SAT Section One : Critical Reading Sample Questions:

1. Farmlands, wetlands, forests, and deserts that composed the American landscape in the early twentieth
century have frequently been transformed during the past thirty years into mushrooming metropolitan
areas as urbanization spreads across the country. Many metropolitan areas in the United States are
growing at extraordinary rates. "Urban growth is a vital issue that requires our careful attention from local
to global scales," said Barbara Ryan, USGS Associate Director of Geography.
"It is not until we begin to take a broad census of the land itself--tracking landscapes from a spatial
perspective in a time scale of decades--that we can grasp the scale of the changes that have already
occurred and predict the impact of changes to come."
On average, between 1984 and 2004, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Memphis,
Minneapolis- St. Paul, Orlando, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Raleigh-Durham, Reno-Sparks, Sacramento,
Seattle- Tacoma, and Tampa-St. Petersburg averaged 173 square miles of additional urban land over the
two decades, with Houston, Orlando, and Atlanta as the top three regions by area. The growth leaders by
percentage change were Las Vegas (193 percent), Orlando (157 percent), and Phoenix (103 percent).
You can infer from this article that

A) the author believes that further study on the issue of urban growth is needed
B) the author is inflating the change in land use to further his or her own agenda
C) Seattle-Tacoma is getting overcrowded
D) the author is very much against urban sprawl and is actively working to limit it
E) the author heartily endorses urban growth

2. He was a un-common small man, he really was. Certainly not so small as he was made out to be, but
where IS your Dwarf as is? He was a most uncommon small man, with a most uncommon large Ed; and
what he had inside that Ed, nobody ever knowed but himself: even suppose in himself to have ever took
stock of it, which it would have been a stiff job for even him to do.
The kindest little man as never growed! Spirited, but not proud. When he travelled with the Spotted Baby
though he knowed himself to be a nat'ral Dwarf, and knowed the Baby's spots to be put upon him artificial,
he nursed that Baby like a mother. You never heerd him give a ill-name to a Giant. He DID allow himself
to break out into strong language respectin the Fat Lady from Norfolk; but that was an affair of the 'art; and
when a man's 'art has been trifled with by a lady, and the preference giv to a Indian, he ain't master of his
actions.
He was always in love, of course; every human nat'ral phenomenon is. And he was always in love with a
large woman; I never knowed the Dwarf as could be got to love a small one. Which helps to keep 'em the
Curiosities they are.
One sing'ler idea he had in that Ed of his, which must have meant something, or it wouldn't have been
there. It was always his opinion that he was entitled to property. He never would put his name to anything.
He had been taught to write, by the young man without arms, who got his living with his toes (quite a
writing master HE was, and taught scores in the line), but Chops would have starved to death, afore he'd
have gained a bit of bread by putting his hand to a paper. This is the more curious to bear in mind,
because HE had no property, nor hope of property, except his house and a sarser. When I say his house,
I mean the box, painted and got up outside like a reg'lar six-roomer, that he used to creep into, with a
diamond ring (or quite as good to look at) on his forefinger, and ring a little bell out of what the Public
believed to be the Drawing-room winder. And when I say a sarser, I mean a Chaney sarser in which he
made a collection for himself at the end of every Entertainment. His cue for that, he took from me: "Ladies
and gentlemen, the little man will now walk three times round the Cairawan, and retire behind the curtain."
When he said anything important, in private life, he mostly wound it up with this form of words, and they
was generally the last thing he said to me at night afore he went to bed.
He had what I consider a fine mind--a poetic mind. His ideas respectin his property never come upon him
so strong as when he sat upon a barrel-organ and had the handle turned. Arter the wibration had run
through him a little time, he would screech out, "Toby, I feel my property coming--grind away! I'm counting
my guineas by thousands, Toby--grind away! Toby, I shall be a man of fortun! I feel the Mint a jingling in
me, Toby, and I'm swelling out into the Bank of England!" Such is the influence of music on a poetic mind.
Not that he was partial to any other music but a barrel-organ; on the contrary, hated it.
He had a kind of a everlasting grudge agin the Public: which is a thing you may notice in many
phenomenons that get their living out of it. What riled him most in the nater of his occupation was, that it
kep him out of Society. He was continiwally saying, "Toby, my ambition is, to go into Society. The curse of
my position towards the Public is, that it keeps me hout of Society. This don't signify to a low beast of a
Indian; he an't formed for Society. This don't signify to a Spotted Baby; HE an't formed for Society. I am."
Which selection best interprets "Chops would have starved to death, afore he'd have gained a bit of bread
by putting his hand to a paper" 4th paragraph

A) He would starve before wrapping paper around food showing distrust in the preparation of same.
B) He would starve before signing a performance contract as a phenomenon.
C) He would starve before he would accept charity from anyone.
D) He would starve before borrowing money to buy bread.
E) He would starve before he would agree to anything.

3. He was born a slave, but T. Thomas Fortune (18561928) went on to become a journalist, editor, and civil
rights activist, founding several early black newspapers and a civil rights organization that predated W. E.
B. DuBois' Niagara Movement (later the NAACP). Like many black leaders of his time, Fortune was torn
between the radical leanings of DuBois and the more conservative ideology of Booker T. Washington.
This 1884 essay, "The Negro and the Nation," dates from his more militant period.
The war of the Rebellion settled only one question: It forever settled the question of chattel slavery in this
country. It forever choked the life out of the infamy of the Constitutional right of one man to rob another, by
purchase of his person, or of his honest share of the produce of his own labor. But this was the only
question permanently and irrevocably settled. Nor was this the all-absorbing question involved. The right
of a state to secede from the so called Union remains where it was when the treasonable shot upon Fort
Sumter aroused the people to all the horrors of internecine war. And the measure of protection which the
national government owes the individual members of states, a right imposed upon it by the adoption of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, remains still to be affirmed.
It was not sufficient that the federal government should expend its blood and treasure to unfetter the limbs
of four millions of people. There can be a slavery more odious, more galling, than mere chattel slavery. It
has been declared to be an act of charity to enforce ignorance upon the slave, since to inform his
intelligence would simply be to make his unnatural lot all the more unbearable. Instance the miserable
existence of ae sop, the great black moralist. But this is just what the manumission of the black people of
this country try has accomplished. They are more absolutely under the control of the Southern whites;
they are more systematically robbed of their labor; they are more poorly housed, clothed and fed, than
under the slave regime; and they enjoy, practically, less of the protection of the laws of the state or of the
federal government. When they appeal to the federal government they are told by the Supreme Court to
go to the state authorities --as if they would have appealed to the one had the other given them that
protection to which their sovereign citizenship entitles them!
Practically, there is no law in the United States which extends its protecting arm over the black man and
his rights. He is, like the Irishman in Ireland, an alien in his native land. There is no central or auxiliary
authority to which he can appeal for protection. Wherever he turns he finds the strong arm of constituted
authority powerless to protect him. The farmer and the merchant rob him with absolute immunity, and
irresponsible ruffians murder him without fear of punishment, undeterred by the law, or by public
opinion--which connives at, if it does not inspire, the deeds of lawless violence. Legislatures of states
have framed a code of laws which is more cruel and unjust than any enforced by a former slave state.
The right of franchise has been practically annulled in every one of the former slave states, in not one of
which, today, can a man vote, think, or act as he pleases. He must conform his views to the views of the
men who have usurped every function of government--who, at the point of the dagger, and with shotgun,
have made themselves masters in defiance of every law or precedent in our history as a government.
They have usurped government with the weapons of the cowards and assassins, and they maintain
themselves in power by the most approved practices of the most odious of tyrants. These men have shed
as much innocent blood as the bloody triumvirate of Rome. Today, red handed murderers and assassins
sit in the high places of power, and bask in the smiles of innocence and beauty.
Now that slavery has been abolished, Fortune believes, black people

A) are chattel
B) can succeed in the white man's world
C) have fewer rights than before
D) inspire lawless violence
E) are protected by laws

4. Given the research available today on how students learn differently, teachers need to have an ______
bag of tricks to successfully engage them all.

A) impromptu
B) available
C) eclectic
D) enormous
E) expansive

5. Margaret Walker, who would become one of the most important twentieth century African-American poets,
was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1915. Her parents, a minister and a music teacher, encouraged her
to read poetry and philosophy even as a child. Walker completed her high school education at Gilbert
Academy in New Orleans and went on to attend New Orleans University for two years. It was then that the
important Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes recognized her talent and persuaded her to
continue her education in the North. She transferred to Northwestern University in Illinois, where she
received a degree in English in 1935. Her poem, "For My People," which would remain one of her most
important works, was also her first publication, appearing in Poetry magazine in 1937.
The passage cites Walker's interaction with Langston Hughes as

A) not as important at the time it happened as it is now, due to Hughes' fame.
B) a great encouragement for Walker's confidence as a poet.
C) important to her choice to study at New Orleans University.
D) instrumental in her early work being published.
E) influential in her decision to study at Northwestern University.

Solutions: