SAT — text structure and purpose
These questions ask what a sentence is for, and what a passage is built out of — not what either one says. The distinction sounds small and decides the whole question type. Five items here quote a single sentence from the passage and ask what it does for the argument; five ask how the passage as a whole is put together. Every passage is written so that its architecture is genuinely determinate, which is what makes a structure question answerable at all.
Every purpose item includes, among its wrong answers, a perfectly accurate summary of the quoted sentence. That is deliberate and it is the trap the type is built on: a reader who has understood the sentence completely, and who reaches for the choice that reports what it means, gets it wrong every time. "It states that instability is likely if the trend continues" is an unimpeachable description of a sentence whose job is to project a consequence from evidence already laid out — and the question asked for the job. The explanations name that choice as the trap each time rather than dismissing it, because it is worth learning to feel the pull and refuse it.
The other wrong answers in the purpose items name real rhetorical functions that some other sentence in the same passage performs — supplying the evidence, restating the view being corrected, introducing the thesis. A reader who knows all the functions but has lost track of which sentence is which will be caught by them, which is the second half of the skill. Two items give the reader a handhold worth noticing: a sentence opening "to support this" announces its own role, and a sentence opening "if" is doing something other than reporting the present.
The structure items work the other way, offering arrangements the passage nearly has. One would fit if the last sentence proposed a remedy instead of defending what exists; another would fit if the passage ranked two things it merely reports; a third would fit the first half and contradict the second. Checking each candidate structure against the final sentence resolves most of them, and the explanations say so.
Every study, historian, economist, movement and institution in these passages is invented, and no invented finding is attributed to any real organization, journal or university. Nothing is reproduced from any College Board publication, released test, practice test, question bank or scoring guideline: the passages were written fresh.
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- State what a sentence does for an argument rather than what it reports
- Refuse an accurate summary of a sentence when the question asks for its function
- Tell the function of one sentence from the functions the sentences around it perform
- Recognize a concession followed by a reassertion of the writer's own position
- Distinguish evidence for a claim from the conclusion drawn from that evidence
- Read a conditional projection as different in kind from a report of present fact
- Describe how a whole passage is built, in the order its parts actually come
- Test a candidate structure against a passage's final sentence before accepting it
- Notice when a writer reports two positions without choosing between them
- Use signal words such as "however", "nonetheless" and "to support this" to locate the turns in an argument
Which choice best describes the function of the sentence "If the trend continues, the market is likely to face a long period of instability" in the writer's argument?
Sample question
Consider this passage. "Dr. Aris Thorne argues that the rapid decline of the Veridian forest is due chiefly to soil acidification rather than to climate fluctuation. He points to the raised concentration of aluminum ions in the root zones of the dying trees as the catalyst for that chemical imbalance. While some critics hold that rising temperatures are the main driver, Thorne maintains that the composition of the soil is the more immediate threat to the ecosystem." Which choice best describes the function of the sentence "While some critics hold that rising temperatures are the main driver, Thorne maintains that the composition of the soil is the more immediate threat to the ecosystem" in the writer's argument?
- It offers evidence that aluminum ions are the catalyst for the forest's decline.
- It states that the critics prefer a temperature explanation while Thorne prefers a chemical one.
- It gives a rival explanation a hearing and then restates the writer's own position against it.
- It sets out the method by which Thorne measured the effect of temperature on the trees.
See the answer
It gives a rival explanation a hearing and then restates the writer's own position against it.
The sentence names a competing account and then puts the writer's own back in its place, which is a concession followed by a reassertion. The choice about aluminum ions describes what the previous sentence does, since that is where the evidence appears. The choice about measurement describes something no sentence here does at all, as no method is mentioned. And the remaining choice is the trap this question type is built around: it accurately reports what the sentence says, that the critics prefer one explanation and Thorne another, without saying what the sentence is for. A summary of content is never an answer to a question about function.