Digital SAT Passage Practice - Set 34

A home inspector's contravened building code, a private investigator's exonerating evidence, and a zoning board's overturned assumption about permit complexity each hide one of the ten words from SAT Vocab Ep.34. 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 34 Full Domain Practice From Ep.34 Words

High School Grades 10-12 18 Questions Digital SAT Format

◀ Review Vocab Ep.34 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.34 so the vocabulary stays familiar while the question types rotate through the full range you will actually see on test day.

Set 34 continues the argument-and-analysis vocabulary theme with passages from a mix of investigative and evaluative scenarios: a home inspector's building code violation, a university ethics board's recommendation, a zoning board's related concern, a scholar's carefully drawn conclusion, and a candidate's declared position, along with a handful of settings involving an encyclopedia editor, a forensic linguist, a political science professor, a private investigator, and an insurance claims reviewer. None of these scenarios repeat a real-world case; they were written specifically to give each of the ten Ep.34 words a natural, test-realistic sentence to live in.

Ep.34's words split into a positive and negative cluster: exonerate and germane lean positive, describing clearing someone of blame and being directly relevant, while contravene and impugn lean negative, describing violating a rule and challenging someone's honesty. Compendium, concomitant, deduce, espouse, presage, and warrant stay neutral, naming tools or actions of reasoning without judging them as good or bad. 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 home inspection to a university ethics board hearing.

Question 1 of 18 Craft and Structure

The home inspector's report noted that the new deck railing height would contravene current building code, sitting nearly four inches shorter than the required minimum.

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

Question 2 of 18 Craft and Structure

DNA evidence uncovered decades later finally worked to exonerate the man, proving conclusively that he could not have been present at the scene of the crime.

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

Question 3 of 18 Craft and Structure

The zoning board member argued that traffic flow was directly germane to the permit discussion, not a side issue as the applicant's attorney had suggested.

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

Question 4 of 18 Craft and Structure

The opposing candidate's ad seemed designed to impugn her opponent's honesty, implying without any real evidence that campaign donations had influenced his voting record.

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

Question 5 of 18 Craft and Structure

The encyclopedia's new single-volume compendium condensed forty years of scattered scholarship on the region's history into one comprehensive, organized reference.

As used in the text, "compendium" 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 deduce, espouse, and presage.

Question 6 of 18 Craft and Structure

From the pattern of scuff marks alone, the forensic linguist's colleague was able to ______ that the intruder had entered through the side window rather than the front door.

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

Question 7 of 18 Craft and Structure

The political science professor was known to openly ______ a controversial theory that most of her colleagues had long dismissed as outdated.

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

Question 8 of 18 Craft and Structure

The insurance claims reviewer noted that the unusual spike in minor water-damage claims seemed to ______ a larger plumbing issue across the entire apartment complex.

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 private investigator's case theory and an ethics board's review method comparison.

Question 9 of 18 Craft and Structure

A private investigator's case notes credit a single overlooked receipt for cracking the missing-persons case wide open. A supplementary memo added after the client's follow-up questions notes that an anonymous tip called into the office the same week also pointed investigators toward the same location, a lead unrelated to the receipt.

Which choice best describes the function of the supplementary memo in the text as a whole?

Question 10 of 18 Craft and Structure

A university ethics board piloted two formats for reviewing research proposals, one using a single reviewer and the other using a three-person panel. Researcher satisfaction with the single-reviewer process came out just barely ahead, a difference small enough to dismiss. The consistency of final decisions, however, was a different matter entirely, with the panel format pulling far ahead.

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 zoning board's approval rate and a forensic linguist's disputed authorship claim.

Question 11 of 18 Craft and Structure

Text 1

A city zoning board's annual summary attributes a recent rise in permit approval rates entirely to a new streamlined application form introduced that year.

Text 2

Staffing records from the same office show the board also hired two additional permit reviewers around the same time the new form was introduced, reducing the office's overall backlog.

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

Question 12 of 18 Craft and Structure

Text 1

A forensic linguist's published analysis attributes a disputed manuscript's likely authorship entirely to distinctive sentence-length patterns matching a known writer's other works.

Text 2

A separate handwriting expert who examined the same manuscript found ink composition inconsistent with materials the known writer is documented to have used during the claimed period of authorship.

Which choice best describes the relationship between the two texts?

Central Ideas and Details

These two questions reuse concomitant and warrant from Vocab Ep.34, this time asking what the passage means as a whole rather than what one word means.

Question 13 of 18 Information and Ideas

Researchers noted that a rise in remote work came with a concomitant drop in commercial parking revenue downtown, the two trends moving together throughout the same three-year period.

Which choice best describes the main idea of the text?

Question 14 of 18 Information and Ideas

The editor decided that the anonymous tip alone did not warrant running the story, insisting on at least one additional independent source before publication.

Based on the text, which choice best describes the editor's view of the anonymous tip?

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

A home inspector believes that checking attic insulation levels, rather than only checking visible wall insulation, is what most accurately predicts a home's winter heating costs.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the inspector's belief?

Question 16 of 18 Information and Ideas

A zoning board member argues that adding a public comment period before each vote has improved community trust more than simply publishing meeting minutes online would.

Which piece of evidence would most directly support the board member'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

Insurance claims reviewers typically expect the largest claims to take the longest to process, given their added complexity, yet processing records spanning five years at one company show mid-sized claims consistently taking longer on average to resolve than the largest ones. It seems reasonable to conclude that ______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Question 18 of 18 Information and Ideas

University ethics boards typically expect proposals with the most extensive supporting documentation to move through review the fastest, since reviewers have fewer follow-up questions to ask, yet review logs from one institution show that heavily documented proposals actually take longer on average to clear review than more concisely documented ones. The most plausible explanation is that ______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

out of 18 correct

Question Distribution by Skill

How This Set Is Built

Set 34 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 continues the argument-and-analysis vocabulary from Ep.31 through Ep.33. Contravene and impugn lean negative here, while exonerate and germane stand out as the set's clearly positive words. The two Central Ideas questions close the vocabulary loop by reusing concomitant and warrant, 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 contravene and impugn 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 complicates or questions 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, heating cost prediction accuracy, that the inspector's belief depends on. 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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