SAT Craft & Structure: method and traps

Craft and Structure asks what a word means here, what a sentence is doing here, and how two texts stand toward each other. In all three, the answer is fixed by the surrounding sentence rather than by the most familiar definition or the most agreeable reading.

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This area at a glance

6 worked examples · 6 traps

112

questions

  • Foundation 12
  • Standard 65
  • Challenge 35

What this area asks for

  • Words in context
  • The purpose of a sentence or paragraph
  • How a passage is organised
  • Cross-text connections between paired texts

The method

One routine that applies across the whole area, rather than a rule for each question type.

  1. 1

    Cover the choices and supply your own word

    Read the sentence with a blank where the tested word sits and say what belongs there. A word of your own is the only defence against a choice that is a real synonym in general but wrong in this sentence.

  2. 2

    Use the punctuation as a signpost

    A colon, a dash, or a "because" clause after the tested word is the test telling you what it means. These passages are short precisely so that the evidence sits within a line of the word.

  3. 3

    For purpose questions, describe the move, not the content

    The answer to "the opening list mainly serves to" is a verb: introduce, contrast, qualify, illustrate. Summarising what the sentence says is a different task and produces a wrong answer that reads well.

  4. 4

    For paired texts, decide the relationship first

    Before reading the choices, put the relationship in one word: agrees, qualifies, contradicts, complements. Then find the choice that names it. Most wrong options overstate agreement or overstate conflict.

Worked examples

Each one is worked to the point where the next move is obvious, not to the answer alone.

1

The report called the schedule "generous": buses ran every ten minutes and the last departure was after midnight. What does "generous" most nearly mean here?

  1. 1.Note the colon: what follows is the definition the passage supplies.
  2. 2.Frequent service and a late finish describe amplitude of provision, not kindness.
  3. 3.Reject the everyday sense of the word in favour of the one the evidence fixes.

ample or plentiful

2

An article opens with two sentences on how a bridge looked before repairs, then spends the rest describing the repair work. What does the opening serve to do?

  1. 1.Ask what the opening does, not what it says.
  2. 2.It establishes a starting condition against which the rest is measured.
  3. 3.A choice summarising the bridge's appearance describes content, not function.

It sets up the state that the described work changes.

3

Text 1 praises a method for its speed. Text 2 reports that the method is fast but loses detail. How would Text 2's author view Text 1?

  1. 1.Text 2 accepts the speed, so it does not contradict.
  2. 2.It adds a cost Text 1 does not mention, so it qualifies.
  3. 3.Reject choices that make Text 2 reject the method entirely.

As accurate about the benefit but incomplete about the cost.

4

An essay's final paragraph restates its opening question without answering it. What does that most likely accomplish?

  1. 1.Ask what the paragraph does rather than what it says.
  2. 2.Returning to a question and declining to close it marks the question as still open.
  3. 3.Reject choices describing a summary or a conclusion; neither is happening.
  4. 4.The function is to leave the reader holding the question the essay has now equipped them to think about.

It presents the question as unresolved rather than settled

5

Text 1 argues a policy worked. Text 2 says the same outcome occurred where the policy was never applied. How do they relate?

  1. 1.Identify what Text 2 accepts: the outcome itself is not disputed.
  2. 2.What it supplies is a case that the policy cannot explain.
  3. 3.This is a challenge to attribution, not to the measurement.
  4. 4.Choose the option that says the outcome is agreed and the cause is not.

Text 2 accepts the outcome and disputes the cause

6

As used in 'the account is spare, naming three objects and no feelings', what does 'spare' most nearly mean?

  1. 1.The clause after the comma is the definition the sentence supplies.
  2. 2.Three objects and no feelings describes an economy of means.
  3. 3.Reject 'extra', 'thin' in the sense of inadequate, and 'available' — none is what the evidence fixes.

pared down to essentials

Where marks are lost

Each of these has a matching wrong answer waiting among the four choices.

The most common definition

Tested words are chosen because their usual meaning is wrong here. If a choice is the definition you would give without reading the sentence, treat it with suspicion.

Summary offered as purpose

A choice that accurately restates a sentence is not an answer to what the sentence is doing.

Overstated disagreement

Paired texts on this test rarely contradict outright. A choice saying one text "refutes" or "disproves" the other usually goes further than either text does.

Choosing by register

The more formal-sounding option is not more likely to be right. Match the evidence, not the tone.

Answering what a sentence says instead of what it does

Purpose questions ask for a function: conceding, qualifying, illustrating, limiting. A choice that accurately summarises the sentence's content is the commonest wrong answer, because it is true and answers a different question.

Reading a concession as agreement

'The figures are not in dispute' opens an objection rather than ending one. A writer who grants a point is clearing it out of the way so the disagreement can be located somewhere else — usually in the very next sentence.

Every question in this area can be answered from within a few lines of the tested word or sentence. When a choice requires you to range further than that, it is usually the wrong one.

Now work the questions

112 Craft and Structure questions with a worked explanation for each, on the SAT Reading & Writing page.

Open SAT Craft & Structure practice

The other SAT Reading & Writing areas

SAT Information & Ideas

Every question in this area has the same underlying demand: the answer must be supported by the passage, not merely consistent with it. A choice can be true about the world, sensible, and even likely, and still be wrong because the text does not establish it.

Read the guide

SAT Expression of Ideas

This area is unusual on the SAT because it tells you what it wants. A synthesis question names the writer's goal in its final sentence, and the choice that meets that goal wins even when another is more elegant. Reading the goal is most of the work.

Read the guide

SAT English Conventions

Conventions is the most learnable area on the test, because the rules are finite and the same handful is tested again and again. Nearly every question resolves once you have identified the subject and the main verb, which is why that identification is the first move rather than a last resort.

Read the guide
SAT® Craft & Structure: Method | IQ Test Center