Question ID 12bd5b75 1.26

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: 12bd5b75
With its towering, six-spired exterior of granitelike quartz monzonite, the Salt Lake Temple is one of the most
instantly recognizable structures in the state of Utah. However, many people do not know that ______ built over
the course of forty years, with construction beginning in 1853 and ending in 1893.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. it was
B. one was
C. they were
D. both were
Question ID bd11fe93 1.27

Assessment Test Domain Skill Difficulty

SAT Reading and Writing Standard English Form, Structure,

Conventions and Sense

ID: bd11fe93
Dr. Rocío Paola Caballero-Gill is a paleoceanographer. This means that Dr. Caballero-Gill doesn’t just study
oceans as they are today. She uses chemistry and fossil evidence ______ oceans as they were in the past.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. has studied
B. to study
C. studied
D. studies