<p>1) Our coach probably WOULD HAVE EXTENDED our practice BY TEN MINUTES if IT WEREN"T so hot and HUMID in the gymnasium. NO ERROR</p>
<p>The answer is NO ERROR, but I chose IT WEREN"T. Shouldn't "it weren't" be changed to "it hadn't been?"</p>
<p>2) Scientists have defined many standard lengths in terms of the speed of light in a vacuum BEING A REMARKABLY STABLE QUANTITY.</p>
<p>(A) being a remarkably stable quantity
(B) as a remarkably stable quantity
(C) having remarkable stability as a quantity
(D) because this quantity is remarkably stable
(E) for its remarkable stability as a quantity</p>
<p>I chose B because it is the most succinct of the five choices. The answer is D. Why is it D and not B?</p>
<p>1) Whenever you have IF, it is usually following by WERE.</p>
<p>As for 2, I am stumped.</p>
<p>edit:</p>
<p>Looking at it again, B does not make sense in context with the entire sentence. It is similar to saying: I like to eat candy as a remarkably good food, as opposed to I like to eat candy because it is a remarkably good food.</p>
<p>The second choice may be longer, but it is clearer.</p>
<p>I am seeing a lot of writing questions on here lately that just are not reflective the of the SAT. Hypothetical conditionals (“if it weren’t”) have never been tested on any SAT I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them. They are occasionally tested on the GMAT, but only in the highest difficulty questions. I know that when the SAT first added the writing section, a lot of test prep companies guessed at what was going to be on the test by looking at the GMAT (because both the SAT and GMAT are owned by ETS and there are similarities in tested content). But after a couple of years, most companies reevaluated what they were teaching using data from real SATs. </p>
<p>The second question is poorly written. I can see why (D) is a good choice (because it creates a grammatically correct sentence), but it’s hard to gather the meaning of the original sentence. It’s impossible to tell if the stable quantity is referring to the standard lengths or the speed of light in a vacuum. I’m going to guess that both of these questions are simulated by a test prep company and not written by the test makers.</p>
<p>These two questions came from the McGraw Hill’s Conquering SAT Writing workbook. I don’t think it helps me much; in fact, the workbook confuses me because it has many typos and unhelpful explanations. I also don’t think the questions are similar to questions that are on the SAT. </p>
<p>Maybe I should begin doing practice tests from previously administered SATs. Do you know how I can get any of them? I already have the Blue Book with 10 practice tests, but I don’t want to start doing them until a few weeks before I take the SAT. I’m planning on taking the SAT in about 10 months.</p>
<p>10 practice tests along with the 3 online College Board practice SAT’s isn’t enough?</p>
<p>^To be fair, I have exhausted all of those resources.</p>
<p>After the 3 freebies and the Blue Book, the only place with real writing questions is the CB Online Course. You can get math and reading questions from the old Red Book.</p>