Digital SAT Passage Practice - Set 14

A coral nursery documentary, a bombastic campaign speech, and an ancient shell bead workshop each hide one of the ten words from SAT Vocab Ep.14. Eighteen Digital SAT-format questions walk through every Reading and Writing skill, from word meaning to cross-text evidence.

CRAMBOOKNOTES Digital SAT Practice

Digital SAT Passage Practice

Set 14 Full Domain Practice From Ep.14 Words

High School Grades 10-12 18 Questions Digital SAT Format

◀ Review Vocab Ep.14 First All Digital SAT Practice

The Digital SAT Reading and Writing section is built from short passages, usually 25 to 150 words, with one question attached to each. Two of the four content domains, Craft and Structure and Information and Ideas, make up more than half the test and cover several distinct skills, not just vocabulary. This set covers every skill inside both domains, from Words in Context and Text Structure to Cross-Text Connections, Central Ideas, Command of Evidence, and Inferences, using the same ten words from SAT Vocab Ep.14 so the vocabulary stays familiar while the question types rotate through the full range you will actually see on test day.

Set 14 pulls its passages from a mix of civic and business scenarios: a welcoming new store manager, a dramatic campaign speech, a frugal businessman, a weatherproof coating, a sparsely vegetated desert, and a handful of settings involving a coral nursery documentary, customer onboarding emails, film photography sales, and a shared district heating network. None of these scenarios repeat a real-world case; they were written specifically to give each of the ten Ep.14 words a natural, test-realistic sentence to live in.

Ep.14 splits cleanly into charge: amiable, frugal, laudable, and sanguine all lean positive, while bombastic and vindictive lean clearly negative, with elaborate, impervious, and sparse sitting closer to neutral depending on context. Sorting a word's charge before reading closely is often the fastest way to eliminate two wrong answers.

Read each passage once, answer, and check the explanation regardless of whether you got it right. The explanations point to the exact phrase in the passage that the correct answer depends on, which is the habit that separates strong readers from students who are guessing.

Words in Context - Definitions

These five questions test whether you can identify a word's precise meaning using only the sentence around it. The scenarios range from a welcoming new store manager to a sparsely vegetated desert.

Question 1 of 18 Craft and Structure

The new store manager's amiable manner put nervous new hires at ease immediately, since she greeted every question with patience rather than irritation.

As used in the text, "amiable" most nearly means

Question 2 of 18 Craft and Structure

Critics dismissed the candidate's bombastic campaign speech as long on dramatic language and short on any concrete policy proposals.

As used in the text, "bombastic" most nearly means

Question 3 of 18 Craft and Structure

Raised during a period of economic hardship, the businessman remained frugal even after his company became successful, still packing his own lunch and driving a decade-old car.

As used in the text, "frugal" most nearly means

Question 4 of 18 Craft and Structure

The new coating made the material impervious to water, allowing outdoor equipment to survive even the heaviest seasonal storms without rusting.

As used in the text, "impervious" most nearly means

Question 5 of 18 Craft and Structure

Vegetation in the high desert region was so sparse that early surveyors struggled to find enough dry brush for a single evening fire.

As used in the text, "sparse" most nearly means

Words in Context - Complete the Text

Instead of a highlighted word, these three questions leave a blank and ask you to choose the word that fits the sentence's logic, using elaborate, laudable, and sanguine.

Question 6 of 18 Craft and Structure

The heist in the film relied on an ______ plan involving three separate teams, a forged identity, and a timed power outage.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word?

Question 7 of 18 Craft and Structure

The committee called the volunteer's decade of unpaid service a ______ commitment to the community, one they hoped other residents would follow.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word?

Question 8 of 18 Craft and Structure

Despite three rounds of layoffs, the CEO remained ______ about the company's chances of recovery, telling employees the worst was already behind them.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word?

Text Structure and Purpose

These two questions step back from single words and ask how a passage is organized, or what a specific sentence is doing within it, using a coral nursery documentary and a customer onboarding email study.

Question 9 of 18 Craft and Structure

Rapid coral fragment growth in a nursery facility's tanks drives most of a new documentary's runtime, which credits the growth to the nursery's new feeding schedule. Only in its closing segment does the documentary note that the tanks also received water from an unusually nutrient-rich source that season, a factor separate from the feeding schedule. This late detail complicates the feeding schedule's claimed role in the growth.

Which choice best describes the function of the last sentence in the text as a whole?

Question 10 of 18 Craft and Structure

During the same onboarding period, marketing researchers split new customers into two groups to compare email formats, one receiving a single detailed welcome email and the other a short series of five brief emails. The detailed-email group opened only slightly more emails on average than the series group, not substantial enough to matter. In first-purchase rate, however, the series group showed a substantially higher conversion. A single-variable design, changing only the email format, is what allowed this distinction to emerge so clearly.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

Cross-Text Connections

These two questions present two short, related passages and ask how one would likely respond to a claim made in the other, using a film photography debate and a district heating proposal.

Question 11 of 18 Craft and Structure

Text 1

Film sales will keep declining as smartphone cameras displace more of the casual photography market, according to industry analyst Colin Baptiste.

Text 2

A fourteen percent jump in film camera and film roll sales during 2027, recorded in a retail report, was credited by several sellers to younger photographers seeking a more deliberate creative process.

Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to Baptiste's prediction in Text 1?

Question 12 of 18 Craft and Structure

Text 1

Demand projections in a district energy report indicate that a shared heating network for a new housing development could cut residents' heating costs by roughly thirty percent.

Text 2

An independent energy analyst who reviewed those demand projections found they were calculated around a mild winter's peak load, well below what the region's historically harsh winters typically demand.

Which choice best describes the relationship between the two texts?

Central Ideas and Details

These two questions reuse the denounce and vindictive passages from earlier vocabulary work, this time asking what the passage means as a whole rather than what one word means.

Question 13 of 18 Information and Ideas

International leaders quickly denounced the decision, calling it a clear violation of the original treaty and demanding an immediate reversal before the next scheduled summit.

Which choice best describes the main idea of the text?

Question 14 of 18 Information and Ideas

The play portrays a vindictive ruler who spends the entire second act plotting revenge against a former advisor, ultimately sacrificing the kingdom's stability to settle a personal grudge.

Based on the text, which choice best describes the point the play is making?

Command of Evidence

These two questions give you a claim and ask which piece of evidence would most directly support it, a skill that shows up constantly in the Information and Ideas domain.

Question 15 of 18 Information and Ideas

Eighteen companies helped researchers test whether a cash incentive for biking to work reduces car commute days more than informational materials alone, holding commute distance and job schedule constant. Employees were paired by commute distance, job schedule, and baseline car-commute days. The cash incentive was the sole condition that shifted from one paired employee to the next.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the researchers' proposal?

Question 16 of 18 Information and Ideas

Customs records from a coastal spice merchant guild reveal trade in a far broader range of goods beyond spices than earlier accounts described, a historian argues, contending that scholarly attention has concentrated too heavily on the guild's most famous spice shipments.

Which piece of evidence would most directly support the historian's argument?

Inferences

These two questions close the set with an unfinished passage and ask you to complete the logical conclusion the evidence supports, without overreaching beyond what the passage actually shows.

Question 17 of 18 Information and Ideas

Performance feedback delivered within twenty-four hours left employees twenty-one percent clearer on how to improve than feedback delivered a month later, even with identical written comments in both cases. A manager with limited scheduling flexibility might reasonably take this to mean that ______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Question 18 of 18 Information and Ideas

Unworked shells were scattered throughout most households of an ancient coastal settlement, but a single workshop near the settlement's edge contained finished shell beads at various stages of polishing alongside specialized grinding tools. This contrast suggests that ______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

out of 18 correct

Question Distribution by Skill

How This Set Is Built

Set 14 covers every skill inside Craft and Structure and Information and Ideas, the two domains that together make up more than half of the Reading and Writing section. It divides cleanly by emotional charge, positive words like amiable and laudable sit against negative words like bombastic and vindictive, which makes tone-tracking a useful shortcut throughout this set. The two Central Ideas questions close the vocabulary loop by reusing denounce and vindictive from earlier in the set, this time asking what the passage means rather than what the word means.

Every passage in this set was written specifically for these ten words. None are adapted from outside sources, and none repeat across other sets in this series.

Skill	Domain	Questions
Words in Context - Definitions	Craft and Structure	5
Words in Context - Complete the Text	Craft and Structure	3
Text Structure and Purpose	Craft and Structure	2
Cross-Text Connections	Craft and Structure	2
Central Ideas and Details	Information and Ideas	2
Command of Evidence	Information and Ideas	2
Inferences	Information and Ideas	2

Where Students Lose Points on This Set

Words in Context questions are usually missed for one of two reasons: either the reader focuses only on the highlighted word and ignores the surrounding clause that explains it, or they pick an answer that matches their own memorized definition instead of the meaning the sentence actually supports. In this set, words like impervious and sparse work the same way: the correct choice always traces back to a specific phrase in the passage, never to outside knowledge of the word.

Cross-Text Connections trips up students who assume the second text will always agree with the first. In both Question 11 and Question 12 here, Text 2 pushes back on an assumption in Text 1 rather than confirming it, which is the more common relationship on the actual exam than most students expect.

Command of Evidence questions are missed most often when a student picks the answer that sounds true in general rather than the one that tests the specific claim being made. Question 15's correct answer is the only choice that measures the exact outcome, car-commute days, that the researchers proposed. The other three choices are all plausible facts that simply do not address that claim.

Reviewed by the CramBookNotes SAT prep team as part of the Digital SAT Passage Practice series.

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