SAT Reading and Writing Practice Test: Full Module 2 (27 Questions)

The engineer's report on the failed water pump was remarkably ______: it listed every measurement taken, every test performed and every prototype that had been tried and abandoned during the two-year project.

Although the mayor is known for combative speeches, her remarks at Tuesday's council meeting were notably ______: she praised several of her opponents' proposals and invited them to help draft a compromise budget.

Some concrete harbor structures built by the ancient Romans have proved remarkably ______: after roughly two thousand years of exposure to seawater, many of them remain largely intact.

The lead biologist was ______ about the early results of the nesting study: she pointed out that the sample of nests was small and warned colleagues against drawing conclusions before a second season of data had been collected.

Many octopuses can change the color and pattern of their skin within a fraction of a second to blend in with their surroundings. This ability has long puzzled biologists, because most octopuses have only one type of light-sensitive cell in their eyes and are therefore thought to be colorblind. One proposed explanation is that light-sensitive proteins in the skin itself may detect light directly, helping the animal respond to its surroundings without relying on its eyes alone.

In the early 1800s, Mary Anning searched the crumbling seaside cliffs near Lyme Regis, England, for fossils, which she sold to collectors and scientists. Her finds included some of the first ichthyosaur and plesiosaur skeletons to be studied in detail. Because she was a woman of modest means, however, she could not join the Geological Society of London, and the scientists who described her specimens in print often did not mention her name. Historians have since worked to restore her place in the early history of paleontology.

Text 1

Several companies that tried a four-day workweek reported that employees completed as much work as before while taking fewer sick days. To some observers, these results suggest that a shorter week could raise productivity across the economy as a whole.

Text 2

Trials of the four-day week have mostly involved firms that chose to take part, often offices whose managers were already enthusiastic about the idea. Such companies may differ in important ways from the typical employer, and work such as hospital care cannot simply be compressed into fewer days.

On a summer afternoon, a dark tar roof can become far hotter than the surrounding air, and the heat it absorbs warms both the building below and the street around it. Roofs covered with plants behave differently. Soil and leaves absorb less heat, and water evaporating from the plants carries heat away, keeping the roof surface much cooler. For this reason, some cities now encourage green roofs as one way to lower summer temperatures in crowded neighborhoods.

Tardigrades, tiny animals less than a millimeter long, live in damp places such as moss and leaf litter. When their surroundings dry out, they pull in their legs, lose almost all of the water in their bodies and curl into a dry, barrel-shaped form called a tun. In this state their metabolism nearly stops, and they can survive for years until water returns and they become active again.

A researcher hypothesizes that American crows can recognize individual human faces and remember people who have treated them as a threat. To test this, team members wearing a particular rubber mask briefly captured several crows on a university campus and then released them unharmed. Later, volunteers walked through the campus wearing either that mask or a different, neutral mask.

A city's bike-share program recorded the average number of trips per day in April and July.

A student claims that between April and July, the average number of daily trips grew more on weekends than on weekdays.

Archaeologists studying a village occupied about 1,000 years ago found that much of its pottery was made from clay containing minerals that occur only along a river valley about 200 kilometers away. No clay with these minerals is found near the village, and the site shows no signs of pottery making, such as kilns or unfinished pieces. These findings suggest that ______

A botanist grew two groups of identical bean seedlings with the same water, soil and temperature. One group received light only from directly above, and the other received light only from one side. After a week, the seedlings lit from one side had bent toward the light, while those lit from above had grown straight up. These results suggest that ______

Birdwatchers have observed that a songbird species in a mountain valley now builds its nests about a week earlier in spring than it did in the 1970s. They claim that this change has been caused by rising spring temperatures in the valley.

The collection of handwritten recipes that the museum acquired last spring ______ dishes from at least four generations of a single family.

The bridge's original wooden deck rotted within twenty ______ engineers replaced it with a steel deck in 1911.

Before releasing three young owls back into the forest, volunteers at the wildlife center measured the ______ wingspans and recorded them in a logbook.

By the time the rescue team reached the flooded village, most residents ______ to the hilltop school, which had been set up as an emergency shelter.

Founded in 1902, the city orchestra will perform ______ final concert of the season on Saturday evening.

The five Great Lakes together hold about one-fifth of the world's fresh surface water. Lake Superior, the largest of the ______ more water than the other four lakes combined.

The Suez Canal opened in 1869, ______ the sea route between Europe and South Asia by thousands of kilometers, since ships no longer had to sail around Africa.

A honeybee colony may collect pollen and nectar from flowers several kilometers away from its hive. ______ researchers who analyze the pollen in a single jar of honey can learn which plants grow across a wide area around the hive.

For decades, a small portrait in a regional museum was labeled as the work of a famous seventeenth-century Dutch painter. ______ a recent study of the canvas showed that its threads had been woven more than a century after the painter's death.

Many plants defend themselves against plant-eating insects with chemicals. ______ milkweed releases a sticky, bitter sap containing toxic compounds when its leaves are damaged.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Katherine Johnson (1918-2020) was a mathematician who worked for NASA and its predecessor, NACA.
• She calculated trajectories for early U.S. spaceflights.
• Before John Glenn's orbital flight in 1962, Glenn asked that Johnson personally check the orbit calculations produced by electronic computers.
• She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Shield volcanoes have broad, gently sloping sides.
• They form from runny lava that flows long distances before it cools.
• Mauna Loa in Hawaii is a shield volcano.
• Stratovolcanoes are steep and cone-shaped.
• They form from layers of thick lava, ash and rock that pile up near the vent.
• Mount Fuji in Japan is a stratovolcano.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Mangroves are trees that grow in salty water along tropical and subtropical coasts.
• Their dense, tangled roots slow incoming waves.
• By slowing waves, mangrove forests can reduce flooding and erosion along the shore.
• Mangrove soils store large amounts of carbon.