here's a tip on how to answer one of the most commonly asked questions on the digital asset your reading section if you take a look at the prompt it states which Choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase what I recommend doing when you see a question with that type of prompt is start by reading from the beginning and then once you get to this blank right here fill it in with what you think should go there now that might require that you continue reading on but ultimately what your goal should be is to fill in the blank with a word before you actually take a look at your aunt's choices this is important because it'll help you avoid being swayed by what the answer choices say so let's go and illustrate this with question one former astronaut Ellen Ochoa says that although she doesn't have a definite idea of when it might happen she blank that humans will someday need to be able to live in other environments than those found on Earth this conjecture informs her interest in future research missions to the Moon okay well if she has interest in future research missions to the Moon I would assume that she believes that someday humans would need to be able to live in other environments than those found on Earth okay so I would fill in right here with beliefs now at this point I would then take a look at my aunt's choices so I have answer Choice a as an option which is it demands well we can't say that she demands humans will someday need to be able to live in other environments because obviously she cannot demand that we have B speculates she speculates that humans will someday need to be able to live in other environments than those found on Earth and that would make sense because it informs her interest in future research missions to the Moon okay so that makes a ton of sense if we take a look at C doubts well she obviously doesn't doubt it because she's interested in future research missions to the moon and she cannot establish it to establish something would basically to prove something she's unable to prove that humans will someday need to be able to live in other environments of those found on Earth okay so our answer would have to be B speculates and as you can see by filling in this blank with a word before we actually take a look at our aunt's choices we're much less likely to be swayed by what they say because we already know what should fill in that blank based on the context of the question here's another example with question two beginning in the 1950s Navajo Nation legislative later Annie Dodge juanica continuously worked to promote Public Health this blank effort involved traveling throughout the vast Navajo Homeland and writing a medical dictionary for speakers of dying visad the Navajo language I would say this consistent effort okay we say that she continuously worked to promote Public Health then we go on to talk about her effort which involved traveling throughout the Homeland writing medical dictionaries obviously this is a consistent effort so that's what I'd fill in there before taking a look at my aunt's choices now if we take a look at our options we have a and partial well there's not any sides to be taken here so you can't have a neutral stance on something that doesn't have two sides so that would make sense we have B off hand off hand would have a negative connotation so that would make sense here either if we take a look at C persistent okay persistent and consistent very very similar in meaning okay both in this context would basically mean that there is a consistent or continued effort involved by Annie okay so that would make a lot of sense if we take like a d mandatory no one is forcing her to do that so that wouldn't make sense okay so our answer would be C here's how I recommend you approach digital sat reading questions that ask you to State the main main purpose or the main idea of text so to illustrate this I'm going to use question number seven in 2007 computer scientist Louis van on was working on converting printed books into a digital format he found that some words were distorted enough that digital scanners can recognize them but most humans could easily read them based on that finding vanon invented a simple security test to keep automated Bots out of websites the first version of the recapture test asks users to type one known word and one of the many word scanners couldn't recognize correct answers prove the users were human and added data to the book digitizing project so for main purpose and Main Idea questions what I recommend you do is come up with your own answer before taking a look at the answer choices that way you're not easily swayed by ants choices that are close to correct but have slight flaws in them that actually make them incorrect so let's go and start by coming up with our main purpose for this prompt okay so ultimately we start out by talking about how Von on was using digital scanners and how it couldn't recognize some of the words then we talk about how he uses this to create the recapture test and then we talk about the application of the recapture test and how it's used to protect websites so ultimately it's really about the creation of the recapture test okay so let's take a look at our options now that we've just identified the main purpose as the creation of the recapture test so we have option A to discuss vanon's invention of recaptcha okay that looks perfect we'll put a check by that let's take a look at b c and d we have B to explain how digital scanners work okay obviously that's not the main purpose okay we don't even really discuss necessarily that much about digital uh how digital scanners actually work we just mentioned them in the beginning and talk about how they can't actually recognize some of the words but that's really just to introduce how they came up with the recapture test so just to lead us to the creation of it we have C to call attention of anon's Book digitizing Project the focus isn't on his book digitizing project okay that's just how he ended up discovering or creating recaptcha okay so we can get rid of C as well there if we take a look at D we have to indicate how popular recaptcha is okay once again that is not ultimately the main purpose now do we State anywhere even that it is popular okay we say that if we go up he invented a simple security test to keep automated bots on website so we don't even necessarily mention that it is popular some of us may know this from just our general knowledge of what goes on on the internet but we have to acknowledge that the main purpose here is talking about the creation of recapture okay so our answer has to be a now you'll notice by coming up with our own answer for the main purpose first it helped us to be able to eliminate answer choices that were similar or were mentioned at somewhere in the text but weren't actually the main purpose but we're just maybe a step to get us to the main purpose here's another example of how I recommend approaching questions that ask you about the main purpose or main idea on the digital sat reading section so I'm going to illustrate this with question 11. following text is from Maggie Pogue Johnson's 1910 poem poet of our race in this poem the speaker is addressing Paul Lawrence Dunbar a black author thou with stroke of Mighty pen has to told of joy and mirth and read the hearts and souls of men as cradle from their birth the language of the flowers thou has stressed them all and in the Little Brook responded to thy call okay so we're going to start out by coming up with our own main purpose before actually taking a look at your answer choices that way we're not as swayed by any choices that are close to correct but have slight flaw that actually make them incorrect so let's go ahead and start by discussing what the main purpose of this is let's start with this first part okay so we have that with stroke of Mighty pan has told of joy and mirth and read the hearts and souls of man as cradled from their birth okay so we're ultimately complimenting um Paul Lawrence dunbars work as a poet stating that he's told of joy and mirth read the hearts and souls of men so essentially stating that he's very in tune with obviously The Souls of man or in other words the soul really representing you know the inner thoughts of people sort of who they are deep deep down in their soul we have as cradled from their birth so from um from their birth presumably until death and we take a look at the second part we have the language of the flowers thou has read them all in the Little Brook responding to their call okay so here we're talking more so about nature okay so presumably this is a poet who is talking both about humans and nature clearly it sounds like they are very in tune with both of them Kay has read them all all the language of the flowers so very great at writing both about humans and about nature okay so main purpose I would say is that Paul Lawrence Dunbar is an incredible poet who's created at writing both about humans maybe The Human Experience as well as nature so we have option A to praise a certain writer for being especially perceptive regarding people in nature okay as you can see that's very supported by the text okay that's also in line with the main purpose that we came up with before taking a look at the answer choices that looks really good we'll take a quick look at b c and d as well we have B to establish that a certain writer has read extensively about a variety of topics well that's not the main purpose okay and we're also not explicitly stating or there's no real support for that the certain writer has read extensively about a variety of topics okay this is pretty much all figurative language if we scroll up and take a look at the poem so there's really not any support for that being the main purpose um ultimately the main purpose is that they are especially perspective regarding people in nature right we talk about how they have told of joy and mirth read the hearts and souls of man and that's really the key part there hearts and souls of men okay so that's perceptive about people and then perceptive about nature the language of the flowers that has spread them all okay so tons of support for a if we take a look at C to call attention to a certain writer's careful and elaborate elaborately detailed writing process we're not discussing the writing process okay if we take a look at D we've got to recount fond memories of an afternoon spent in nature with a certain writer okay we never state that this is from an afternoon they spent together okay so D doesn't have any support our answer would have to be a as you can see coming up with our own answer Choice first help us to avoid getting stuck between two answers and it also helps us to get rid of answer choices that seem like they would be close to a correct answer but have slight flaws that we ultimately can then use to rule them out as incorrect here's some advice on how to answer this really common digital sat reading question the question states which Choice best describes the function of the underlying sentence as a whole when you come across a question like this the first thing I'd recommend been doing is going ahead and reading through so let's go and start doing that with question eight following text is from Edith Wharton's 1905 novel The House of Mirth Lily Barton a companion are walking through a park Lily had no real intimacy with nature but she had a passion for the appropriate and could be keenly sensitive to a scene which was fitting which which was the fitting background of her own Sensations the landscape of spread below her seemed an enlargement of her present mood and she found something of herself in its calmness its breath its long reaches okay so immediately what I'm seeing is before we had a claim okay that she could be keenly sensitive to a scene which was the fitting background of her own Sensations okay now we are going ahead and showing or proving that claim okay we have the landscape outspread blow her it seemed to enlarge about her present mood and she found something of herself in its calmness okay that's very directly supportive of that claim that we had in the previous sentence okay that she finds something of herself in its calmness or in other words that it's fitting um she's keenly sensitive to a scene was the fitting background of her own Sensations okay so obviously that's supportive it's breath it's long free reaches all right let's keep reading on the nearer slopes the sugar Maples wavered like powers of light lower down was a massive massing of great Orchards and here and there the lingering of an Oak Grove all right so this is pretty much from here down just a description of the setting for the most part so we have what choice best describes the functional online sentence if in the text as a whole so from here I'd go down to my answer choices so you have option A it creates a detailed image of the physical setting of the scene well it looks like actually the sentence after the underlined one is what is really giving more of a detailed image of the fiscal setting of the scene okay so I would go ahead and I would get rid of a if we take a look back at the sentence that is underline and I'll go ahead and remove some of this blue so you can see it a little bit better okay we state that the landscape outsort below her seemed a large amount of her present mood and she found something of herself in its calmness its breath its Longford reaches as you can see that's really not creating a detailed image of the physical setting okay so we could remove it based on that and one thing I do recommend you do on the SAT reading and writing section is you can cross out answer choices okay and you can cross them out based on what makes them false or what makes them incorrect okay so if we take a look at B now it establishes that a character is experiencing an internal conflict okay well ultimately it's not really establishing that the character is experiencing an internal conflict okay if we go back up to the underlying sentence it says the landscape out spread below her seemed an enlargement of her present mood and she found something of herself and it's calmness its breath it's long for the reaches well here we have it found she found something of herself in its calmness okay so it doesn't sound like there's much internal conflict there okay it sounds like she would be calm so we could get rid of B if we take a look at C we have it makes an assertion that the next sentence expands on okay well the next sentence is really just a description of the scene of the setting okay so ultimately we're not making an assertion okay and the next sense is that would obviously not be expanding on that if we take a look at D now we have it illustrates an idea that is introduced in the pre-essence okay if we go back up in the previous sentence as I pointed out earlier it states that she could be keenly sensitive to a scene which was the fitting background of her own Sensations okay we then go on to state that she found something of herself in its calmness its breath that's long for reaches okay and the landscape outspread below her seemed an enlargement of her present mood okay that's ultimately supportive of the claim that came before it okay so as we can see there our answer would have to be D okay so I think the key things that I want you to take away from this tip is basically if you have an underlying sentence like this okay be looking for the role that it plays as you read through here's something you need to watch out for on one of the most commonly asked questions on the digital sat reading section that question is Which choice best states the function of the underlying science and the overall structure of the text so I'm going to approach this just like I approached the previous question but then once we get to the answer choices I'm going to show you some common wrong answer choices to watch out for so we have a study by a team including Finance Professor Maru V suggests that exposure to Sunshine during the work day can lead to overly optimistic Behavior using data spanning from 1994 to 2010 for a set of us companies the team compared over 29 000 annual earnings forecasts to the actual earnings later reported by those companies all right so ultimately we see that we start out here with a suggestion or sort of a hypothesis that exposure to Sunshine during the work day can lead to overly optimistic Behavior then we talk about how we are gathering the data okay so right here we have data collection then we have the team found that the greater the exposure to Sunshine at work in the two weeks before manager spent an earnings forecast the more the com the manager's forecast exceeded what the company actually earned that year so then we have summary okay so we start with hypothesis data collection summary all right so ultimately if we scroll down we've got option A to summarize the result of the team's analysis well that would be the summary okay and this is one of the common wrong answer choices that I wanted to point out to you guys is that oftentimes when you have a sentence underline like this in the text one of the answer choices which is obviously going to be a wrong answer choice is they will select either the sentence before or the sentence after or another sentence somewhere in the text okay and they will put that down as one of the wrong answer choices so you need to watch out for that in this case it's the summary which we see is the sentence that is after the sentence that's underlined okay so we can get rid of a because we know it's not the underlying sentence that's giving the summary it is the following sense so always watch out for that if we take a look at B we have to present a specific example that illustrates the study's findings so this is more so of a misinterpretation okay so I would identify this as a misinterpretation wrong answer choice and the reason I identify it as that is because some people would look at this underlying text and they would think that it is a specific example illustrating the study's findings but it's not okay they're talking about how they are collecting this data okay this is not a specific example either because ultimately okay we're looking at 29 000 annual earnings forecasts so obviously that is not specific okay also we have to recognize that this is data collection okay this is not providing of an example we are collecting the data okay so if we look at option b we can get rid of it okay we would classify that in my opinion as a misinterpretation because this is not a specific example if we take a look at C we have to explain part of the methodology used in the team study okay oftentimes on the SAT if you see methodology you should probably be thinking how the experiment or the study is being set up and how data is being collected okay so that's what you want to think about when you think about methodology and as you can see in this case the underlying sentence okay that's describing the methodology used okay they used data spanning from 1994 to 2010 for a set of us companies the team compared over 29 000 annual earnings forecasts to the actual earnings later reported by those companies okay that's an example of a methodology okay so C is perfect there we'll take a look at d as well okay D states to call out a challenge the team faced in conducting its analysis the way I would classify answer Choice D is just as a random wrong answer Choice some times on the SAT reading section and this isn't specific to just this question type this is specific to just generally almost any type of question on the SAT reading and writing section you may just get some answers that are fairly random and this one is fairly random there really isn't any challenge that's discussed at all in the text anywhere okay so the fact that they would put that there is really just random okay so we can get rid of d as well there as you can see your ends there will be C what I really wanted to point out in this is the common wrong answer choices that you'll see on questions that ask you to State the function of underlying sentences in the overall structure of text here's a tip for anyone who struggles with reading comprehension on the digital sat reading and writing section if we take a look at question 10 we'll start by reading the question which states according to the text what is true about Mother where the text is adapted from Edith nesbit's 1906 novel The Railway children mother did not spend all her time in paying Dole visits to dull ladies and sitting Dolly at home waiting for Dole AZ to pay visits to her she was almost always there ready to play with the children and read to them and help them to do their home lessons besides this she used to write stories for them while they were at school and read a lot to and read aloud read them aloud after tea and she always made up funny pieces of poetry for their birthdays and for other great occasions okay so in this case on a reading comprehension question like this you really just have to go to your aunt's choices there's not much you can do before that okay so we'll go to answer Choice a we have she wishes that more ladies would visit her so the biggest tip that I would have for anyone who struggles with reading comprehension on the digital sat and the sat in general is you need to try to make it less about comprehension and more about evidence and textual support okay so if you take a look at option A she wishes that more ladies would visit her okay the biggest tool you have if you are someone who struggles with reading comprehension is the ability to go back to the text okay so she wishes more ladies would visit her let's see if there's any textual evidence for that because if there's not we can get rid of it so we have mother did not spend all her time in paying Dover still ladies and sitting Dolly at home waiting for delaysia to pay this to her she was almost always there really play with the children read to them and then we talk about the children for the rest of this okay ultimately is there any evidence that she wishes that more ladies would visit her no there is not so you can get rid of a okay and one piece of advice for the reading and writing section is when you get rid of an ass Choice try to get rid of it based on the part of it that's false so she wishes that more ladies would visit her okay there's no evidence that she wishes that okay you would have to make um you can't even make a reach for that there's not it's not even like it would be a large reach there's just no textual evidence of support so you have to get rid of a okay if you take a look at B now birthdays are her favorite special occasion and this is where being strict on the digital sat reading section is important okay you want to be strict this part right here birthdays are her favorite special occasion that's what makes B wrong okay and let's say you didn't remember um that she never stated this well you can go back to the text and you can look for special occasions let's go and take a look for that or birthdays in particular okay so if we go back to the text we'll look for birthdays okay we see right here is the only mention of birthdays so we have she always made up funny pieces of poetry for their birthdays and for other great occasions okay great occasions does that mean it's her favorite okay so I'm the SAT reading section be strict when getting rid of Anne's choices if it states that it's someone's favorite special occasion but it just states that it's a great occasion in the text you can't make that jump there's not textual evidence to support that it's their favorite okay now if we take like a c we have she creates stories and poems for her children well let's see if we have evidence for that okay if you're not someone who's great with comprehension go back to the text so create some stories and poems for children well let's take a look there we have she was almost always there ready to play the children read to them and help them do their home lessons besides this she used to write stories okay so we have that she creates stories for them and while they were at school and read them aloud after tea and she always made up funny pieces of poetry okay so she made up funny pieces of poetry made up means that she's writing them or creating them okay so she creates stories and poems for her children we see that that has textual support C would have to be our answer okay and then D reading to her children is her favorite activity well once again there's no mention of anything being her favorite activity let's say that you forgot that you're not great at comprehension you just go back to the text look for where we talk about reading to her children then okay we have that up here she was almost always there ready to play with the children and read to them and help them do their home lessons Okay and then after that if we go down okay it doesn't really look like we're talking about um we talk about reading again here read to them aloud after T but once again we don't say that it's her favorite okay so we can get rid of that by being strict on the favorite part okay so if you are someone who struggles comprehension try to identify the subject in your answer Choice identify where that subject is in the text okay read that section of the text and then determine if there is textual evidence to support it if there is not any evidence to support it then it cannot be correct okay every answer choice on the SAT has to have evidence from the text to support it here's a tip for anyone who struggles with reading comprehension on the digital sat reading and writing section what I recommend doing is taking a look at your prompt before you end up reading through the passage and do this each time because then you know what to look for as you read through and it avoids you having to do a second read through which if you struggle with reading comprehension you probably would have to okay so based on the text how does Lord Chancellor respond to the crowd so we're ultimately going to be looking for Lord Chancellor's response to the crowd as we do our initial read through let's go ahead and start we have the following texts adapted from Louis Carroll's 1889 satirical novel Sylvia Bruno a crowd is gathered outside a room belonging to the warden an official who represents the Lord Chancellor or who reports to Lord Chancellor one man who has more like more excited than the rest one is high into the air and shouted as well as I could make out who roared for the subordin everybody reward but whether it was for the subordin or not it did not clearly appear some were shutting Brad and some taxes but no one seemed to know what it was they really wanted all this I saw from the open window of the wardens breakfast Saloon looking across the shoulder of the Lord Chancellor what can it all mean he kept repeating to himself I never heard such shouting before and at this time of the morning too and with such unanimity okay so we have his response contained right here okay he states that what can it all mean okay he kept repeating himself he's never heard such shouting at this time in the morning so he doesn't know what it means okay but then he ends with and with such unanimity or in other words such togetherness or closeness okay so everyone's together but Lord Chancellor can't make out what they all want all right so that's his response we've got option A he asks about the meaning of the crowds shouting even though he claims to know what the crowd wants while he doesn't claim to know what the crowd wants okay so anytime you have an answer choice on the SAT reading a writing section that you can get rid of based on a piece of it that is incorrect cross out that piece that makes it Incorrect and move on you got B he indicates a desire to speak to the crowd okay it never has any sort of portion of the text that indicates he has a desire to speak to the crowd okay if you didn't remember that for example if you have bad reading comprehension you would go back to where the response is contained okay which we see is in this bracket of blue right here if you take a look there you see what can it all mean he kept repeating himself I never heard such shouting before and at this time of the morning too and with such unanimity obviously right there there is no indication he wants to speak to the crowd so you could get rid of B and then C he expresses a sympathy for the crowd's demands okay well does it ever show that he's expressing Sympathy for the crowd's demands once again it does not okay so you would get rid of that okay if you weren't sure on that you'd go back to that section and notice how I've narrowed this down to a section so if you are someone who struggles reading comprehension make sure that you try to narrow down where you need to look back to okay sometimes it'll be in a case like this where you're only looking at one portion of the text which is his response because you really don't need to focus on the other portions because you're not asked about them okay in other cases you may have to jump around a little bit more because it may not be confined to one section of the text okay now we'll take a look at answer Choice D he describes the crowd as being united that's supported he talks about and with such unanimity would be the quotation that would support that even though the crowd clearly appears otherwise okay and then let's say that you weren't sure if the crowd clearly appears otherwise okay that's actually not contained within this small section it's not confined there okay that one a fine support for you'd actually have to go up okay so the crowd appears otherwise everybody roared but whether it was for the subordin or not did not clearly appear some are shouting bread others taxes no one seemed to know what they really wanted okay so that would show that the crowd appears otherwise even though he describes the crowd as being united okay so answer D has a ton of textual support there here's how I recommend that you approach questions on the digital sat reading and writing section that asks you to support or weaken any sort of claim or hypothesis I'm going to illustrate this with question 13. question 13's prompt states which finding if true would most directly support the student's claim in order to answer a question like this you will need to identify the hypothesis or claim in this case a claim so let's go ahead and start by reading through question 13 and when you go through you want to identify that claim so we'll mark it with a c when we find it we're born in 1891 to a kyocha speaking family in the Andes Mountains of Peru Martin Champions today considered to be one of the most renowned figures of Latin American photography and a paper for an art history class A student claims so this is very very clear can we mark it with a c that chambi's photographs have considerable ethnographic value in his work Champion was able to capture diverse elements of Peruvian Society representing his subjects with both dignity and authenticity so I'll go ahead and take a look at our options with option A shambi took many commissioned photographs of wealthy peruvians but he also produce hundreds of images carefully documenting the people's sights and customs of indigenous communities of the Andes well that's ultimately supporting the fact that his photographs have considerable ethnographic value and his work he's capturing diverse elements okay so both the wealthy and the indigenous communities a Peruvian Society representing a subject of both dignity and authenticity okay we have he's documenting the peoples the sites the Customs okay so that would be supportive of the authenticity aspect okay as far as the dignity aspect the fact that he's taking you know hundreds of images carefully documenting um the indigenous communities of the Andes kit I'd say that because he's in particular documenting the indigenous communities as well as the wealthy peruvians but in this case I'm more so concerned with the indigenous communities the fact that he's documenting both of those kids showing that he's showing them with dignity okay there's no sort of bashing or anything like that okay he's both um you know taking these portraits with wealthy as well as the poor with no sort of partiality to either so he's representing them with dignity authenticity because of that has considerable ethnographic ethnographic value okay so that looks good we'll take a look at b c and d as well we have option b Champy's photographs demonstrate a high level of technical skill as seen his strategic use of Illumination to create dramatic light and Shadow contrast now that they may very well be true however the problem is we need to directly support the student's claim and the student's claim isn't that chamby is the most technically skilled photographer okay so we wouldn't want to focus on his technical skill we'd want to focus on the ethnographic value of the photographs he is taking okay the fact that he's capturing diverse elements proving Society not on the actual technical skill so this is an example of something that is fairly unrelated to the actual claim that is being made here we take a look at C we have during his lifetime shambi was known and celebrated both within and outside his native Peru as his work was published in places like Argentina Spain and Mexico so this answer choice I would actually classify it as you would select this if you had a misinterpretation of part of the text because if we scroll up and we state that Champy's photographs have considerable ethnographic value we're not stating that um chamby himself and him as a photographer is being valued in multiple aspects or parts of the world okay which is what ants Choice C is trying to sort of that's kind of the claim C is insinuating with its support here okay saying that Champion's known and celebrated within outside his native Peru as work was published in places like Argentina Spain and Mexico so I would classify this as a misinterpretation type of wrong answer choice if we take a look at D we have some of the peoples and places Champion photographed had long been popular subjects for Peruvian photographers well once again we need to keep in mind the claim that we're trying to support okay we know that the claim is that his photographs have considerable ethnographic value and his work he's capturing diverse elements proven Society representing the subjects we build dignity and authenticity okay no part of D is ultimately supportive of that okay D is really just stating something it's just stating that some of the peoples and places Jamie photographed have been along popular subjects for Peruvian photographers that's not supportive of the claim okay and also one thing I also want to point out here is you need to directly support the claim word directly there is important okay because you have to keep in mind your answer Choice must directly support it can't just be you know some sort of tangent that is a reach to support it needs to directly support the only answer choice that does that here is answer Choice a so the big takeaway I want you to have from this type of question is as you read through identify that claim or that hypothesis that you either need to support or weaken here are some common wrong answer Choice types to questions that ask you about findings that either support or weekend a researcher's hypothesis or someone's claim okay so I'm going to illustrate this with question number 16. so to start we're going to first identify what the research hypothesis is as we do our read through on question 16 and then we'll get into the answer choices so we have in the mountains of Brazil b t and BM two plants in the Villagio family establish themselves on soilless nutrient poor patches of quartzite Rock plant ecologist Anna a and Patricio de Brito Costa used microscopic analysis to determine that the roots of BT and BM which grow directly into the chord site have clusters of fine hairs near the root tip further analysis indicated that these hairs secrete both Malik and citric acids the researchers hypothesize so now we have our hypothesis I'm going to mark this with an H that the plants depend on dissolving underlying rock with these acids as the process not only creates channels for continued growth but also releases phosphates that provide the vital nutrient phosphorus okay so now we have to find support for that hypothesis I'll try to leave that hypothesis within the frame so you can still see it we have option A other species in the velocity eye family are found in terrains with more soil but have root structures similar to BT and BM okay ultimately this is pretty unrelated to the actual hypothesis at hand here okay our hypothesis is that the plants depend on dissolving underlying rock with these acids um because that they then use this to release phosphates that provide the vital nutrient phosphorus well if you have the same family there are other um other species in the same family that have root structures that are similar but are found in terms with more soil that's not really telling us any support or not weakening either the claim that the these plants are ultimately using these acids to not only create channels for continued growth but also to release phosphates to provide the vitamin nutrient phosphorus so this really doesn't weaken it doesn't support either it's it's for the most part unrelated so we can get rid of a based on that so that would fit into sort of the neutral or unrelated category for the most part if we take a look at B we have though B T and B on both secrete citric and malic acids each species produces these acids in different proportions okay this right here it's not supportive of our hypothesis it's not weakening our hypothesis it's just neutral and unrelated so it fits into pretty much the same bucket as answer Choice a would there okay if we take a look at option C now we have the roots of BT and BM carve new entry points into rocks even when cracks in the surface are readily available all right well if we go back up to our hypothesis okay we know that if these roots are are these cracks already available readily available we would expect that if they didn't need the phosphorus they would just grow into the cracks okay because they wouldn't need and to ultimately create these new cracks which is more costly and requires more energy from the actual plant itself to make these new cracks okay so this is actually supportive of that hypothesis right because if they were to just take the cracks that were already entered not create new ones then that would support the idea that or that would weaken the hypothesis and support the idea that they don't actually need the phosphorus but because they are actively carving new entry points into the Rocks even though the cracks are already available and they're not just growing into the cracks this supports the idea that they would need to do that in order to get the phosphorus okay so we know our answer is going to have to be C we can take a look at d as well because let's see what wrong answer Choice bucket that falls into so I can teach that we have BT and BM Thrive even when transferred to the surfaces of rocks that do not contain phosphates well if they're thriving on rocks that don't contain phosphates that would weaken our hypothesis that BT and BM need to get phosphorus from these rocks by carving in these new entry points okay so if they're thriving without phosphorus then that would weaken that hypothesis okay so D would fall into the buck of being the opposite of what we need so the opposite in this example would be something that weakens our hypothesis now if our question was What would most directly weaken the hypothesis then D would be right and C would actually be the opposite okay so I wanted to point out those wrong answer Choice Types on questions that are asking you to support or weaken a hypothesis or a claim here's one of the biggest things you need to watch out for on the digital sat reading section when asked to logically complete text so the way I would approach question 17 is I'd start by taking a look at the prompt in this case we just got Which choice logically completes the text then I'll go back up and I'll start reading so we have herbivorous sauropod dinosaurs could grow more than 100 feet long and weigh up to 80 tons and some researchers have attributed the evolution of sauropods to such massive sizes to increase the plant production resulting from high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide during the mesozaic era in this case we have researchers attributing something so I'll mark that with an A so any sort of hypothesis claim attribution along those lines or speculation I will Mark with a letter in this case a for attribution and that'll keep reading however there is no evidence of significant spikes in carbon dioxide levels coinciding with relevant periods in sauropod evolution such as when the first large sauropods appear when several sauropod lineagors underwent further Evolution toward gigantism or when seropods reached their maximum known sizes suggesting that blank okay well as you can see we have a contrast here and then we go on to describe that there's no evidence for the attribution so I've got no evidence I'm going to underline that I'll draw the arrow back to attributions we know that there's no evidence for that all right suggesting that what we have option A fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide affected different sauropod lineages differently well once again we have no evidence for fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide okay so no evidence for these fluctuations so I can get rid of a we can move on to B we have the evolution of larger body sizes and sauropods did not depend on increased atmospheric carbon dioxide okay we know that in our attribution we thought that it did depend or at least coincide with this increase increased plant production resulting from high levels atmospheric carbon dioxide but we know there's no evidence of significant spikes in carbon dioxide levels okay so we would State then that the evolution of larger body sizes did not depend on increased atmospheric carbon dioxide okay so there's evidence to support that so we can go ahead and Mark B as our answer I'm going to quickly go over C and D as well and we can discuss which box of wrong answer choice they fit into because there are common types of wrong answer choices on the digital sat reading section so here we have C atmospheric carbon dioxide was higher when the largest known sauropods live than when it was than it was when the first sauropods appeared well once again if we go back up we state that there's no evidence of significant spikes in carbon dioxide levels coinciding with relevant periods in sauropod evolution okay so there is no support for that Spike okay so we can get rid of this based on this part here the atmospheric carbon dioxide was higher when the largest known sauropods lived okay we don't know that so we can get rid of C if we take a look at D now we have sauropods probably would not have evolved to such immense sizes if atmospheric carbon dioxide had been even slightly higher so there's a few things wrong with this okay for one this isn't even supportive of the hypothesis or the attribution okay so it's not even supportive of that we know the attribution is wrong okay we also know that we never state that sauropods could not have evolved to such immense sizes of atmospheric carbon dioxide have been even slightly higher so there was no evidence for this okay so we can go and get rid of it based on the fact that there just is no evidence okay so our answer would have to be B so what I want you to take away from this is a couple things for one on this question type which is a fairly common one which Choice logically completes the text I want you to Mark any claims hypothesis attributions conclusions things along those lines I want you to mark them with their coinciding letter or underline them whatever marking use is up to you okay the next thing is you want to be deliberate about going back to the text okay because oftentimes you saw as we went through these answer choices you'll need to go back to see what logically makes sense and that's especially true for science texts like this okay this is ultimately a science passage okay for science-based passages you will very often need to go back to the text okay find what evidence there is to support what's coming after or what's completing the text here's a second example of how I recommend approaching questions that ask you to logically complete on the digital sat reading section so I'll illustrate this question 18 and documents called judicial opinions judges explain the reasoning behind their legal rulings and in those explanations they sometimes cite and discuss historical and contemporary philosophers legal scholar and philosopher Anita L Allen argues that while judges are naturally inclined to mention philosophers whose views align with their own positions the strongest judicial opinions consider and rebut potential objections I'm going to mark this with a claim okay it says she's arguing this so you could mark it with an a you can mark it with a c I guess in this case actual Market with an a for our use this is her argument okay discussing philosophers who views conflict with the judge's views could therefore what okay so we have discussing philosophers use who conflict with the judge's views could okay well we know that her argument is that while judges are naturally inclined to mention philosophers views aligned in their own positions the strongest judicial opinions consider and rebut potential objections okay so discussing philosophers whose views conflict with judges views She would argue would therefore strengthen their arguments okay so we have option A allow judges to craft judicial opinions without needing consult the philosophical works well it's actually the opposite okay it would force judges to craft judicial opinions with instead of without with needing to consult philosophical work since they would have to consult works that they're not familiar with or ones that they disagree with so they would need to consult them so we can get rid of a okay a essentially has sort of the incorrect relationship in terms of with versus without okay let's go and take a look at B now we have helped judges improve the arguments that they put forward in their judicial opinions well we know that that is her argument her argument is that the strongest judicial opinions consider and rebut potential objections therefore discussing philosophers whose views conflict with judges views could therefore improve the arguments that they put forward in their judicial opinions okay so this is ultimately going in line with what she is arguing okay so our answer would have to be B I'm going to take a look at C and D as well so we can teach a little bit based on those we have C make judicial opinions more comprehensible to readers without legal or philosophical training well we never discuss legal or philosophical training or the comprehensibility to readers that's not the goal of this the goal isn't um in discussing with conflicting philosophers views the goal isn't to make it more comprehensible to the readers the goal is to make it a stronger argument okay so this would be trying to achieve a separate goal or a different goal for what is actually stated by Anita L Allen okay so this would be if you were not if you misinterpreted basically the argument that she's trying to make or the goal behind this if we look at D we have bring judicial opinions in line with views that are broadly held among philosophers well for one thing philosophers hold many different views okay so that wouldn't really make a ton of sense but also the goal isn't to bring the judicial opinions in line with the views of philosophers the goal is just to strengthen the argument this all goes back to understanding and identifying Anita L Allen's argument okay her argument once again I'll go back up is that well judges are naturally inclined to mention philosopher whose views align with their own positions the strongest judicial opinions consider and potential objections and then when we go on we know that we're specifically looking at and I'm going to underline this again we're specifically looking at this section the strongest of opinions consider it and robot potential objections we know we're looking specifically at that because we state that discussing philosophers who views conflict with judges views could therefore do what okay and since we're talking about how to um since we're talking about views that conflict with the judges okay that's the potential objections that I underlined here so it would have to be that it makes the judicial opinion stronger in order to continue this idea okay so answer there has to be b as far as what I want you to take away from this a couple things I talked about this in the last question I went over that dealt with completing the text but you want to make sure that you're marking any arguments claims hypotheses conclusions with a letter or some sort of other markings that you know how to go back to that in the text the other thing is if you can I talked about this in a question type that was different than completing the text but you want to make sure you're understanding where to go back to okay so in this case you saw that we really really focused in on the strongest judicial opinions consider in robot potential objections okay and the reason is that that is what is directly discussed in this next part discussing philosophers whose views conflict with judges views that is the potential objections so as you can see most of that text pretty much the whole first half we're really not very concerned with so generally on the SAT reading section and this is not specific just to this question type if you can limit where you're going back to in the text to just where it is necessary in order to answer the question correctly that will help you there will be times when you need to you know go through more of the text or maybe even all of the text when going through an answer choice and that's okay that does happen but on certain questions you can keep the scope of text that you need to refer back to more limited and that will help you save some time here's how I recommend you approach questions on the digital sat reading section that asks you to fill in a quotation to effectively illustrate some sort of claim okay so the first thing that I would do if I had just scrolled down to question 12 is I would identify in this case I need to effectively illustrate a claim I would underline the fact that it's a claim okay so I'm going to mark my claim as I do this read through so we have o Pioneers is a 1913 novel by Willa Cather in the novel Cather portrays Alexandra bergson as having a deep emotional connection to her natural surroundings okay the claim here is that bergson has a deep emotional connection to our natural surroundings that's the claim okay so now we just need to go a b c d find one that supports that so the question that you need to ask yourself after you read through each answer Choice here is does this support the claim okay or does this illustrate the claim rather okay illustrate does it illustrate the claim so let's go and start with a she had never she had never known before how much the country meant to her okay so this is illustrating that she cares for the country the chirping of the insects down in the long grass had been like the sweetest music she had felt as if her heart were hiding down there okay so it felt as if her heart were hiding down there somewhere with the quail and the Plover and all the little wine wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun okay so obviously she has an emotional connection here feels her heart is hiding down there under the long shaggy ridges she felt the future stirring so clear that she has a deep emotional connection to Nature from ancestrous a okay so obviously that is illustrating the claim I'll quickly go over b c and d as well because it can be helpful to understand why wrong answers are wrong so we have B Alexandra talked about talked to the men about their crops and to the women about their poultry she spent a whole day with one young farmer who had been away at school and was experimenting with a new kind of clover head she learned a great deal so some people might look at B and say okay it talks a ton about nature that must be the answer but it's not because we have to keep in mind the entirety of our claim if we scroll up we see our claim is that she has a deep emotional connection to her natural surroundings okay answer is B well it talks about nature it does not show or illustrate that she has a deep emotional connection to Nature it is just talking about her sort of learning more about nature okay but not showing she has a deep emotional connection to it I can learn about football that doesn't mean I have a deep emotional connection to football okay so that's that's why B would have to be wrong there okay so understand that just because we talk about one of the topics mentioned in the claim does not mean we are illustrating the claim if you look at C we have Alexander drove off alone the rattle of her wagon was lost in the howling of the wind but her Lantern held firmly between her feet made a moving point of light along the highway going deeper and deeper into the dark country okay once again even though we are talking about going into the dark country which can be pertained or could be you know thought of as going deeper into past nature if you were to associate country with nature which is a pretty fair Association it does not support once again the fact that she has a deep emotional connection to her natural surroundings okay so you have to make sure that you are illustrating the entirety of the claim and not just talking about one of the topics of the claim which would be nature in this case if we look at D we have it was Alexander who read the papers and followed the markets and who learned by the mistakes of their neighbors it was Alexandra who could always tell you about what it had cost to fat in each steer and who could guess the weight of a hog before it went on the scale so closer than John bergson her father himself okay so a couple things I want to point on on this one okay first off at the end here when we talk about how she could guess the weight of a hog before it went on the scales closer than her father himself that's probably indicating that she grew up close to Nature close probably on a farm okay since she's able to guess the weight of a hog better than her father is so presumably she has done a lot of work on a farm so that's kind of what that is indicating but I could once again kind of the same similar example to football right if I had worked on a farm for a long time that does not necessarily mean I have a deep emotional connection to Nature it just means I've worked on a farm for a long time and probably know how much a hog weighs okay so you cannot associate that that does not illustrate having a deep emotional connection with nature okay so that's the problem with d so I think the key thing I want you to take away from this question and sort of this example is number one the way you approach this identify what you need okay in this case you have to first identify the claims we identify the claim in this case we need to illustrate that claim so we go through a b c and d okay find which one illustrates that and recognize that we need to actually illustrate it we cannot just mention or talk about the topic okay in this case it was nature but it could be another topic it's not enough just to discuss the topic or put the character in a setting where the topic is you have to actually illustrate the entirety of the claim here's a second example of a question where you're asked to provide a quotation to to effectively illustrate a claim okay so this is very similar to the last question in this case we're dealing with a poem however there's also one other thing I want to point out with this question which is why I wanted to include it here so you have question 12 to you is an 1856 poem by Walt Whitman and the poem Whitman suggests that readers whom he addresses directly have not fully understood it themselves writing all right well first let's go and identify the claim okay the claim is that the readers who he's addressing directly have not fully understood themselves because that's the claim they have not fully understood themselves okay now we got to keep in mind this is a poem so let's go and go through our options okay we also need to understand that he's writing this poem directly to the reader it's called to you okay so we need to understand the perspective of the reader the perspective is he's addressing them directly okay and that's stated up here that he's addressing them directly so perspective is something you need to pay attention to on the SAT reading and writing section so just recognize that if you come across a poem especially you're going to want to be able to recognize perspective narratives as well but in particular poems okay so let's go ahead and look through our options we have option A you have not known what you are you've slumbered upon yourself all your life your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time okay you have not known what you are you have slumbered upon yourself okay sleep is sort of a signifier for not fully understanding yourself but if you're looking for something even more explicit you have this first part before the comma you have not known what you are you do not understand yourself okay is essentially what he's saying and when you take into account perspective when he says you have not known what you are he is saying you have not fully understood yourself okay so a is perfect there let's go and talk about b c and d as well okay so we have option b these immense Meadows these interminable Rivers you are immense and interminable as they well him calling the reader in that case is us because we are the reader here immense is not stating that we have not fully understood ourselves so we can get rid of B that is not illustrating the claim if we take a look at C I should have made my way straight to you long ago I should have blabbed nothing but you I should have chanted nothing but you once again that is not showing that or is not illustrating that we have not fully understood ourselves so we can get rid of C okay now we get into D and D is where perspective really comes into play okay option D States I will leave all and come and make hymns of you none has understood you but I understand you so what many people will do here is they will see none has understood you and they will translate that into thinking that D has to be the answer because if we scroll up the claim is that Whitman suggesting to the readers who's he's addressing directly they have not fully understood themselves but this is where perspective comes into play if I say to you my viewer right now no one has understood you would you interpret that to mean that you yourself have not understood you probably not okay if someone says to me no one has understood you Hayden I would not interpret that to mean that I myself have not understood myself okay so this is where perspective comes into play because he is addressing us directly we need to recognize and interpret this as no one has understood you that is not the same as saying that you have not understood yourself because of the perspective here okay so that is the problem with answer Choice D okay D is stating I will leave all and come make the hymns of you not as understood you but I understand you okay so ultimately we can get rid of D we see our answer there has to be answer Choice a here's how I recommend you approach questions on the digital sat reading section that asks you to use data from either a table graph or any sort to support or weaken any sort of claim or hypothesis or conclusion okay so I'm going to illustrate this with question number 15 where I would start I'd start by reading through the passage so I have Alicia Monte cinos Navarro Isabel store and rochio Perez barales recently examined several plots within a diverse plant community in southeast Spain the researchers calculated that if individual plants were randomly distributed on this particular landscape only about 15 percent would be with other plants and patches of vegetation so one thing that will jump out to me here is the fact that it's randomly distributed okay anytime that I see something randomly distributed I'm usually pay attention to it that goes for the reading section as well as the math section actually but we'll keep reading they counted the number of juvenile plants of five species growing in patches of vegetation and the number growing alone on bare ground and compare those numbers to what would be expected if the plants were randomly distributed okay which we obviously have up there based on these results they plan name that plants of these species that grow in close proximity to other plants gain an advantage at an early developmental stage so here we have a claim okay anytime we have a claim hypothesis conclusion anything along those lines I will always mark it okay because that makes it easier for me to come back and find it later so which Choice best describes data from the table that supports the claim so we're looking to support this claim if we take a look at the table now and that is what I will do okay before going to the answer choices I will actually go back to the table now I will note that this is a case where it can be somewhat of a personal preference for me personally I would prefer to go back to the table find what data is supporting this claim and then look for the answer choices for some people they may want to go straight to the answer choices I would recommend that you go to the claim or go from the after reading the claim after reading the prompt going to the table I just find that it makes it easier to avoid getting misled by some of the ant's choices but you know you can kind of make your own decision there so let's go ahead and go through this we've got to support the claim that species that grow in close proximity gain an advantage on early developmental stage we have juvenile plants fund growing on bare ground and patches of vegetation for five species we got the five species we got the number found in bare ground found in patches vegetation we got the total we got the percent found in patches of vegetation now one thing that we need to keep in mind here is that if they were randomly distributed we'd expect that 15 would be with other plants and patches of vegetation so we would expect that the percent found in patches of vegetation would be 15 okay so 15 percent and that's for individual plants so it doesn't give a name on the species so I would just expect 50 and all of these then 15 percent as we can see we don't have that we'd have above 50 in all of them which is more than three times what would be expected okay so that's really the evidence I'm looking for is pretty much stating pretty much all of this column of this table is obviously more than three times what was expected so let's go down and look at our options okay so we have option A for all five species less than 75 percent of juvenile plants were growing in patches of vegetation well that is not supporting the claim okay so we can get rid of a we need to focus on the fact that it's three times what we expected compared to random distribution we've got B the species with the greatest number of juvenile plants growing was H stoic Stow okay we don't really care about one particular species versus the other okay we use five species if we look back up at our text but we're not really concerned with a comparison of the species Okay so we've got option C we got for T live libanities and T moradero the percentage of juvenile plants growing in patches of vegetation was less than what would be expected If plants weren't randomly distributed well we actually see that it's more than what would be expected If plants were randomly distributed so this would fall into the bucket of wrong answer choices that is the incorrect I guess in this case it's a misinterpretation okay because it's actually stating it's really just misinterpreting the data it's stating that it's a less than what would be expected but it's actually more okay so this would just be a misinterpretation of the data we've got option D now from each species the percentage of juvenile plants growing in patches of vegetation was substantially higher than what would be expected if the plants were randomly distributed okay we see that that's true according to the data okay as you can see by going back to the table first and finding what data from the table would support that claim okay I was able to have an idea of what I'm looking for before going into the answer choices here's a second example of how I recommend that you approach questions on the digital sat reading section that asks you to use data for some reason whether that's to support or weaken some sort of claim or in this case to complete an example so first thing I would take a look at is the prompt okay we've already gone over that so from here instead of going straight to the data I'm going to go ahead and go to where I have my passage so we have some researchers studying indigenous actors and filmmakers in the United States have turned their attention to the early days of Cinema particularly the 1910s and 1920s when people like James Young deer Dark Cloud Edwin Correa Lillian Saint Seer known professionally as red wing we're involved in one way or another with numerous films in fact so many films and Associated records of this era have been lost that counts of those four figures outputs should be taken as bare minimums rather than totals it's entirely possible for example that okay we have for example so we need to discuss what we're getting an example of well ultimately we state that so many films and Associated records have been lost that counts for these figures outputs should be taken as bare minimums rather than rather than totals it's entirely possible for example that blank okay so we'd be looking to discuss how it looks like in our table we've got number of films known and commonly credited and then we have years active in the individual credited credited film output keep in mind since this is the credited film output we've discussed how that's a bare minimum not a total and then we're stating it's entirely possible okay since we're saying it's possible that these are bare since these are bare minimums it would be possible that our numbers would be higher than what's in this table then okay so Which choice effectively uses data to complete the example okay in this case like on the last question I prefer to go back to the data table okay and try to figure out how I can use that to in this case I need to complete the example in the past example it was supported claim so to complete the example it's much more difficult to actually come down with an idea of what you're looking for but in this case looks like we're just gonna be looking for an example that provides greater numbers than what's in here for all these for all these uh these rows because what's in these rows is really just to be bare minimums is what we're told not the actual totals so we've got option A Dark Cloud acted in significantly fewer films than did Saint Lillian Lillian Saint Seer who's credited with 66 performances well that's not providing an example okay keep in mind we need to provide that example because that's what we're told we've got B Edwin curries 47 credit acting roles include only films made after 1934. well if we go up we've got years active 1912 to 1934 for Edwin Curry uh his 47 acting roles include only films after 1934 well we've got 47 acting roles here we see that that's from 1912 to 1934 so B is incorrect according to the data so we can get rid of that okay we can go down we can look at option C we have Lillian Saint Seer acted in far more than 66 films and Edwin Correa directed more than 58 so the land States here we can find where she is we have got 66 here okay this is the amount that she's credited for we know that we're looking for that being a bare minimum and that she actually did more than that so this makes sense next we have Edwin Correa directed more than 58 we see Edwin Correa was credited as the director for 58 once again we're stating that he did more than that which is in line with an example that these are bare minimums and not totals okay so C looks perfect we'll take a quick look at d as well D states that James Young deer actually directed 33 films and acted in only 10. okay we can find James Young deer we see that he's credited with 33 okay and he's credited as the writer for 10 so 33 actor and a writer for 10. uh so in this case it's stating that he actually directed 33 films oh okay he's still as the director for 35 so that'd be less than so that is not an example so that actually be the opposite of what we are looking for so you can put that in the bucket of an opposite um for the wrong answer Choice okay so answered half against Choice C okay so the key thing I want you to take away from these last two examples is you have a question like this where you're asked to use data for you know something or another on the SAT reading section that I recommend that you would approach it would be you start by taking a look at the prompt from there go to the passage once you're done with the passage figure out what you need from the data go back to the data once you're done going back to the data have an idea of what you're looking for in your answer's choice to either support weekend whatever you need then go to your aunt's choices if you enjoyed this video please like subscribe and consider sending a super thanks to help support my channel additionally please drop a comment below letting me know what videos you want me to make in the future and if you are looking for additional Educational Services that it offer please check out my website haydenrodie.com