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SAT: Choosing the Quotation That Supports

This question type describes a claim a student or scholar makes about a text, then offers four quotations from that text. Your job is to find the one that actually demonstrates the claim. The quotations are all from the same work, so topic overlap is guaranteed and cannot be your criterion.

The rule

The right quotation demonstrates every part of the claim, not just its topic.

Break the claim into its parts before you read any quotation. A claim that a poem uses images of enclosure to convey the speaker's isolation has two components: images of enclosure, and a sense of isolation. The right quotation must show both. A line full of walls and locked rooms that reads as comforting satisfies only the first half.

Then check each quotation against every part of the claim rather than against its general subject. A quotation can be about the right topic and still not demonstrate anything. If the claim is that a character resists a decision, a line describing the decision is topical but shows no resistance, while a line where the character delays or objects does the work.

Watch for quotations that describe rather than demonstrate. If the claim concerns how a narrator speaks about the past, a line stating that the narrator thinks often about the past is a report. A line where the narrator actually lingers on a past scene is a demonstration. The SAT favors the quotation that enacts the claim.

Length and vividness are not evidence. The most striking quotation among the four is often the wrong answer, placed there because it is memorable. Judge only on whether every element of the claim is visible in the lines quoted, not on which line you liked most.

If two quotations seem to fit, find the part of the claim that separates them. Usually one contains a qualifier, such as only in private or after the encounter, that only one of the two quotations satisfies. Going back to the exact wording of the claim resolves nearly every tie.

The trap

Picking the most vivid or memorable quotation rather than the one that satisfies each element of the stated claim.

Try it

Try one
Real question

Using account books from a manor in fourteenth-century England, historian Edward Oduya compared the size of each year's wheat harvest with the price of wheat at a nearby market over five years. Accounts of this kind were drawn up each autumn by the reeve who ran the estate for its lord, and they record the grain threshed from each field beside the acreage sown, letting a yield per acre be reconstructed centuries later. Prices at the time depended heavily on local supply, since grain was costly to move over long distances. Oduya concluded that poor harvests drove wheat prices up: ______

Wheat Harvests and Prices on One English Manor
YearHarvest (bushels per acre)Price (pence per bushel)
1331116
133298
1333125
1334613
1335107

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the statement?

Engineers have proposed that adding crushed volcanic ash to cement reduces cracking because the ash keeps reacting for years, slowly filling fine gaps. The idea is old: Roman builders mixed ash from the Bay of Naples into mortar that still stands today. The ash supplies silica that reacts with the lime cement releases. Skeptics counter that any improvement simply reflects the lower water content of ash mixtures. Materials researcher Lucía Terán set out to separate the two, casting ninety prisms, curing them in water baths, and measuring the pore space in each one.

Which finding, if true, would most strongly support the continuing-reaction explanation over the water-content explanation?

  • A) Ash mixtures were stronger than ordinary mixtures after one day.
  • B) Ash mixtures required less water to reach a workable consistency.
  • C) Ash mixtures and ordinary mixtures made with identical water content performed alike at one month, but the ash mixtures had far fewer fine gaps at two years. ✓
  • D) Ash mixtures cracked less than ordinary mixtures at every age tested.

Why: The question asks for evidence favoring the continuing reaction over lower water content, so water has to be matched and the benefit has to arrive late, which mixtures alike at one month and far fewer fine gaps at two years give. One finding is about the first day: Ash mixtures were stronger than ordinary mixtures after one day. An advantage within a day is far too early for a reaction said to run for years, and lower water content would produce it. Another states the skeptics' premise: Ash mixtures required less water to reach a workable consistency. Needing less water to reach workability is the rival explanation, not evidence against it. The last leaves water content uncontrolled: Ash mixtures cracked less than ordinary mixtures at every age tested. Less cracking at every age, including the earliest, is what the water explanation predicts too.

Practice more of these free

Questions students ask

What if I do not understand the poem the quotations come from?

You do not need to. Work from the claim, which tells you what to look for, and check each quotation for those specific features. This question type is designed to be answerable from the claim and the four lines alone.

Why are all four quotations about the same subject?

Because they are drawn from the same text, topical relevance cannot distinguish them. The test is whether a quotation shows the specific behavior, image, or attitude the claim names, which is a narrower requirement than being on topic.

Guides that cover this

More on command of evidence