SAT Rhetorical Synthesis (Hard) English – Real Collegeboard Practice Questions with Answers and Explanations

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: African American women played prominent roles in the Civil Rights Movement, including at the famous 1963 March on Washington. Civil rights activist Anna Hedgeman, one of the march’s organizers, was a political adviser who had worked for President Truman. Civil rights activist Daisy Bates was a well-known journalist and advocate for school desegregation. Hedgeman worked behind the scenes to make sure a woman was included in the lineup of speakers at the march. Bates was the sole woman to speak, delivering a brief but memorable address to the cheering crowd. The student wants to compare the two women’s contributions to the March on Washington.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: Stars form in a galaxy when gravity causes a massive cloud of dust and gas to collapse. A galaxy in a phase of rapid star formation is called a starburst galaxy. Quenching is a process in which a galaxy loses star-forming gas. A galaxy that no longer forms stars is called a quenched galaxy. A quenched galaxy has entered the poststarburst phase. The student wants to explain what a quenched galaxy is.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: In North America, woodlands have expanded into areas that were once grasslands. Thomas Rogers and F. Leland Russell of Wichita State University investigated whether woodland expansion is related to changes in climate. Rogers and Russell analyzed core samples from oak trees on a site that was not wooded in the past and indexed the age of the trees with historical climate data to see if tree populations and climate were correlated. Tree population growth was associated with dry intervals. Droughts may have played a role in woodland expansion. The student wants to emphasize the aim of the research study.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: As engineered structures, many bird nests are uniquely flexible yet cohesive. A research team led by Yashraj Bhosale wanted to better understand the mechanics behind these structural properties. Bhosale’s team used laboratory models that simulated the arrangement of flexible sticks into nest-like structures. The researchers analyzed the points where sticks touched one another. When pressure was applied to the model nests, the number of contact points between the sticks increased, making the structures stiffer. The student wants to present the primary aim of the research study.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: The Million Song Dataset (MSD) includes main audio features and descriptive tags for popular songs. Audio features include acoustic traits such as loudness and pitch intervals. Many algorithms use these audio features to predict a new song’s popularity. These algorithms may fail to accurately identify main audio features of a song with varying acoustic traits. Algorithms based on descriptive tags that describe fixed traits such as genre are more reliable predictors of song popularity. The student wants to explain a disadvantage of relying on audio features to predict a song’s popularity.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: Some powerful works of literature have so influenced readers that new legislation has been passed as a result. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) is the autobiography of a man who endured slavery on both sides of the Atlantic. Equiano’s book contributed to the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. The Jungle (1906) is a fictional work by Upton Sinclair that describes unsanitary conditions in US meatpacking plants. Sinclair’s book contributed to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. The student wants to emphasize a difference between the two books.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: In 1971, experimental musician Pauline Oliveros created Sonic Meditations. Sonic Meditations is not music but rather a series of sound-based exercises called meditations. Each meditation consists of instructions for participants to make, imagine, listen to, or remember sounds. The instructions for Meditation V state, “walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.” Those for Meditation XVIII state, “listen to a sound until you no longer recognize it.” The student wants to provide an explanation and an example of Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: Freddie Wong (born 1985) is a director and special effects artist from the United States. He is best known for the action-comedy web series Video Game High School (VGHS). VGHS premiered in 2012 on RocketJump, a YouTube channel that Wong cocreated. The series was celebrated for its inventive video game–centric world and high-quality special effects. VGHS was nominated for a Producers Guild Award for Outstanding Digital Series. The student wants to begin a narrative about Wong’s award-nominated web series.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: Ulaanbaatar is the capital of Mongolia. The city’s population is 907,802. Ulaanbaatar contains 31.98 percent of Mongolia’s population. Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam. The city’s population is 7,781,631. Hanoi contains 8.14 percent of Vietnam’s population. The student wants to emphasize the relative sizes of the two capitals’ populations.

Which choice most effectively uses information from the given sentences to emphasize the relative sizes of the two capitals’ populations?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: The popular wood-wide web theory posits that trees can communicate and exchange resources with one another via common mycorrhizal networks (CMNs) of fungi. Ecologist Dr. Suzanne Simard first suggested this theory in 1997. She described trees as “super-cooperators.” In the 2022 study “The Decay of the Wood-Wide Web?,” mycologist Dr. Justine Karst and colleagues evaluated dozens of CMN studies. They write that CMNs “have captured the interest of broad audiences. We are concerned, however, that recent claims about CMNs in forests are disconnected from evidence.” The student wants to use a quotation to emphasize a potential problem with the wood-wide web theory.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: A thermal inversion is a phenomenon where a layer of atmosphere is warmer than the layer beneath it. In 2022, a team of researchers studied the presence of thermal inversions in twenty-five gas giants. Gas giants are planets largely composed of helium and hydrogen. The team found that gas giants featuring a thermal inversion were also likely to contain heat-absorbing metals. One explanation for this relationship is that these metals may reside in a planet’s upper atmosphere, where their absorbed heat causes an increase in temperature. The student wants to present the study’s findings to an audience already familiar with thermal inversions.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: A commodity chain is the series of links connecting the production and purchase of a commodity on the world market. Chinese American anthropologist Anna Tsing studies the contemporary commodity chain of matsutake mushrooms. At one end of the matsutake chain are mushroom pickers in Oregon. At the other end are wealthy consumers who buy the costly matsutake in Japan. According to Tsing, “Japanese traders began importing matsutake in the 1980s, when the scarcity of matsutake in Japan first became clear.” The student wants to provide an overview of the matsutake commodity chain.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: Archaeologist Jon Erlandson and colleagues argue that humans first arrived in the Americas by sea. They propose that humans traveled between Pacific Ocean islands and coastlines from northeast Asia to the Americas. Many of these islands and coastal zones were later submerged as glaciers melted and sea levels rose. The researchers think that “a coastal route, including kelp forests and estuaries, would have provided a rich mix of marine, estuarine, riverine, and terrestrial resources” such as seaweeds, fish, and birds. This proposed scenario is known as the kelp highway hypothesis. The student wants to summarize the kelp highway hypothesis.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: Neuroscientists Krishnan Padmanabhan and Zhen Chen sought to better understand the workings of the brain’s olfactory system. They devised a study using mathematical models. They found that certain fibers allow the brain to toggle from one method of processing smells to another. In one method, cells in the piriform cortex (where the perception of odor forms) capture olfactory information at a given moment. In the other, the cells track changes in olfactory information over time. The student wants to summarize the study’s findings.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: Nissologists are scientists who study islands. Some nissologists define an island as any piece of land surrounded by water. Using that definition, they determined that Sweden has 221,000 islands. Other nissologists define an island as being 1 kilometer square, a certain distance from the mainland, and having at least 50 permanent residents. Using that definition, they determined that Sweden has 24 islands. The student wants to make and support a generalization about nissologists’ definition of an island.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish these goals?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: In 1978, Sámi activists staged protests to block the construction of a dam on the Alta River in Norway. The dam would disrupt Sámi fishing and reindeer herding. The dam was ultimately built, but the Alta conflict had a lasting impact. It brought international attention to the issue of Sámi rights. It led to a set of 2005 legal protections establishing Sámi rights to lands, waters, and resources. The student wants to make and support a generalization about the Alta conflict.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: Cambodia’s Angkor Wat was built in the 1100s to honor the Hindu god Vishnu. It has been a Buddhist temple since the sixteenth century. Decorrelation stretch analysis is a novel digital imaging technique that enhances the contrast between colors in a photograph. Archaeologist Noel Hidalgo Tan applied decorrelation stretch analysis to photographs he had taken of Angkor Wat’s plaster walls. Tan’s analysis revealed hundreds of images unknown to researchers. The student wants to present Tan’s research to an audience unfamiliar with Angkor Wat.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?