SATs Writing Skills & Essay 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which of the following best describes the purpose of a thesis statement in an SAT essay?
- To summarize the author's biography
- To state the writer's central claim about the author's argument (Correct answer)
- To list all evidence the author uses
- To provide a dictionary definition of the topic
Correct answer: To state the writer's central claim about the author's argument
The thesis in an SAT essay identifies the author's argumentative strategy and the writer's analysis of it.
Question 2: Choose the option that corrects the faulty parallelism: 'She likes hiking, to swim, and cycling.'
- She likes hiking, swimming, and to cycle.
- She likes to hike, to swim, and cycling.
- She likes hiking, swimming, and cycling. (Correct answer)
- She likes to hike, swim, and also cycling.
Correct answer: She likes hiking, swimming, and cycling.
All items in a list must use the same grammatical form; here, all three should be gerunds.
Question 3: Which verb tense best completes this sentence? 'By the time the exam ended, she _____ all 40 questions.'
- answers
- has answered
- had answered (Correct answer)
- will answer
Correct answer: had answered
The past perfect 'had answered' indicates an action completed before another past event.
Question 4: An SAT passage mentions that researchers 'found a correlation' between two variables. A student's essay claims this 'proves causation.' This is an example of:
- Strong textual analysis
- Correctly summarizing the evidence
- Misrepresenting what the text actually claims (Correct answer)
- Appropriate paraphrasing
Correct answer: Misrepresenting what the text actually claims
Correlation does not imply causation; overstating evidence misrepresents the source text.
Question 5: Which option correctly uses an apostrophe?
- The students' essays were graded. (Correct answer)
- The student's essays' were graded.
- The students essays were graded.
- The students's essays were graded.
Correct answer: The students' essays were graded.
'Students'' shows plural possessive: the apostrophe after the s indicates multiple students own the essays.
Question 6: What does 'rhetorical appeal to ethos' mean in the context of SAT essay analysis?
- The author uses statistics and data
- The author appeals to the reader's emotions
- The author establishes credibility and authority (Correct answer)
- The author uses vivid sensory details
Correct answer: The author establishes credibility and authority
Ethos refers to the credibility or trustworthiness the author projects to persuade the audience.
Question 7: Which sentence contains a misplaced modifier?
- The teacher graded the tests carefully.
- Carefully, the teacher graded all tests.
- The teacher graded the tests written by students carefully. (Correct answer)
- The teacher carefully graded the students' tests.
Correct answer: The teacher graded the tests written by students carefully.
'Carefully' in option C appears to modify 'written by students' rather than how the teacher graded.
SATs Writing Skills & Essay 3
Which of the following best describes the purpose of a thesis statement in an SAT essay?