SAT Reading Explanations - Official SAT Practice Test 10, Reading Passage 1
Extremely Detailed, Highly Effective Explanations. Includes Recommended Question Type Tactics and Quiz Hacker's "Hyper-Literal Textual Analysis" for Every Correct and Incorrect Answer Choice.
Below are detailed answer explanations for the 10 questions on Reading Passage 1 of Official SAT Practice Test 10. This literature passage is adapted from Mary Helen Stefaniak's The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia: A Novel, ©2010. The passage centers on Miss Grace Spivey, the new school teacher in Threestep, Georgia.
(Note that due to copyright restrictions, the passage itself is not included below. Both the passage and the questions are published in "The Official SAT Study Guide" by the College Board.)
Each explanation covers applicable Question Type Tactics and guides students through the Hyper-Literal Textual Analysis (HLTA) for every correct and incorrect answer.
Question 1
Difficulty: Medium-Low
Type: General
Subtype: “throughout”
Correct Answer: A) “one of Miss Spivey’s former students.”
Explanation: This answer choice accurately restates the information given throughout the passage. The narrator refers to her own experiences in the classroom with Miss Spivey, such as when she mentions her brother Ralphord asking a question (lines 34-35) and when she discusses what "we really wanted to know about" (lines 58-59). This indicates that the narrator was one of Miss Spivey's students.
“But,” some students ask, “how can we justify saying that the narrator is one of Miss Spivey’s FORMER students?
Good question! The passage primarily portrays the narrator as a current student of Miss Spivey. However, the term "former student" is justified because the passage is written in the past tense, indicating that the events and experiences described happened in the past. Phrases like "Miss Spivey arrived" (line 1), "She told us all that at school the first day" (line 33), and "She looked around the room" (line 82) suggest that the narrator is recounting past events from her time as a student in Miss Spivey's class.
While the term "former" is not explicitly stated in the passage, the past tense narration shows that the events took place in the past, and the narrator is now looking back on those experiences, making it allowable to infer that she is a "former student." This inference is allowable because it is a Sole Reasonable Inference (i.e., none of the other answer choices offer reasonable inferences).
Incorrect Answers:
B) “Miss Spivey's predecessor.”
Explanation: This answer choice does not accurately restate information from the passage. The passage mentions Miss Spivey's predecessor, Miss Chandler (line 68), but does not suggest that the narrator is Miss Chandler. Instead, the narrator describes her experiences as a student in Miss Spivey's classroom, making it clear that the narrator is not her predecessor.
C) “an anonymous member of the community.”
Explanation: This answer choice does not accurately restate information from the passage. Although the narrator does not provide her name, the passage provides enough context to determine that the narrator is one of Miss Spivey's students (lines 34-35, 58-59). The narrator also names her brother, Ralphord (lines 34-35). Clearly, the narrator was known to her own brother and to her other classmates in the one-room schoolhouse. Therefore, she is not simply an anonymous community member.
D) “Miss Spivey herself.”
Explanation: This answer choice does not accurately restate information from the passage. The narrator speaks about Miss Spivey in the third person and describes her own experiences as a student in Miss Spivey’s classroom (lines 34-35, 58-59). This indicates that the narrator is not Miss Spivey but rather one of her former students.
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