DIGITAL SAT

writing
by SCD
 standard
englısh
conventıons
Standard English conventions in
Digital SAT Writing refer to the
accepted rules and guidelines
for using English grammar,
punctuation, usage, and syntax.
In English grammar, verbs can
be categorized into different
tenses, such as present, past,
and future.

verbs
These questions are designed to
test your understanding of how
to use correct verb forms that
accurately express the timing of
an action or event.
 the current moment or time period,

present tenses which includes the present day, week,

month, or year

present sımple tense

actions or states that are generally singular subjects
true, habitual or factual + V+s
present perfect tense Many people believe that regular exercise
improves overall health.
actions that started in the past and
continue up to the present or have just The Earth orbits around the Sun.
been completed
has V3
have V3 present contınuous tense
Scientists have discovered a new actions that are currently in progress or
species of bird in the rainforest." ongoing
am/is/are
He has written five novels since his Ving The government is implementing
debut in 2010. new policies to address the issue.
 past tenses
past sımple tense
actions or states that happened at a V+ed
specific time in the past V2
past perfect tense
The company released a new version of its
actions that were completed before
software last year.
another past action

had V3
past contınuous tense
She had already eaten lunch by actions that were ongoing in the past
the time I arrived.
was/were
She was working on the project
She had already visited 20 Ving
all weekend.
countries by 1999.
 wıll / would
would wıll / wıll not
hypothetical situations predictions, suggestions, and hopes
regarding the future
I asked for a promotion, but my boss
I'm sure the sun will rise tomorrow
said she would not give it to me.
morning.

would have v3 wıll have v3

action that will be completed at some
a hypothetical situation that point in the future before another
could have happened in the past action
but did not actually happen
They will have finished building the new bridge
If I had known about the traffic
by the end of the year.
jam, I would have left earlier.
 would
past habıt
condıtıonal statement When I was young, I would often ride my
bike to school.
If I had more time, I would go to the gym.
When she was alive, she would always wake
If I were to win the lottery, I would donate up early and go for a run.
a portion of the money to charity.

polıte request future ın the past

Would you like some tea? Yesterday, she said she would come
to the party.
Would it be possible for you to
send me the report by tomorrow? She knew that she would regret not
taking the job offer.
 Passive voice is a grammatical structure

passıve voıce in which the subject of a sentence

receives the action of the verb, rather than
performing the action themselves.

be + V3

The CEO always sets ambitious goals

The company launched its first
for the company.
product in 2010.
Ambitious goals are always set for
The first product was launched by
the company by the CEO.
the company in 2010.

The team is currently developing a new The team was conducting market research when
product line. they received the news.
A new product line is currently being Market research was being conducted by the
developed by the team. team when they received the news.

The company has invested heavily in research The company had already established
and development. a strong reputation by 2018.
Heavy investment in research and A strong reputation had already been
development has been made by the established by the company by 2018.
company.
passıve voıce be + V3

Passive voice can The company will launch a new product

line next year.
sometimes make A new product line will be launched by
sentences wordy or the company next year.

unclear.
By the end of the year, the company
will have opened five new stores.
Use active voice for By the end of the year, five new
stores will have been opened by the
clarity and emphasis company.
 PARTICIPLES a form of a verb that can function as
an adjective, adverb, or noun in a
sentence

PRESENT PARTICIPLES PerfecT PARTICIPLES

Ving
I met Mrs. Gerry who works at a hospital. having V3 / having been V3
time difference between the actions
I met Mrs. Gerry working at a hospital.

After I had arrived home, I started cleaning.

PasT PARTICIPLES passive Having arrived home, I started cleaning.

+ed / V2
The window had been broken by the storm,
The statute, which was built in 1881, is the
and it was replaced.
symbol of the town.

Having been broken by the storm, the

Built in 1881, the statue is the symbol of the
window was replaced.
town.
look for the time expressions

step 1
ıdentıfy the tıme of the
actıon pay attention to the other
tenses used
 step 2
check for subject-verb
agreementeliminate the ones that do not
match with your subject
 step 3
evaluate the choıces
be careful for the missing
auxiliaries
e.g. A) trying
A) is trying
1) Botanists recognize over fifty different species of sunflower, and variance
exists even in those species. One species, the silverleaf sunflower, ______
both an early-flowering ecotype that tends to grow in coastal areas and a
late-flowering ecotype that grows inland.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of

Standard English?

A) encompassing
B) to encompass
C) encompasses
D) having encompassed
 2) While many spiders use webs to catch their food, others capture prey
using hunting or burrowing techniques. Spiders from the family Ctenizidae,
often called trapdoor spiders, ______ their burrows with doors, using their
silk for hinges.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of

Standard English?

A) cover
B) are covering
C) will have covered
D) had covered
 3) Before the museum closed permanently, it faced financial
challenges that ______ a large deficit and declining ticket sale
revenues.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) include
B) will include
C) would include
D) included
 4) The tomato is consumed in many different ways, including raw, as
an ingredient in many dishes and sauces, and in drinks. Botanically a
fruit, it _____ considered a vegetable for culinary purposes. It belongs
to the nightshade family, and its plants typically grow from three to ten
feet high.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the
conventions of Standard English?

A) was
B) had been
C) would be
D) is
5) The complexity of human speech is a problem that continues to
puzzle computer scientists. Since the , 1950s, they __ to create a
machine capable of responding to human language with a
comparable degree of flexibility and depth.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) have struggled
B) had struggled
C) would struggle
D) struggle
 6) Martha Graham, an American dancer and choreographer, is known as
one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance. Building upon the
foundation of turn-of-the-century dancer Isadora Duncan, Graham brought
this art form to a new level with her introduction of dance techniques that at
first horrified and then later won over the American public. By the time she
retired from the stage in 1970 , she _____ gave hundreds of performances
and permanently altered the course of dance in the United States.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of

Standard English?

A) gave
B) will give
C) had given
D) would have given
7) In response to the demand for long-lasting staple foods during the
1970s, _____. As a result, the nutritional value of many packaged
foods declined.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) preservatives were added by manufacturers to dishes that

previously were simple.
B) the addition of preservatives to manufacturers to previously simple
dishes.
C) manufacturers added preservatives to previously simple dishes.
D) previously simple dishes had preservatives added to them by
manufacturers.
8) Antarctic pearlwort, a low-growing shrub with characteristic yellow
flowers, is one of only two native flowering plants which ______ in
Antarctica.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) occuring
B) occur
C) are occuring
D) will have occurred
 9) Occupying a significant part of modern-day Nigeria, the Kingdom
of Benin was one of the major powers in West Africa between the
thirteenth and nineteenth centuries. It ______ ruled by Oba Ewuare I
from 1440 to 1473.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) will be
B) is
C) was
D) has been
10) The Japanese lacquer tree, which is native to East Asia, has shiny
leaves and yellow flowers. It ______ a resin that is used to create a
durable and shiny finish on various objects such as furniture,
decorative pieces, and even musical instruments. The resin is highly
valued for its ability to resist water, heat, and acidic substances.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) produced
B) will produce
C) produces
D) is producing
11) Wanda Diaz-Merced, an astrophysicist who is blind, has developed
software that can translate astrophysical data into sound. Such tools
______ astrophysicists to detect subtle patterns in data—patterns
that may not be evident in graphs and other visual formats.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) has enabled
B) enable
C) is enabling
D) enables
 12) In recent years, economists around the world have created new
tools that quantify the overall well-being of a country’s citizens.
Economists in India, for example, use an Ease of Living Index. This tool
______ economic potential, sustainability, and citizens’ quality of
life.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) will have been measuring

B) measures
C) had measured
D) would have measured
13) In 1881, French chemist Camille Faure redesigned the rechargeable
lead-acid battery. Faure’s design greatly increased the amount of
electricity that the original battery, which the French physicist Gaston
Planté ______ fifteen years earlier, could hold.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) is inventing
B) will invent
C) had invented
D) invents
 14) In the late 1960s, inspired in part by the sight of laundry hanging
on a clothesline, African American abstract painter Sam Gilliam
began to create his iconic “Drape” paintings. He applied bold,
saturated hues to large canvases and ______ them from ceilings or
walls, causing the drooping fabric to cascade in dramatic loops and
curves.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) suspending
B) suspended
C) to suspend
D) to have suspended
 15) In 1990, California native and researcher Ellen Ochoa left her
position as chief of the Intelligent Systems Technology Branch at a
NASA research center ______ the space agency’s astronaut training
program.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) to join
B) is joining
C) joined
D) joins
16) In 1899, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius developed an equation
to answer a long-standing question: why do chemical reactions
speed up at higher temperatures? The Arrhenius equation, named for
its creator, ______ an important concept in modern chemistry.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) remains
B) remain
C) have remained
D) are remaining
 17) After winning the 1860 presidential election, Abraham Lincoln
appointed Edward Bates, Salmon P. Chase, and William H. Seward to
his cabinet. Lincoln’s decision was surprising, since each of these men
had run against him, but historians have praised it, noting that Lincoln
______ his rivals’ diverse talents to strengthen his administration.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) will leverage
B) is leveraging
C) has leveraged
D) leveraged
18) Nuhād al-Ḥaddād, known as Fairuz, was one of the most beloved
Lebanese singers of the twentieth century. Her broad singing
repertoire—which included traditional forms, such as the Arabic
qasida and maqam, alongside modern pop and jazz styles—lent
Fairuz a timeless, cross-generational appeal, ______ her the
moniker “the soul of Lebanon.”

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) earn
B) earning
C) earned
D) has earned
 19) By the time Hawaiian king Kamehameha III ______ the throne,
the number of longhorn cattle, first introduced to the islands in 1793,
had drastically increased, and so too had the need for paniolo
(Hawaiian cowboys) to manage the wild herds that then roamed
throughout the volcanic terrain.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) will ascend
B) ascended
C) ascends
D) is ascending
 20) Classical composer Florence Price’s 1927 move to Chicago
marked a turning point in her career. It was there that Price premiered
her First Symphony—a piece that was praised for blending traditional
Romantic motifs with aspects of Black folk music—and ______
supportive relationships with other Black artists.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) developing
B) developed
C) having developed
D) to develop
 21) While exploring Nevada’s Gypsum Cave in 1930, Seneca and
Abenaki archaeologist Bertha Parker made her most famous
discovery: the skull of a now-extinct ground sloth (Nothrotheriops
shastensis) alongside human-made tools. Parker’s crucial finding
was the first ______ humans in North America as far back as 10,000
years ago.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) place
B) to place
C) places
D) placed
 22) A second-generation Japanese American, Wataru Misaka
______ in World War II (1941-45) and won two amateur national
basketball championships at the University of Utah when he joined
the New York Knicks for the 1947-48 season, becoming the first non-
white basketball player in the US’s top professional league.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) had already served

B) already serves
C) was already serving
D) already served
 23) In 1994, almost 200 years after the death of Wang Zhenyi, the
International Astronomical ______ the contributions of the barrier-
breaking 18th-century astronomer and author of “Dispute of the
Procession of the Equinoxes,” naming a crater on Venus after her.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) Union, finally acknowledging

B) Union, having finally acknowledged
C) Union would finally acknowledge
D) Union to finally acknowledge
 24) Planetary scientist Briony Horgan and her colleagues have
determined that as much as 25 percent of the sand on Mars is
composed of impact spherules. These spherical bits of glass form
when asteroids collide with the planet, ejecting bits of molten rock
into the atmosphere that, after cooling and solidifying into glass,
______ back onto Mars’s surface.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) raining
B) rain
C) to rain
D) having rained
 questıons from
dıgıtal sat practıce
tests
 1) In 1637, the price of tulips skyrocketed in
Amsterdam, with single bulbs of rare varieties
selling for up to the equivalent of $200,000 in today’s
US dollars. Some historians _______ that this “tulip
mania” was the first historical instance of an asset
bubble, which occurs when investors drive prices to
highs not supported by actual demand.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms

to the conventions of Standard English?

A) claiming
B) claim
C) having claimed
D) to claim
2) The classic children’s board game Chutes and Ladders is a version of an
ancient Nepalese game, Paramapada Sopanapata. In both games, players
encounter “good” or “bad” spaces while traveling along a path; landing on
one of the good spaces _______ a player to skip ahead and arrive closer
to the end goal.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms

to the conventions of Standard English?

A) allows
B) are allowing
C) have allowed
D) allow
3) When writing The Other Black Girl (2021), novelist Zakiya Dalila Harris drew
on her own experiences working at a publishing office. The award-winning
book is Harris’s first novel, but her writing _______ honored before. At the
age of twelve, she entered a contest to have a story published in American
Girl magazine—and won.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms

to the conventions of Standard English?

A) were
B) have been
C) has been
D) are
4) In winter, the diets of Japanese macaques, also known as snow monkeys,
are influenced more by food availability than by food preference. Although
the monkeys prefer to eat vegetation and land-dwelling invertebrates, those
food sources may become unavailable because of extensive snow and ice
cover, _______ the monkeys to hunt for marine animals in any streams
that have not frozen over.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of

Standard English?

A) forces
B) to force
C) forcing
D) forced
5) Lucía Michel of the University of Chile observed that alkaline soils contain
an insoluble form of iron that blueberry plants cannot absorb, thus inhibiting
blueberry growth. If these plants were grown in alkaline soil alongside
grasses that aid in iron solubilization, _______ Michel was determined to
find out.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of

Standard English?

A) could the blueberries thrive.

B) the blueberries could thrive.
C) the blueberries could thrive?
D) could the blueberries thrive?
 6) In his 1963 exhibition Exposition of Music— Electronic Television,
Korean American artist Nam June Paik showed how television images
could be manipulated to express an artist’s perspective. Today, Paik
_______ considered the first video artist.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) will be
B) had been
C) was
D) is
 7) In order to prevent nonnative fish species from moving freely
between the Mediterranean and Red Seas, marine biologist Bella Galil
has proposed that a saline lock system be installed along the Suez
Canal in Egypt’s Great Bitter Lakes. The lock would increase the salinity
of the lakes and _______ a natural barrier of water most marine
creatures would be unable to cross.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) creates
B) create
C) creating
D) created
 8) To survive when water is scarce, embryos inside African turquoise
killifish eggs ______ a dormant state known as diapause. In this state,
embryonic development is paused for as long as two years—longer
than the life span of an adult killifish.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) enter
B) to enter
C) having entered
D) entering
 9) Formed in 1967 to foster political and economic stability within the
Asia-Pacific region, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations was
originally made up of five members: Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore,
Malaysia, and Indonesia. By the end of the 1990s, the organization
______ its initial membership.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) has doubled
B) had doubled
C) doubles
D) will double
 10) Food and the sensation of taste are central to Monique Truong’s
novels. In The Book of Salt, for example, the exiled character of Bình
connects to his native Saigon through the food he prepares, while in
Bitter in the Mouth, the character of Linda ______ a form of synesthesia
whereby the words she hears evoke tastes.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) experienced
B) had experienced
C) experiences
D) will be experiencing
 11) For thousands of years, people in the Americas ______ the bottle
gourd, a large bitter fruit with a thick rind, to make bottles, other types of
containers, and even musical instruments. Oddly, there is no evidence
that any type of bottle gourd is native to the Western Hemisphere; either
the fruit or its seeds must have somehow been carried from Asia or
Africa.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) to use
B) have used
C) having used
D) using
12) In the 1950s, a man named Joseph McVicker was struggling to keep
his business afloat when his sisterin-law Kay Zufall advised him to
repurpose the company’s product, a nontoxic, clay-like substance for
removing soot from wallpaper, as a modeling putty for kids. In addition,
Zufall ______ selling the product under a child-friendly name: Play-
Doh.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) suggested
B) suggests
C) had suggested
D) was suggesting
13) A member of the Cherokee Nation, Mary Golda Ross is renowned for
her contributions to NASA’s Planetary Flight Handbook, which _______
detailed mathematical guidance for missions to Mars and Venus.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) provided
B) having provided
C) to provide
D) providing
14) Bengali author Toru Dutt’s A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876), a
volume of English translations of French poems, _______ scholars’
understanding of the transnational and multilingual contexts in which
Dutt lived and worked.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) has enhanced
B) are enhancing
C) have enhanced
D) enhance
15) Atoms in a synchrotron, a type of circular particle accelerator, travel
faster and faster until they ______ a desired energy level, at which
point they are diverted to collide with a target, smashing the atoms.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) will reach
B) reach
C) had reached
D) are reaching
 16) Even though bats prefer very sweet nectar, the plants that attract
them have evolved to produce nectar that is only moderately sweet. A
recent study ______ why: making sugar is energy-intensive, and it is
more advantageous for plants to make a large amount of low-sugar
nectar than a small amount of high-sugar nectar.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) explains
B) explaining
C) having explained
D) to explain
 17) Former First Lady of the United States Eleanor Roosevelt and Indian
activist and educator Hansa Mehta were instrumental in drafting the
United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that
______ the basic freedoms to which all people are entitled.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) have outlined
B) were outlining
C) outlines
D) outline
 18) The Progressive Era in the United States witnessed the rise of
numerous Black women’s clubs, local organizations that advocated for
racial and gender equality. Among the clubs’ leaders ______
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, founder of the Women’s Era Club of Boston.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) was
B) were
C) are
D) have been
 19) Like other amphibians, the wood frog (Rana sylvatica) is unable to
generate its own heat, so during periods of subfreezing temperatures, it
_______ by producing large amounts of glucose, a sugar that helps
prevent damaging ice from forming inside its cells.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) had survived
B) survived
C) would survive
D) survives
 20) In many of her landscape paintings from the 1970s and 1980s,
Lebanese American artist Etel Adnan worked to capture the essence of
California’s fog-shrouded Mount Tamalpais region through abstraction,
using splotches of color to represent the area’s features. Interestingly,
the triangle representing the mountain itself _______ among the few
defined figures in her paintings.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) are
B) have been
C) were
D) is
 21) Working from an earlier discovery of Charpentier’s, chemists
Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna—winners of the 2020
Nobel Prize in Chemistry—re-created and then reprogrammed the so-
called “genetic scissors” of a species of DNA-cleaving bacteria
_______ a tool that is revolutionizing the field of gene technology.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the

conventions of Standard English?

A) to forge
B) forging
C) forged
D) and forging
SCD