PSAT '09 Form W Thread

<p>@motivated: “incredulity” simply means “disbelief” (in-not, cred-believe)</p>

<p>Also, another one that bothered me:
Something about L’Enfant building the Capitol? He suggested to build it at the center of Washington DC, and offered to design a mall. (I don’t remember the sentence verbatum. As you guys can see from my posts, I don’t really know any of the questions!) I was vacillating between “at the center” and “to build”. I assumed that it should be “in the center”, but “at the center” was still logical. I though “to build” should have been “building”, but again, both were logical. What do you think?</p>

<p>The birds migration/explanation of or for one…was that #31 on the finding the error, or a changing the sentence one?</p>

<p>@cucumber: I put “to build” as wrong, but I def. was in the same dilemma as you were!</p>

<p>^ I chose “at the center”; i thot it was “in the center” because it makes more sense to be “in the center” than “at the center”. Also, the question was near the begginning of the sentence identifying error section, which means that typically, it’s one of the errors that are like “duh”. I know that that isn’t true always but i’ve taken alot of practice tests and have noticed the same pattern.</p>

<p>@cucumber, you’re wrong about your interpretation of disdain and resentment. I don’t feel like explaining it again but just go on merriam websters and type both words in.</p>

<p>Can someone calculate my approximate score?</p>

<p>CR: -6 to -4 errors
M: 0 errors
W: -2 to -4 errors</p>

<p>cucumber 1…suggested to build had to be grammatically correct since the second part of that sentence had another “past tense + infinitive” (i dont remember the exact words). i put “at the center of” since the “in the center of” seemed to be the correct idiom and also since it was the second to last question…
for the last question…some ppl have said “came” was wrong since it should have been “comes”, but if there is no indication of whether the visitors were there or had been there, its debatable and is a vague question. i got the feeling that this was maybe a “new era” year for the PSAT, there seemed to be alot of nitpicky things tested in this PSAT.</p>

<p>Questions about the fish/lobster passage…
-“sharp” decline of fish prices most nearly means “gruff?”
-fishermen were like biologists because they knew the environment the lobster lived in?</p>

<p>“Hari’s previous attempts were FUTILE” - RU SURE?</p>

<p>Im pretty sure it was severely limited</p>

<p>I put sharp decline … is acute because acute means severe
the second one i got the same answer</p>

<p>Can someone confirm the answers for the four to five hard writing identifying sentence error questions</p>

<p>The sentence was reversed, saying (something like) “That the subway was awesome came as a surprise to visitors”. If you changed the clause at the beginning of the sentence to “it”, it would say “it came as a surprise to visitors.” So came makes sense. But I completely agree that this is a new era in the SAT; they asked another question JUST like this on the SAT on Saturday.</p>

<p>also for that math question with x, y, z,</p>

<p>Was it I, II and III?</p>

<p>it was all three are odd AND x is negative</p>

<p>It was just I and II</p>

<p>I’m sure it was all 3</p>

<p>I thought it was also yz>0 as that is the only way for xyz to be less than zero as either all three are negative or one is negative (where only x could be negative) thus y and z are either both negative or positive</p>

<p>yea, all three seems right.</p>

<p>and the sharp decline was acute. at first i wasn’t sure between acute and caustic (maybe a severe, harmful decline?) but i put acute and that seems right:</p>

<p>[define:</a> acute - Google Search](<a href=“define: acute - Google Search”>define: acute - Google Search)</p>