Digital PSAT Reading Quiz

Correct Answer: (D)

Difficulty: Easy

Category: Expression of Ideas

Getting to the Answer: This question deals with a tran- sition. When determining which transition is the one to use in a given situation, consider what the transition is doing. Is it a continuation of the ideas in the previous sentence? Does it set up a contrast between the ideas in the current sentence and the ones in the previous sentence? Or is it laying out events in a cause-and-effect situation?

In this passage, the first sentence establishes how many islands make up New Zealand. The second sentence establishes that “this view” is missing a “critical” fact. In terms of purpose, the transition connecting both sentences would be establishing a contrast between those two ideas. Choice (D) sets up that contrast, and it is correct. (A) is incorrect because that transition func- tions as a continuation of the first sentence’s ideas. Choices (B) and (C) are incorrect because those transi- tions establish a cause-and-effect relationship between the two sentences.

Correct Answer: (A)

Difficulty: Easy

Category: Standard English Conventions

Getting to the Answer: Since this question asks about Standard English conventions, read the answer choices before looking at the passage. The choices signal that this question deals with punctuation, most likely testing how to set off parenthetical information, as indicated by the comma, dash, and parenthesis in the answer choices. The sentence with the blank contains the parenthetical phrase “written in his native Khmer language.” Parenthetical elements should be set off from the rest of the sentence with a pair of matching punctuation marks. Since the phrase is preceded by a comma, either predict that a comma should also follow “language” or eliminate incorrect answer choices; (A) is correct. Choices (B) and (D) include other ways to set off parenthetical information, but a comma must be used here to result in a matching set. Choice (C) incorrectly runs the text together by omitting all punctuation

Correct Answer: (B)

Difficulty: Hard

Category: Information and Ideas

Getting to the Answer: The first two sentences intro- duce the automobile as an invention that had a large impact on American life, but the passage changes focus after that. Marked by the emphasis keywords “Interest- ingly,” “first,” and “sea of change,” the main idea expressed in the remainder of the text is that the process of manufacturing cars changed American business practices. This prediction matches (B), the correct answer.

Incorrect choices (A) and (C) take ideas from the passage but go too far. In the first sentence, the text states the automobile is one of a “Few” crucial inventions that changed American life, but not that it was the most important one. (A) also makes no mention of the change in car manufacturing processes that was the focus of the rest of the text. Similarly, the passage never states that assembly lines are the “most efficient method” for manufacturing all “industrial equipment” because the text only discusses car assembly. The success of the Ford plant is never mentioned in the passage, so (D) is also incorrect.