SHSAT English Language Arts Quiz: Precise Word Choice

(1) Hummingbirds, the smallest birds in the world, have the highest metabolism of any warm-blooded animal, and during the day their hearts can beat more than 1,000 times per minute. (2) To fuel this pace, they must eat roughly their own body weight in nectar every day. (3) At night, when they cannot feed, many hummingbirds enter a state called torpor. (4) In torpor, the bird's body changes in a big way. (5) Its heart rate falls to fewer than 50 beats per minute, letting the bird survive until morning on a small part of the energy it normally burns.

Which word or phrase should replace "changes in a big way" in sentence 4?

(1) The Hawaiian Islands formed over a hot spot, a place where unusually hot molten rock rises steadily from deep inside Earth. (2) The hot spot itself stays in one place, but the Pacific Plate above it creeps northwest by several centimeters each year. (3) As the plate moves, each volcano is carried away from the hot spot, and a new one forms behind it. (4) As a result, the islands vary in a pattern. (5) Kauai, in the northwest, has deeply eroded hills, wide canyons, and long-cold volcanoes, while the Big Island, in the southeast, still has active lava flows.

Which is the most precise revision of sentence 4?

(1) Early keyboard instruments such as the harpsichord pluck their strings with small quills. (2) Because each key plucks with the same force no matter how it is pressed, a harpsichord cannot play one note louder than another. (3) Around 1700, an Italian instrument maker named Bartolomeo Cristofori built a keyboard that struck its strings with small hammers instead. (4) His invention gave players something new. (5) Pressing a key gently produced a soft tone, and striking it firmly produced a loud one, which is why the instrument was first called the pianoforte, from the Italian words for soft and loud.

Which choice most precisely replaces "something new" in sentence 4?

(1) In 1985, scientists reported that the ozone layer high above Antarctica had grown dramatically thinner each spring, creating what newspapers soon called a hole. (2) The ozone layer shields Earth from much of the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. (3) Researchers traced the damage to chemicals called CFCs, which were then widely used in refrigerators and spray cans. (4) In 1987, nations signed the Montreal Protocol, an agreement that dealt with these chemicals. (5) Under the agreement, CFC production was cut step by step over the following years until it reached nearly zero, and the ozone layer slowly began to recover.

In sentence 4, the phrase "dealt with" is vague. Which replacement best matches the information in sentence 5?

(1) Each autumn, monarch butterflies from eastern North America begin a long southward journey that can stretch nearly 3,000 miles across the continent. (2) Their destination is a small cluster of fir forests in the mountains of central Mexico, where millions of butterflies cling to the same trees year after year. (3) The insects travel to this place because of the weather there. (4) In those high forests, temperatures stay cool enough to slow the butterflies' metabolism but rarely drop below freezing. (5) This narrow range lets the monarchs survive the winter on fat stored before the trip, without risking death from frost.

To make sentence 3 more precise, which revision should the writer choose?

(1) The Brooklyn Bridge was designed by the engineer John Roebling, who died from an injury in 1869, before construction began. (2) His son Washington took over, but in 1872 he became seriously ill after working in the deep underwater chambers used to build the towers. (3) Unable to visit the site, Washington watched the work through a telescope from his window. (4) His wife, Emily, had a role in the project. (5) For eleven years, until the bridge opened in 1883, she carried his instructions to the engineers, answered many of their technical questions herself, and even spoke in his defense when some questioned whether he should remain in charge.

To make sentence 4 more precise, which revision should the writer choose?

(1) Ancient Roman builders made a concrete that has survived in harbor walls and piers along the Mediterranean coast for nearly two thousand years. (2) Modern concrete, by contrast, often begins to crack within a few decades when it is exposed to seawater. (3) Researchers studying ancient samples drilled from Roman piers found that the ancient material actually grows stronger over time. (4) As seawater seeps into the Roman mixture, it reacts with volcanic ash to form new mineral crystals that slowly fill tiny cracks. (5) In this way, the seawater has an effect on the concrete instead of destroying it.

Which word or phrase should replace "has an effect on" in sentence 5?

(1) Coral reefs, which shelter about a quarter of all ocean species, depend on a partnership between coral animals and tiny algae that live inside their tissues. (2) The algae supply the coral with most of its food and give reefs their bright colors. (3) Scientists have found that a rise of just 1 or 2 degrees Celsius above the normal summer peak, if it lasts for several weeks, is enough to break this partnership. (4) When that happens, the coral does something with the algae. (5) Without its partners, the coral turns white, a condition known as bleaching, and begins to starve.

Which is the most precise revision of sentence 4?

(1) Most plants, from oak trees to garden tomatoes, open the tiny pores on their leaves, called stomata, during the day to take in carbon dioxide. (2) In hot deserts, however, open pores let precious water escape into the dry, sunbaked air. (3) Cacti and many other desert plants avoid this loss by following a different schedule. (4) They open their stomata at a different time and store the carbon dioxide they absorb as an acid. (5) When the sun rises, the pores close and stay shut all day, and the plant uses sunlight to turn the stored acid into sugar.

The writer wants to replace "at a different time" in sentence 4 with more precise wording. Which choice is most consistent with the rest of the paragraph?

(1) In 1811, a twelve-year-old girl named Mary Anning and her brother found a strange skull in the cliffs near Lyme Regis, England. (2) Over the next year, Mary carefully dug out the rest of the skeleton, which was about seventeen feet long. (3) The creature, later named Ichthyosaurus, looked something like a dolphin but had a long, narrow snout lined with teeth. (4) Scientists at the time were affected by the find. (5) Some scientists still doubted that any kind of animal had ever died out, yet here was the skeleton of a creature that no one had ever seen alive.

Which revision of sentence 4 uses the most precise language and fits the rest of the paragraph?

(1) In the late 1800s, a group of French painters, including Claude Monet, often worked outdoors, in fields, gardens, and city streets, rather than in their studios. (2) Portable metal paint tubes, which could be sealed and carried, made it practical to paint far from home. (3) Working outside, these artists tried to capture how light changed from minute to minute. (4) To work quickly enough, they used a particular kind of brushstroke. (5) Up close, their canvases look like a mass of separate flecks of paint, each its own color, but from across a room the flecks blend into a shimmering scene.

The writer wants to replace "a particular kind of brushstroke" in sentence 4 with more precise wording. Which choice is most consistent with the paragraph?

(1) In one study, two groups of middle school students memorized the same list of 40 Spanish vocabulary words. (2) The first group studied the list for one full hour on a single Monday evening. (3) The second group studied for twenty minutes on each of three evenings spread over a week, adding up to the same total time. (4) When the groups were tested, the results were different. (5) On a test given one month after the last session, the second group recalled nearly twice as many words, suggesting that spacing out study sessions strengthens long-term memory for new vocabulary.

Which revision of sentence 4 uses the most precise language and agrees with sentence 5?

(1) When a national snack company offered to buy the recipe for Mrs. Delgado's pecan pie, her neighbors were sure she would say yes. (2) The company's representative set a thick contract on her kitchen counter and named a price that made her nephew whistle. (3) Mrs. Delgado slid the contract back across the counter before the man had even finished his sentence, explaining that the recipe had been in her family too long to sell. (4) In this way, Mrs. Delgado answered the offer. (5) The next morning, she mailed the company a handwritten note thanking them for thinking of her, along with a pie for the representative to share with his office.

To make sentence 4 more precise, which replacement for "answered" should the writer use?

(1) Every Sunday, Grandpa Sal reads the comics at the kitchen table before anyone else in the house is awake. (2) This week, a strip about a dog trying to hide a bone in the bathtub caught his eye. (3) By the last panel, his shoulders had begun to shake, and he had to set down his coffee mug before it spilled. (4) The joke made him react for a long time. (5) Under his chair, the old beagle slept on without lifting an ear, and when the family wandered downstairs later that morning, no one knew anything funny had happened until Grandpa slid the page across the table.

In sentence 4, the word "react" is vague. Which word best replaces it?

(1) Owen had announced at dinner that he could bake his sister's birthday cake without a recipe, and he waved away his father's offer to help. (2) An hour later, the cake came out of the oven with a crater in the middle deep enough to hold an egg, and when his sister wandered into the kitchen, Owen's ears turned pink and he stared hard at a spot on the floor. (3) He felt bad about the way the cake had turned out. (4) His sister studied the crater for a long moment without saying a word. (5) Then Owen grinned, scratched the back of his neck, and suggested that they call it a "volcano cake" and fill the crater with ice cream. (6) His sister laughed so hard that she had to sit down, and the volcano cake was gone before the end of the party.

Which word should replace "bad" in sentence 3 to describe Owen's feeling most precisely?

(1) For years, Rosa's Bakery on Elm Road was so crowded each morning that the line of drivers waiting for coffee and rolls stretched out the door. (2) Then a new highway opened on the other side of town, and far fewer cars came down Elm Road. (3) After that, the bakery's business went down. (4) Rosa did not notice anything wrong from one day to the next; she realized what had happened only when she compared her winter flour orders with the ones from the spring. (5) By then, the long morning line was only a memory, and on some mornings the bell over the door rang just a handful of times before noon.

Which revision of sentence 3 most exactly describes what happened to the bakery's business?

(1) On Tuesday at lunch, Marcus and Jada talked about whether the cafeteria should stop selling bottled water. (2) Within minutes their voices had risen so high that students at the next table turned to stare, and Jada thumped the tabletop every time she made a point. (3) Marcus fired back with facts about plastic in the ocean, while Jada insisted that students needed a cheap, healthy drink. (4) Each waited for the other to finish before answering. (5) When the bell rang, they agreed to swap sides the next day and walked to science class together, laughing about something else.

Which revision of sentence 1 uses the most precise wording?

(1) On Saturday nights, the kitchen at Luca's Diner turns out more dinners than on any other night of the week. (2) Order tickets clatter out of the printer one after another, pans hiss on every burner, and the cooks dart between the grill and the counter without slowing down. (3) On those nights, the pace of the work is fast. (4) The head cook hums along with the radio as she flips burgers, and each cook keeps to his or her own station, so the plates reach the pickup counter in the same order the tickets came in. (5) The waiters say they always know exactly when each table's food will be ready.

Which word most precisely replaces "fast" in sentence 3?

(1) Last fall, Maya noticed that the school's recycling bins were being emptied into the same dumpster as the regular trash. (2) She mentioned it at the student council's September meeting, again in October, and again at every meeting after that, each time holding up a new photo of the bins being tipped into the dumpster. (3) By winter, some council members grinned as soon as her hand went up, because they knew exactly what was coming. (4) Maya talked about the problem all year. (5) In the spring, after the school signed up with a recycling company, the council president thanked her in front of everyone and said the problem would have been forgotten without her reminders.

To describe Maya's effort more exactly, which words should replace "talked about" in sentence 4?

(1) Grandma asked Lucia to find the photo album from her wedding, which she was sure was somewhere in the attic. (2) Lucia climbed up right after lunch and did not come down until the sun was setting, opening trunk after trunk and box after box along the way. (3) She went through the attic all afternoon. (4) She lifted out quilts, dolls, and stacks of old letters, and she even unrolled a rug to check inside it. (5) By the time she spotted the album under a pile of curtains, sweaters and board games lay in heaps across the floorboards, and she could not have said which corners she had already searched.

Which choice most precisely replaces "went through" in sentence 3?