Solving Every NEW SAT Reading Questions (By a 1600 scorer)

Overview

The presenter works through newly released SAT Reading questions, modeling how to unpack dense passages, identify what each question requires, and choose answers supported by the text, tables, or graphs. The examples cover main ideas, logical conclusions, evidence, data interpretation, and questions that ask students to strengthen or weaken a claim.

Main Strategies

• Translate technical passages into plain language. Identify the study’s question, what the researchers did, and what they found.
• Focus on the question’s task. Determine whether you need a main idea, a supported inference, evidence for a claim, or information that would test or weaken a conclusion.
• Stay within the evidence. Do not assume a causal relationship, a broad generalization, or a comparison the passage does not establish.
• Use tables and graphs precisely. Compare only the relevant groups and measures. Percentages may not reveal absolute counts or what most individuals do.
• Check answer-choice scope. Reject choices that add restrictions, circumstances, or claims that are not in the text.
• For research claims, consider alternative explanations. A result may appear to support a hypothesis while still being affected by confounding factors.
• For weakening questions, look for a plausible alternative explanation. For example, artifacts found in another region could have arrived through migration rather than trade.

Question-by-Question Summary

1. Dating fossil sites with strontium ratios — D. Mammal fossils place both sites broadly in the HH4 period, while shark-tooth ratios offer a more precise estimate. The ratios support both sites being within HH4 and suggest one site is more recent than the other.

2. Spider silk and adaptive radiation — B. The study found significant differences in silk properties among species. That supports the idea that silk materials diversified, but does not establish that silk differences caused the variation in web architecture.

3. Responses to disagreement — B. Participants rated listeners who disagreed with them as less skilled, even when the summaries showed signs of attentive listening. The best inference is that participants tended to discount evidence that the listener had paid attention.

4. Smartphone-assisted memory — D. To evaluate the researchers’ claim about misattribution, it would help to know how participants classified information they already knew before looking it up on a phone. This could distinguish true misattribution from accurate recollection.

5. Microbial fuel cells — A. Adding silver nanoparticles was associated with higher power density. Since silver conducts electricity well, the proposed explanation is that the particles let electrons bypass inefficient redox reactions and reach the electrode more directly.

6. Advergames and product memory — A. The limited-capacity model explains why games can attract players’ interest without helping them remember product or brand information: attention devoted to game mechanics leaves less capacity to encode the advertising content.

7. New Year’s resolutions by age — A. The table supports the comparison that adults aged 50–64 were more likely than those aged 30–49 to make resolutions about personal relationships and less likely to make resolutions about finances. The other choices overgeneralize or assume totals the table does not provide.

8. Mussel-shell aggregate in mortar — A. The graph supports the recommendation to use shell aggregate in relatively small amounts: the 10% mixture performed at least as well as the control, while the 20% and 40% mixtures had lower compressive strength.

9. Archaeological evidence and trade — B. The proposed trade link between South and Southeast Asia would be weakened if people had migrated from South Asia to Southeast Asia during the relevant period, since migration could explain how the spices and tools arrived without trade.

10. Sculptor’s career — D. The passage suggests the sculptor’s historical importance came from the influence of his work, despite producing relatively few pieces.

11. Poem about maintaining a fire — B. The line most consistent with praising the fire-maker recognizes the person who brought the wood and charcoal needed to start the fire.

12. Bee foraging and crop diversity — D. The researchers’ conclusion was that a lack of crop variety may reduce total pollen collection. Higher pollen concentrations in honey from colonies near diverse crops would directly support that conclusion.

13. Light-to-sound device during an eclipse — A. As the eclipse reduces the light level, the device should move from a flute-like sound for bright light, to a clarinet sound for medium light, and then to clicking for low light.

14. Social trust in the UK — A. The chart indicates that trust in people participants already knew remained mostly consistent, while trust in people they were meeting for the first time changed more over the years.

15. Shakespeare passage about King Richard — B. Richard’s references to not yet knowing how to flatter, bow, or bend his knee suggest he is not prepared to submit to his victorious cousin.

16. The “period eye” approach to art history — C. The supporting evidence is that many later art historians studied how artworks were understood in their original historical contexts, consistent with the approach’s influence.

17. Complex life on exoplanets — A. The researchers argue that tectonics should be considered alongside a planet’s location in the habitable zone. Complex life is presented as more likely on suitable planets with plate tectonics than on comparable planets without it.

18. Brown bears’ diets — B. Similar diets among mothers and daughters may reflect social learning that fades over time, but environmental conditions and resource availability could also contribute. The evidence does not justify ruling out either explanation.

19. Whistling waves on Venus — D. Venusian waves resemble Earth’s lightning-generated waves, but the passage leaves open whether Venus’s different geophysical conditions produce them through another process.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Speaker: The video’s presenter explains the questions and reasoning. The subtitles do not clearly state the presenter’s name.
• Sources and people mentioned in the passages:
  • Pew Research Center, for the 2024 New Year’s resolutions survey.
  • Zang and colleagues, for the archaeological study.
  • Zissis and Zahn, for the research on tectonics and complex life on exoplanets.
  • William Shakespeare, whose play is referenced in the Richard question.
  • “Z. C.,” credited in the subtitles as the author of the 1922 poem about a fire.
  • Multiple other researchers and studies, including work on spider silk, listening, memory, microbial fuel cells, advergames, mortar, bees, social trust, bears, and Venus. Their names are not fully preserved in the subtitles.