Bluebook SAT Reading Comprehension Flashcards
6 cards from real Bluebook SAT Test practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 6 Bluebook SAT Reading Comprehension flashcards as text
The following text is from a 1913 essay about urban parks. "A city without open ground is like a house without windows: its inhabitants may survive, but they cannot be said to breathe. The park is not a luxury bestowed by the generous; it is a debt the city owes to every citizen who has surrendered the fields for the pavement." Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
Answer: Parks are an obligation a city has toward residents who gave up rural life.
The author calls the park a debt the city owes to citizens, not a luxury.
Marine biologist Ana Ruiz studied coral colonies exposed to slightly elevated water temperatures for three summers. She observed that colonies which had experienced mild heat stress in the first summer bleached less severely in later summers than colonies with no prior exposure. Which finding, if true, would most directly support Ruiz's conclusion that prior mild stress builds heat tolerance?
Answer: Previously stressed colonies retained more symbiotic algae during a later heat wave than unstressed colonies did.
Retaining algae under heat is the mechanism of bleaching resistance, so it supports the conclusion.
The following text is from Kate Chopin's 1899 novel The Awakening. "The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation." As used in the text, what does the word "spell" most nearly mean?
Answer: A period of time
"Wander for a spell" means wander for a while.
Historian Priya Nair argues that the rapid spread of the printing press across Europe in the late 1400s was driven less by demand for books than by the economic incentives faced by printers, who needed to recover the high cost of their equipment. Which statement, if true, would most directly weaken Nair's argument?
Answer: Records show that most early print runs were commissioned in advance by buyers who paid deposits.
Advance commissions show demand, not printer-side incentives, drove production.
The following text is from a 2021 article about honeybee navigation. "Foragers returning to the hive perform a waggle dance whose angle relative to vertical encodes the direction of a food source relative to the sun. ______ a bee dancing 30 degrees to the right of vertical is signaling that the food lies 30 degrees to the right of the sun's current position." Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
Answer: For instance,
The second sentence gives a specific example of the general rule in the first.
A student is researching the poet Gwendolyn Brooks and finds this note in a reference work: "Brooks's 1949 collection Annie Allen, which follows a Black girl's growth into womanhood in Chicago, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950, making Brooks the first African American to receive the award." Which quotation from a hypothetical review of Annie Allen would most effectively illustrate the claim that the collection traces a character's development over time?
Answer: "We meet Annie first as a child chasing her own shadow and leave her as a woman weighing what the years have cost."
Only this quotation describes Annie changing from child to woman.