SAT Topics: Expression of Ideas

These are always the last questions on the test, but you'll want to make sure to answer them before time runs out. These are among the shortest and easiest questions on the test, once you learn the patterns. They are comparatively low-hanging fruit, and if you are going to have to guess on any questions, you'll want to spend your guesses on the long, hair-pulling, frustrating, time-consuming questions in the middle of the test. If you have to guess on any of the relatively brief and safe questions at the end, you're losing easy points.

Rhetorical Synthesis — These are the bullet-point questions at the end of every module. With the questions in the easy and medium categories, you usually don't even need to read the bullet points. For example, if the question asks you to emphasize a difference, one of the answer choices will give a similarity instead of a difference, one will mention only one item instead of comparing two, and another answer choice won't mention either one of the two things you are supposed to compare. Those in the hard category can be a little trickier, but they are still nowhere near as obnoxious as the evidence questions in the middle of the test. Here are the easy, medium, and hard practice problems from the SAT Practice Problem Databank.

Transitions — These are also fairly brief and relatively easy, and they are always the second-to-last questions on the test, preceding the bullet-point questions. They give you a few sentences to read, the answer choices will be brief comparative words, and you are supposed to pick the one that best expresses the relationship between the sentence (or clause) containing the transition and the sentence (or clause) preceding the transition. If the second idea contrasts or conflicts with the preceding idea, you need to pick a word that expresses contrast, like however, conversely, or on the other hand. If the first statement is very broad and non-specific and the second statement contains lots of numbers or capital letters, you are probably looking for a generalization → example relationship, in which case for example or for instance would be appropriate, or a broader → narrower relationship, in which case specifically would be appropriate. Here are the easy, medium, and hard practice problems from the SAT Practice Problem Databank.