The Sat Practice Test 8
Reading Test
65 MINUTES, 52 QUESTIONS
Turn to Section 1 of your answer sheet to answer the questions in this section.
Each passage or pair of passages below is followed by a number of questions. After reading
each passage or pair, choose the best answer to each question based on what is stated or
implied in the passage or passages and in any accompanying graphics (such as a table or
graph).
Questions 1-10 are based on the following the other children. He was convinced that I spent
.......................................................................................................................................................................................................
passage. them on licorice sticks, sunflower seeds, or sweets,
This passage is from Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel’s Game.
but I would keep them in a coffee tin under the bed,
30 and when I’d collected four or five reales I’d secretly
©2008 by Dragonworks, S.L. Translation ©2009 by
Lucia Graves. The narrator, a writer, recalls his childhood in rush out to buy myself a book.
early twentieth-century Barcelona. My favorite place in the whole city was the
Sempere & Sons bookshop on Calle Santa Ana. It
Even then my only friends were made of paper smelled of old paper and dust and it was my
and ink. At school I had learned to read and write 35 sanctuary, my refuge. The bookseller would let me sit
long before the other children. Where my school on a chair in a corner and read any book I liked to
Line friends saw notches of ink on incomprehensible my heart’s content. He hardly ever allowed me to pay
5 pages, I saw light, streets, and people. Words and the for the books he placed in my hands, but when he
mystery of their hidden science fascinated me, and I wasn’t looking I’d leave the coins I’d managed to
saw in them a key with which I could unlock a 40 collect on the counter before I left. It was only small
boundless world, a safe haven from that home, those change—if I’d had to buy a book with that pittance, I
streets, and those troubled days in which even I would probably have been able to afford only a
10 could sense that only a limited fortune awaited me. booklet of cigarette papers. When it was time for me
My father didn’t like to see books in the house. to leave, I would do so dragging my feet, a weight on
There was something about them—apart from the 45 my soul. If it had been up to me, I would have stayed
letters he could not decipher—that offended him. there forever.
He used to tell me that as soon as I was ten he would One Christmas Sempere gave me the best gift I
15 send me off to work and that I’d better get rid of all
have ever received. It was an old volume, read and
my scatterbrained ideas if I didn’t want to end up a experienced to the full.
loser, a nobody. I used to hide my books under the 50 “Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens,” I read
mattress and wait for him to go out or fall asleep so on the cover.
that I could read. Once he caught me reading at night I was aware that Sempere knew a few authors who
20 and flew into a rage. He tore the book from my
frequented his establishment and, judging by the care
hands and flung it out of the window. with which he handled the volume, I thought
“If I catch you wasting electricity again, reading 55 perhaps this Mr. Dickens was one of them.
all this nonsense, you’ll be sorry.” “A friend of yours?”
My father was not a miser and, despite the “A lifelong friend. And from now on, he’s your
25 hardships we suffered, whenever he could he gave me friend too.”
a few coins so that I could buy myself some treats like
, That afternoon I took my new friend home,
...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
3
60 hidden under my clothes so that my father wouldn’t
see it. It was a rainy winter, with days as gray as lead, With which of the following statements about his
and I read Great Expectations about nine times, father would the narrator most likely agree?
partly because I had no other book at hand, partly A) He lacked affection for the narrator.
because I did not think there could be a better one in
65 the whole world and I was beginning to suspect that
B) He disliked any unnecessary use of money.
Mr. Dickens had written it just for me. Soon I was C) He would not have approved of Sempere’s gift.
convinced that I didn’t want to do anything else in D) He objected to the writings of Charles Dickens.
life but learn to do what Mr. Dickens had done.
4
1
Which choice provides the best evidence for the
Over the course of the passage, the main focus shifts answer to the previous question?
from a
A) Lines 24-27 (“My father . . . children”)
A) general discussion of the narrator’s love of
B) Lines 35-37 (“The bookseller . . . content”)
reading to a portrayal of an influential incident.
C) Lines 37-38 (“He hardly . . . hands”)
B) depiction of the narrator’s father to an
examination of an author with whom the D) Lines 59-61 (“That afternoon . . . see it”)
narrator becomes enchanted.
C) symbolic representation of a skill the narrator
5
possesses to an example of its application.
It can reasonably be inferred from the passage that
D) tale about the hardships of the narrator’s
the main reason that the narrator considers Great
childhood to an analysis of the effects of those
Expectations to be the best gift he ever received is
hardships.
because
A) reading the book convinced him that he wanted
2 to be a writer.
The main purpose of lines 1-10 (“Even . . . awaited B) he’d only ever been given sweets and snacks as
me”) is to gifts in the past.
A) introduce the characters who play a part in the C) the gift meant that Sempere held him in high
narrator’s story. regard.
B) list the difficult conditions the narrator endured D) Sempere was a friend of the book’s author.
in childhood.
C) describe the passion that drives the actions the 6
narrator recounts.
Which choice provides the best evidence for the
D) depict the narrator’s aspirations before he met answer to the previous question?
Sempere.
A) Lines 38-40 (“when . . . left”)
B) Lines 48-49 (“It was . . . full”)
C) Lines 52-55 (“I was . . . them”)
D) Lines 66-68 (“Soon . . . done”)
, Questions 11-21 are based on the following
...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
7
passage and supplementary material.
The narrator indicates that he pays Sempere
This passage is adapted from Jeffrey Mervis, “Why Null
A) less than Sempere expects him to pay for Results Rarely See the Light of Day.” ©2014 by American
the books. Association for the Advancement of Science.
B) nothing, because Sempere won’t take his money. The question of what to do with null results—
C) the money he makes selling sweets to the other when researchers fail to see an effect that should be
children. detectable—has long been hotly debated
Line among those conducting medical trials, where the
D) much less for the books than they are worth.
5 results can have a big impact on lives and corporate
bottom lines. More recently, the debate has spread to
the social and behavioral sciences, which also have
8 the potential to sway public and social policy.
As used in line 44, “weight” most nearly means There were little hard data, however, on how often or
10 why null results were squelched. “Yes, it’s true that
A) bulk. null results are not as exciting,” political scientist
B) burden. Gary King of Harvard University says. “But I suspect
C) force. another reason they are rarely published is that there
are many, many ways to produce null results by
D) clout. 15 messing up. So they are much harder to interpret.”
In a recent study, Stanford political economist
Neil Malhotra and two of his graduate students
9 examined every study since 2002 that was funded by
The word “friend” is used twice in lines 57-58 to a competitive grants program called TESS
20 (Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences).
A) underline the importance of the narrator’s TESS allows scientists to order up Internet-based
connection to Sempere. surveys of a representative sample of US adults to test
B) stress how friendships helped the narrator deal a particular hypothesis (for example, whether voters
with his difficult home situation. tend to favor legislators who boast of bringing federal
25 dollars to their districts over those who tout a focus
C) emphasize the emotional connection Sempere
feels to reading. on policy matters).
Malhotra’s team tracked down working papers
D) imply that the narrator’s sentiments caused him from most of the experiments that weren’t published,
to make an irrational decision. and for the rest asked grantees what had happened to
30 their results. In their e-mailed responses, some
scientists cited deeper problems with a study or more
10 pressing matters—but many also believed the
Which statement best characterizes the relationship journals just wouldn’t be interested. “The
between Sempere and Charles Dickens? unfortunate reality of the publishing world [is] that
35 null effects do not tell a clear story,” said one
A) Sempere models his own writing after scientist. Said another, “Never published, definitely
Dickens’s style. disappointed to not see any major effects.”
B) Sempere is an avid admirer of Dickens’s work. Their answers suggest to Malhotra that rescuing
findings from the file drawer will require a shift in
C) Sempere feels a personal connection to details of
40 expectations. “What needs to change is the culture—
Dickens’s biography.
the author’s belief about what will happen ifthe
D) Sempere considers himself to be Dickens’s most research is written up,” he says.
appreciative reader. Not unexpectedly, the statistical strength of the
findings made a huge difference in whether they
45 were ever published. Overall, 42% of the experiments
, produced statistically significant results. Of those, Fates of Social Science Studies by Results
...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
62% were ultimately published, compared with 21% 100%
of the null results. However, the Stanford team was 90%
surprised that researchers didn’t even write up 80%
50 65% of the experiments that yielded a null finding. 70%
Scientists not involved in the study praise its 60%
“clever” design. “It’s a very important paper” that 50%
“starts to put numbers on things we want to 40%
understand,” says economist Edward Miguel of the 30%
55 University of California, Berkeley. 20%
He and others note that the bias against null 10%
studies can waste time and money when researchers 0%
devise new studies replicating strategies already strong results mixed results null results
found to be ineffective. Worse, if researchers publish (42% of total) (36% of total) (22% of total)
60 significant results from similar experiments in the
future, they could look stronger than they should published in top journal
because the earlier null studies are ignored. Even
published in non-top journal
more troubling to Malhotra was the fact that two
scientists whose initial studies “didn’t work out” unpublished but written
65 went on to publish results based on a smaller sample. unwritten
“The non-TESS version of the same study, in which
we used a student sample, did yield fruit,” noted one Adapted from Annie Franco, Neil Malhotra, and Gabor Simonovits,
investigator. “Publication Bias in the Social Sciences: Unlocking the File Drawer.”
©2014 by American Association for the Advancement of Science.
A registry for data generated by all experiments
70 would address these problems, the authors argue.
They say it should also include a “preanalysis” plan,
that is, a detailed description of what the scientist
hopes to achieve and how the data will be analyzed.
Such plans would help deter researchers from
75 tweaking their analyses after the data are collected in
search of more publishable results.
Reading Test
65 MINUTES, 52 QUESTIONS
Turn to Section 1 of your answer sheet to answer the questions in this section.
Each passage or pair of passages below is followed by a number of questions. After reading
each passage or pair, choose the best answer to each question based on what is stated or
implied in the passage or passages and in any accompanying graphics (such as a table or
graph).
Questions 1-10 are based on the following the other children. He was convinced that I spent
.......................................................................................................................................................................................................
passage. them on licorice sticks, sunflower seeds, or sweets,
This passage is from Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel’s Game.
but I would keep them in a coffee tin under the bed,
30 and when I’d collected four or five reales I’d secretly
©2008 by Dragonworks, S.L. Translation ©2009 by
Lucia Graves. The narrator, a writer, recalls his childhood in rush out to buy myself a book.
early twentieth-century Barcelona. My favorite place in the whole city was the
Sempere & Sons bookshop on Calle Santa Ana. It
Even then my only friends were made of paper smelled of old paper and dust and it was my
and ink. At school I had learned to read and write 35 sanctuary, my refuge. The bookseller would let me sit
long before the other children. Where my school on a chair in a corner and read any book I liked to
Line friends saw notches of ink on incomprehensible my heart’s content. He hardly ever allowed me to pay
5 pages, I saw light, streets, and people. Words and the for the books he placed in my hands, but when he
mystery of their hidden science fascinated me, and I wasn’t looking I’d leave the coins I’d managed to
saw in them a key with which I could unlock a 40 collect on the counter before I left. It was only small
boundless world, a safe haven from that home, those change—if I’d had to buy a book with that pittance, I
streets, and those troubled days in which even I would probably have been able to afford only a
10 could sense that only a limited fortune awaited me. booklet of cigarette papers. When it was time for me
My father didn’t like to see books in the house. to leave, I would do so dragging my feet, a weight on
There was something about them—apart from the 45 my soul. If it had been up to me, I would have stayed
letters he could not decipher—that offended him. there forever.
He used to tell me that as soon as I was ten he would One Christmas Sempere gave me the best gift I
15 send me off to work and that I’d better get rid of all
have ever received. It was an old volume, read and
my scatterbrained ideas if I didn’t want to end up a experienced to the full.
loser, a nobody. I used to hide my books under the 50 “Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens,” I read
mattress and wait for him to go out or fall asleep so on the cover.
that I could read. Once he caught me reading at night I was aware that Sempere knew a few authors who
20 and flew into a rage. He tore the book from my
frequented his establishment and, judging by the care
hands and flung it out of the window. with which he handled the volume, I thought
“If I catch you wasting electricity again, reading 55 perhaps this Mr. Dickens was one of them.
all this nonsense, you’ll be sorry.” “A friend of yours?”
My father was not a miser and, despite the “A lifelong friend. And from now on, he’s your
25 hardships we suffered, whenever he could he gave me friend too.”
a few coins so that I could buy myself some treats like
, That afternoon I took my new friend home,
...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
3
60 hidden under my clothes so that my father wouldn’t
see it. It was a rainy winter, with days as gray as lead, With which of the following statements about his
and I read Great Expectations about nine times, father would the narrator most likely agree?
partly because I had no other book at hand, partly A) He lacked affection for the narrator.
because I did not think there could be a better one in
65 the whole world and I was beginning to suspect that
B) He disliked any unnecessary use of money.
Mr. Dickens had written it just for me. Soon I was C) He would not have approved of Sempere’s gift.
convinced that I didn’t want to do anything else in D) He objected to the writings of Charles Dickens.
life but learn to do what Mr. Dickens had done.
4
1
Which choice provides the best evidence for the
Over the course of the passage, the main focus shifts answer to the previous question?
from a
A) Lines 24-27 (“My father . . . children”)
A) general discussion of the narrator’s love of
B) Lines 35-37 (“The bookseller . . . content”)
reading to a portrayal of an influential incident.
C) Lines 37-38 (“He hardly . . . hands”)
B) depiction of the narrator’s father to an
examination of an author with whom the D) Lines 59-61 (“That afternoon . . . see it”)
narrator becomes enchanted.
C) symbolic representation of a skill the narrator
5
possesses to an example of its application.
It can reasonably be inferred from the passage that
D) tale about the hardships of the narrator’s
the main reason that the narrator considers Great
childhood to an analysis of the effects of those
Expectations to be the best gift he ever received is
hardships.
because
A) reading the book convinced him that he wanted
2 to be a writer.
The main purpose of lines 1-10 (“Even . . . awaited B) he’d only ever been given sweets and snacks as
me”) is to gifts in the past.
A) introduce the characters who play a part in the C) the gift meant that Sempere held him in high
narrator’s story. regard.
B) list the difficult conditions the narrator endured D) Sempere was a friend of the book’s author.
in childhood.
C) describe the passion that drives the actions the 6
narrator recounts.
Which choice provides the best evidence for the
D) depict the narrator’s aspirations before he met answer to the previous question?
Sempere.
A) Lines 38-40 (“when . . . left”)
B) Lines 48-49 (“It was . . . full”)
C) Lines 52-55 (“I was . . . them”)
D) Lines 66-68 (“Soon . . . done”)
, Questions 11-21 are based on the following
...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
7
passage and supplementary material.
The narrator indicates that he pays Sempere
This passage is adapted from Jeffrey Mervis, “Why Null
A) less than Sempere expects him to pay for Results Rarely See the Light of Day.” ©2014 by American
the books. Association for the Advancement of Science.
B) nothing, because Sempere won’t take his money. The question of what to do with null results—
C) the money he makes selling sweets to the other when researchers fail to see an effect that should be
children. detectable—has long been hotly debated
Line among those conducting medical trials, where the
D) much less for the books than they are worth.
5 results can have a big impact on lives and corporate
bottom lines. More recently, the debate has spread to
the social and behavioral sciences, which also have
8 the potential to sway public and social policy.
As used in line 44, “weight” most nearly means There were little hard data, however, on how often or
10 why null results were squelched. “Yes, it’s true that
A) bulk. null results are not as exciting,” political scientist
B) burden. Gary King of Harvard University says. “But I suspect
C) force. another reason they are rarely published is that there
are many, many ways to produce null results by
D) clout. 15 messing up. So they are much harder to interpret.”
In a recent study, Stanford political economist
Neil Malhotra and two of his graduate students
9 examined every study since 2002 that was funded by
The word “friend” is used twice in lines 57-58 to a competitive grants program called TESS
20 (Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences).
A) underline the importance of the narrator’s TESS allows scientists to order up Internet-based
connection to Sempere. surveys of a representative sample of US adults to test
B) stress how friendships helped the narrator deal a particular hypothesis (for example, whether voters
with his difficult home situation. tend to favor legislators who boast of bringing federal
25 dollars to their districts over those who tout a focus
C) emphasize the emotional connection Sempere
feels to reading. on policy matters).
Malhotra’s team tracked down working papers
D) imply that the narrator’s sentiments caused him from most of the experiments that weren’t published,
to make an irrational decision. and for the rest asked grantees what had happened to
30 their results. In their e-mailed responses, some
scientists cited deeper problems with a study or more
10 pressing matters—but many also believed the
Which statement best characterizes the relationship journals just wouldn’t be interested. “The
between Sempere and Charles Dickens? unfortunate reality of the publishing world [is] that
35 null effects do not tell a clear story,” said one
A) Sempere models his own writing after scientist. Said another, “Never published, definitely
Dickens’s style. disappointed to not see any major effects.”
B) Sempere is an avid admirer of Dickens’s work. Their answers suggest to Malhotra that rescuing
findings from the file drawer will require a shift in
C) Sempere feels a personal connection to details of
40 expectations. “What needs to change is the culture—
Dickens’s biography.
the author’s belief about what will happen ifthe
D) Sempere considers himself to be Dickens’s most research is written up,” he says.
appreciative reader. Not unexpectedly, the statistical strength of the
findings made a huge difference in whether they
45 were ever published. Overall, 42% of the experiments
, produced statistically significant results. Of those, Fates of Social Science Studies by Results
...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
62% were ultimately published, compared with 21% 100%
of the null results. However, the Stanford team was 90%
surprised that researchers didn’t even write up 80%
50 65% of the experiments that yielded a null finding. 70%
Scientists not involved in the study praise its 60%
“clever” design. “It’s a very important paper” that 50%
“starts to put numbers on things we want to 40%
understand,” says economist Edward Miguel of the 30%
55 University of California, Berkeley. 20%
He and others note that the bias against null 10%
studies can waste time and money when researchers 0%
devise new studies replicating strategies already strong results mixed results null results
found to be ineffective. Worse, if researchers publish (42% of total) (36% of total) (22% of total)
60 significant results from similar experiments in the
future, they could look stronger than they should published in top journal
because the earlier null studies are ignored. Even
published in non-top journal
more troubling to Malhotra was the fact that two
scientists whose initial studies “didn’t work out” unpublished but written
65 went on to publish results based on a smaller sample. unwritten
“The non-TESS version of the same study, in which
we used a student sample, did yield fruit,” noted one Adapted from Annie Franco, Neil Malhotra, and Gabor Simonovits,
investigator. “Publication Bias in the Social Sciences: Unlocking the File Drawer.”
©2014 by American Association for the Advancement of Science.
A registry for data generated by all experiments
70 would address these problems, the authors argue.
They say it should also include a “preanalysis” plan,
that is, a detailed description of what the scientist
hopes to achieve and how the data will be analyzed.
Such plans would help deter researchers from
75 tweaking their analyses after the data are collected in
search of more publishable results.
