Question Bank / Reading and Writing / Boundaries
Boundaries SAT question
Reading and Writing · Standard English Conventions · Hard · Answer it here, explanation included.
In a 2016 study, Eastern Washington University psychologist Amani El-Alayli found that, among the study participants who experienced frisson (a physiological response akin to goosebumps or getting the chills) while listening to music, there was one personality trait that they scored particularly blank openness to experience.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
ExplanationShow
Choice D is the best answer. The convention being tested is punctuation use between a main clause and a supplementary phrase. In this choice, a colon is correctly used to mark the boundary between the main clause ("there...on") and the supplementary phrase ("openness to experience") and to introduce the information that identifies which personality trait participants scored especially high on.
Choice A is incorrect because it results in a rhetorically unacceptable sentence fragment beginning with "on" and separates a necessary preposition from the clause beginning with "there." Choice B is incorrect because a semicolon can’t be used in this way to join the main clause ("there...on") and the supplementary phrase ("openness to experience"). A semicolon is conventionally used to join two main clauses, whereas a colon is conventionally used to introduce an element that explains or amplifies the information in the preceding clause, making the colon the better choice in this context. Choice C is incorrect because it fails to mark the boundary between the main clause ("there...on") and the supplementary phrase ("openness to experience").
Drill this skill on Aceit
Adaptive practice, a daily plan, and score tracking take a free account so we can save your work.
More Boundaries questions
- Generations of mystery and horror ______ have been influenced by the dark, gothic stories of celebrated American author Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849).
- The Mission 66 initiative, which was approved by Congress in 1956, represented a major investment in the infrastructure of overburdened national ______ it prioritized physical impr
- A recent study tracked the number of bee species present in twenty-seven New York apple orchards over a ten-year period. ______ found that when wild growth near an orchard was clea
- A study led by scientist Rebecca Kirby at the University of Wisconsin–Madison found that black bears that eat human food before hibernation have increased levels of a rare carbon i
- The haiku-like poems of Tomas Tranströmer, which present nature- and dream-influenced images in crisp, spare language, have earned the Swedish poet praise from leading contemporary
- While one requires oxygen and one does ______ and anaerobic respiration are both forms of cellular respiration—that is, they are processes by which cells break down glucose to use