Up Your Score SAT, 2018-2019 Edition The Underground Guide to Outsmarting The Test

Question 4 . This one is tricky because several of the choices are associated

with    the word    entrenched. The context is  key here.   Mandela does    not say

that    legislation alone   created (or “installed”)    the poverty and lack    of  human

dignity experienced by  black   South   Africans.   What    he  means   is  that    laws

have    supported   (or “reinforced”)   traditions  of  racism. The answer  is  C.  *

*With   vocabulary  questions,  it  always  helps   to  plug    the answer  choices right   into    the sentence    to  try them    out for fit.    Feel    free    to  imaginethe  sentence    being   read    aloud   by  Nelson  Mandela for authenticity.

—Samantha

Question 5 . What is Mandela implying when he says that whites in South

Africa  are significantly   wealthier   than    Africans    and that    the government  is

doing   nothing to  fix this?   Basically,  he  is  implying    that    the government

doesn’t care    about   its African citizens.   The correct answer  is  D   because it

best    crystallizes    the underlying  meaning of  the paragraph.  It  might   be

tempting    to  choose  C,  since   Mandela states  that    the condition   of  other

countries   is  “irrelevant”    for present purposes.   However,    he  says    this    to

emphasize   the importance  of  the fact    that    “we are poor    by  comparison  with

the white   people  in  our own country.”

Question 6 . This question is really just a test of whether you were able to

follow  the passage from    beginning   to  end.    Choice  A   is  the only    one that    has

a   basis   in  the text.   This    portion of  a   sentence    is  Mandela’s   way of  getting

his audience    to  focus   on  South   Africa  and not let other   nations influence

the world’s perception  of  his own.

Question 7 . In the last paragraph, Mandela raises the usual objections made

by  the government  in  order   to  refute  them.   While   the government  might

claim   that    South   Africa  is  wealthier   than    other   African nations,    he  restates

his central argument    that    Africans    are poorer  than    white   South   Africans

and are denied  the same    opportunities.  The answer  is  C.

INFOGRAPHICS

As we’ve mentioned, the SAT now includes questions about informational
graphics that accompany the passages on the Reading and Writing Tests. It might
be jarring, at first, to see a bar graph in your reading passage. But really, these
graphs are just more pieces of evidence. What’s more, once you get used to these
infographics, they become some of the easiest questions in the section.