hey everybody I'm Mike satell the founder of satell tutoring and this is episode 7 of my 10 part series on the strategies for the digital sat in this episode I'm going to talk about trap answer choices for the reading section these are patterns that I've noticed having tutored for so long haven't taken so many practice tests of the new SAT the old sat there are definitely some patterns in how the SAT produces wrong answers and I hope to give you a sense of that but it's a complicated idea so I want you to make sure that you've got the Baseline down so please subscribe to my channel because if you've seen any of my videos you've heard me talk about trap answer choices a lot but specifically I think you should go back and watch episode one of this strategy Series where I talk about dumb summaries the main strategy for the reading section and it basically comes down to we can't just understand everything in a passage there's way too many details so what we're going to do instead is try to boil it down to some simpler ideas and the dumb summary is the way to do that a lot of times thinking about connotation then in episode six I talked about a little bit more more advanced version of this where we think about strong words if there are lots of words in a passage which are the ones that matter most we need to be able to identify strong words that are going to help us understand the passage and also strong words in the choices that might make them right or wrong and specifically in this episode we're going to really focus on strong words in the choices words that in many cases you don't recognize as being strong and that's why we fall for these trap answers they don't seem bad but they actually have really consistent problems that I'm hoping to show you how to identify so let's Dive Right into an example here I'm going to read it just give us the basic sense of what it's about as a video game animator Phoebe Shackleton finds inspiration in her own backyard waiting patiently and observing in the natural movements of local species for example she designed the Frantic scurrying of brimbles fictional monsters from the future home video game series by watching Chipmunks Dash between hiding places outside her Pennsylvania cabin when the animals are nowhere to be found Shackleton can be seen sketching the subtle swing of leaves and branches in a breeze she believes that mimicking these tiny details from The Real World contributes to the immersive experience of a video game world our question is pretty standard Which choice best states the main idea of the text and I'm just going to tell you right away Choice a is the answer Shackleton gets design inspiration from the natural world around her so hopefully that just feels kind of right to you right they talk about Shackleton they talk about where she's getting her inspiration for the video games it's coming from nature so Choice a kind of checks things off but I want to give you this kind of easy answer to this easy passage that we can see more clearly how the SAT is going to manipulate us and give us answers that kind of hit certain other main ideas from the passage but then also have a problem that we might ignore if we're not thinking clearly or just moving too fast so let's start with a really uh simple change to Choice a choice B Shackleton gets most of her design inspiration from the natural world around her so this really wouldn't happen on an SAT where you'd have choices that are this similar but for this purpose of making a point I want to show you what happens when we add in just these three words most of her design inspiration so for many people if they had Choice B on a test not Choice a just Choice B they would read Choice b as if it were basically saying Choice a they wouldn't notice any difference but there is a difference a big one to say that Shackleton gets most of her design inspiration from the natural world is to say that more than half half of her ideas come from there 51 most is a very specific word it's a strong word that we need to pay attention to even though it seems like it's not really doing a lot of work in this choice and that's the thing is these are very subtle words that we might not think of as strong right away but this passage is only about her inspiration of the natural world so why can't B be correct well most is so specific that we need to find another strong word that kind of hits that same specific idea in the passage Now it only talks about her inspiration from the natural world but it never rules out that she's not getting inspired from other places and we're not allowed to assume that that's what's happening right this is just one example of where her inspiration comes from we're not getting the specifics about other things let me give you another example here that's a little bit different and you can kind of see where this is going chipmunks have been shackleton's primary source of animation ideas well yeah it seems pretty good they talk about the Chipmunks it seems to be a pretty important example that inspired her but I'm bothered by the word primary that's another very strong word now they listed this example of the the brimbles and the Chipmunks but that doesn't mean that it was the main example it was the main uh thing that inspired her it's just the thing that they happened to talk about in this very short passage so we're not allowed to give it this importance so the word primary here would really jump out to me but again most people would ignore it focusing on the other parts of choice C that actually do seem supported by the passage and the common feature of both B and C is we have words that try to have a quantity attached to them they involve number in some way and so some other words that might do that many most all few consensus every non-primary major minor numerous widely all these words in some way convey an idea of a number and this is an important idea that that might be right but it's something we would need to prove with the passage so when I see words like this and answer choices I'm instantly kind of on edge I don't necessarily cross the choice out but I need to prove those words with something equivalent in the passage and a doesn't have those right it kind of stays away from the numbers we can see why maybe that is easier to prove is it doesn't have that extra little specific piece so a very common trap on the SAT involves things being Quantified in some way so hopefully this kind of sticks with you in a word like most or primary that you might otherwise ignore will now jump out as being something at least worthy of being considered before you pick the answer let me show you some other kinds of traps that might show up Choice D Shackleton finds it easier to sketch the movements of plants than those of animals well again that kind of makes some sense they talk about the Chipmunks they talk about plants and it probably does make sense that it would be easier to sketch a plant than an animal right plants don't run away in the wild so you're probably gonna have an easier time of it but does it actually say that it's easier and that that word is very strong it's a word that implies some sort of comparison and yes this passage is talking about both of those examples but it doesn't compare them does it rank them and tell us that one is better than the other no they just happen to be two different examples and we're not allowed to make assumptions about which one is better unless they explicitly tell us in the passage so lots of comparison words come up and answer choices more or less increase decrease fewer likely unusually same equal compare contrast all of these words are trying to get us to to rank things and compare their attributes and we have to make sure that the passage is doing that as well if it's not then we can't justify a choice like Choice d let's look at Choice e which I know the SAT does not have an actual Choice e but just in case you want to comment it makes it easier to have different different letters Shackleton cannot design a new video game creature without a real world analog well again all the examples that we get in this passage have to do with her copying something in the real world but to say that she can't design a new video game creature without there being some real world thing that's that's a big leap that's a very strong claim that would need to be supported just because she does occasionally design some Creatures based on real world things doesn't mean that she always has to do that so Choice e is adding in this idea of necessity it must happen need necessary must require proof confirm Universal impossible these are just some words that would kind of scare me if I saw them in a choice they're not always wrong but they require some sort of proof but notice cannot is is not the most obvious word here it feels like it's actually not even part of the main idea of the choice right otherwise it definitely talks about Shackleton in the passage it talks about her designing new video game creatures and it talks about her using the real world so other parts of this Choice check out they seem to be okay and that's how the SAT comes up with traps is most of the choice is Right 90 will be correct but if 10 of a choice is wrong the whole thing is wrong and that's what we need to look for is these kinds of 10 words that we might otherwise ignore let's look at Choice f the future home video game series is well known for its lifelike creatures and animations well they definitely mentioned this video game series and here there's not a particular word that bothers me in the choice it's more about the overall like main idea of the choice it seems to be about the future home video game series but is the passage about that no I don't think so so this is what I would call main character confusion and it kind of relates back to dumb summaries right if we were to summarize this passage it's about Shackleton and how great she is as an animator right but is Choice F about that no it's not about Shackleton now it's about the video game those are different main characters so it's unlikely that choice f is going to be a good summary of what's going on in the passage if they're just kind of focused on different things notice that choice a the main character is in fact Shackleton so that seems to match up and we've got to be kind of you know flexible with this word character right it doesn't necessarily have to be a person or someone from a fictional work in this case the character is the video game series The Future home so which just means kind of like the main idea the main thing that the story is about doesn't match up between the choice and the passage so it's a good way of kind of quickly cutting down on the details and and seeing that there's a mismatch between a choice and a passage let's look at Choice G video game animations are often based on real world examples well okay the first thing that bothers me is the word often this is a word that kind of fits into another category of words that involve time in some way frequently often never always quick longer sustained future previous routine they're adding in chronology one thing happens first then another thing happens or maybe something happens multiple times these are all very strong ideas that need to be proven with the passage so maybe this is a something that's provable it seems like they're kind of implying that this happens often but the bigger issue for me in this choice is less about the specific word and more about again the overall main idea of the choice it seems to be talking in a way that that goes beyond what the passage is saying so this is what I call Big versus small confusion passages about specific examples do not support broad conclusions so what do I mean by that this passage is about the specific example of Phoebe Shackleton and what she does as a video game designer Choice G is about all video game animations right it's a much broader claim and so uh there's there's it's it's going beyond what we're being told we're not allowed to take a specific example and then make some sort of broad claim broad conclusion about everything based on that one example and this is fighting against something that's very just human nature we really like to take a couple of small examples and make a big Claim about it it's just easier but we're fighting against that instinct the SAT knows it's there so we have to recognize when they're doing it they make this kind of trap a lot so just be careful especially in science passages that we're getting a specific example we're not making a bigger conclusion than we're allowed so this also goes to show that multiple traps could be going on in one question one answer Choice there isn't always just one word that we need to find sometimes there's lots of things going on in a choice we don't need to find them all but I hope that I've given you a little bit of a checklist to work through as you go through a question to maybe more yeah maybe more easily identify wrong answers so let's do that with a question in a more traditional way here and I'm going to tell you this is a very dense science passage so don't try to focus too much on the science let's just let the passage happen and we'll use the answer choices and look for strong words there launching anything into outer space requires solving a multitude of physical problems billions of dollars have been spent developing new materials such as hydrocarbonate plastic that can push the limits of space travel even further to make a hydrocarbonate plastic even more to make hydrocarbonate plastic more suitable for the forces experienced during takeoff and Landing Engineers experiment with various chemical Blends including polybenzene a byproduct of natural gas refining the addition of even a small amount of polybenzene a compound with a high affinity for the hydrocarbonates T receptors significantly improve the plastic's durability without adversely affecting flexibility you heard me stumble right these words are so confusing but I don't care what the words let's let's focus on the choices they're going to tell me what to care about the question says the passage indicates that the use of polybenzene allowed Engineers to Choice a reduce the number of T receptors found in hydrocarbon and plastic well reduce the number definitely sounds like some sort of quantity idea is it provable with the passage they talk about the T receptors for sure but around there they're talking about adding in Benzene the polybenzene sounds like addition not reducing something and it improved the durability so again it seems like this is moving something up not moving something down so I'm glad I checked but it's easy for me to make sense now of this very complex science idea because I have a very specific thing I'm looking for and it doesn't check out let's look at B uh the polybenzene allowed Engineers to confirm whether including chemical Blends other than polybenzene would have a similar effect on hydrocarbonate plastic durability well the first thing I noticed is that first word confirm definitely implies the idea of necessity so I gotta be really careful there if it's if it's confirmed it's proven it's it's without a doubt true so that's something that needs to be shown in the passage but if I keep reading I'm also bothered by the fact that they're talking about chemical Blends other than polybenzene that sounds like a big versus small problem this this passage seems to only be about the polybenzene so are we allowed to make some bigger Claim about other chemical Blends that makes me nervous and then if we continue it says that they have a similar effect and that sounds like a comparison to me so that would need to be proven as well there's a lot here and we can go in here but the biggest thing for me is that I just don't remember this passage talking about anything other than the polybenzene at all so we're really not allowed to make conclusions about other chemical Blends so the big versus small thing is the most egregious for me here but there are lots of reasons that we can get rid of this choice and again this is why we think about this as like a checklist is it doesn't you don't need to always find the same thing that I find but if there's something wrong that's something that needs to be proven now the strong words kind of jump out and we can go and look for those in the passage let's look at C polybenzene allowed Engineers to modify the properties of hydrocarbonate plastic to make it more useful for space flight well this is also a comparison more useful right so should I eliminate the choice no the purpose of this whole exercise is not that we are allowed to just immediately eliminate answer choices when we see these problem strong words here what we need to do is go and check for them those ideas in the passage as well so it's it's not an instantaneous get rid of this answer sometimes if I'm really stuck between two answer choices and one of them has like a trap word I will eliminate it and pick the other one but that's me just taking a smart guess in a case like this I want to go in and see this is a comparison but is it one that I can prove it does sound like at the end there we are using the hydrocarbonate or the polybenzene to make the hydrocarbonate improved in certain ways it's durability without affecting its flexibility so it does seem more useful in that way and if we go back to the beginning to make hydrocarbonate plastic more suitable for the forces experienced during takeoff and Landing space flight so we do have evidence of this comparison so this comparison may look like a trap at first but it's justified by the lines that's what we're really doing here is we're just giving ourselves something to latch on to that we can go hunting for in the passage let's look at D though let's be sure um demonstrate that polybenzene blends would be beneficial for most Plastics used in space flight well there's that quantity word most so I got to be careful but even looking deeper Big versus small are we really talking about most Plastics used in space flight we seem to be talking specifically about these hydrocarbonate plastic so I don't know am I allowed to make this bigger Claim about all Plastics I don't think so so D is going to be wrong and C is going to be the best answer here so this question had lots of traps and and hopefully if we had that checklist in our mind we'd be able to notice all these problems but I think the key pieces notice how little summarizing we did of the passage because the passage is so dense with all this science you know it's it's easy to even stumble over but the choices were easier to understand especially when we could kind of Target specific ideas within those choices because we're thinking about potential traps potential strong words that stand out and then we can go looking for those ideas in the passage that's much easier sometimes than trying to understand the passage and then looking for a choice that summarizes it in fact that's actually how we fall for a lot of traps so yes this is a complicated idea I don't expect you to fully understand this after just two examples but if you go and look at other questions from the SAT I think you're going to start to notice these traps coming up again and again I've definitely noticed that these things are repeated there are patterns from one test to another one type of sat to another the SAT is pretty consistent and how they come up with wrong answers so hopefully you'll start to notice those patterns as well if you keep this as kind of a checklist in your mind and the best way to start getting better at this is subscribe to my channel pretty much anytime I review a reading question I'm gonna talk about trap answers it's absolutely the way that helps me the most most thinking about the SAT and the unique way that they ask questions you're not used to your teachers tricking you on tests the SAT kinda has this but if we know how they're going to trick us we're much more able to kind of avoid those traps and pick right answers but it does require this process and it does require more practice so please subscribe watch the other videos in this series you'll hear me talk about traps again and certainly anytime I review a practice test I'm going to talk about trap answers when there are some so it definitely helps me too to subscribe so it'll help you in your score and it'll help me as well but I hope this was a good start thank you for watching and remember when it comes to your scores don't settle for less so tell for more