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Universities want to know that you can perform well in class. One of the many ways these institutions will determine your skillset is by examining your latest SAT score. Created by the College Board, the SAT is a standardized test designed to showcase your abilities to universities across the country. If you are seeking to pursue higher education, you understand the importance of performing well on this examination. Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools are here to help you with all of your test preparation needs. The Question of the Day for SAT Critical Reading is just one of the beneficial study tools in this set that can be utilized to prepare for a testing session. Varsity Tutors also offers resources like a free SAT prep book to help with your self-paced study, or you may want to consider an SAT Critical Reading tutor.
The Question of the Day is a daily test review; every day, you will be presented with a randomly selected question similar to what is expected to be found on the official examination. These questions test your current skills and may even impart new information to you. Whether you need top SAT tutors in New York, SAT tutors in Chicago, or SAT tutors in Los Angeles, working with a pro may take your studies to the next level. For the Critical Reading portion of the SAT, the questions focus on the two main components in this area: reading comprehension and sentence completion. Reading comprehension accounts for the largest part of the Critical Reading segment. Through your answers, you can determine how well you understand the information that has been presented to you. Sentence completion tests your vocabulary knowledge. Each question gives you one or two blanks that need to be filled in with the correct word. The Question of the Day focuses on both areas to ensure that you receive practice to successfully complete this entire portion of the SAT.
By utilizing the Question of the Day, you will receive access to information regarding your performance. No matter how you answer, each question is followed up with an explanation about the correct option. From this page, you can also track your own personal progress and review previous questions you have answered. This will allow you to determine where your strengths and weaknesses lie, which will help you plan your studies to correlate with your needs. You will also have the ability to compare yourself to other students that have also answered the Question of the Day. The platform will show you the percentage of those who answered correctly, the average amount of time taken to provide an answer, and place you within a percentile. It is recommended that you participate on a regular basis; the more questions you answer, the more in-depth information you will be presented with.
As previously stated, the Question of the Day is only one of several study tools designed for your study use. In addition to the SAT Critical Reading Question of the Day and SAT Critical Reading tutoring, you may also want to consider taking some of our SAT Critical Reading practice tests. The entire set of Varsity Tutors’ Learning Tools is rounded out with flashcards, Learn by Concept, full-length practice tests that match the make-up of the actual SAT, and practice tests that focus in on specific topics. Each tool offers something different, therefore allowing you to build confidence and gain the correct knowledge needed for the SAT Critical Reading. By combining one or more of these tools, you have the ability to create a tailored study system to prepare you for test day.
Question of the Day: SAT Critical Reading
Adapted from The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction, Volume 16: Anna Karenina (1877; 1917 ed., trans. Garnett)
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him.
This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household were painfully conscious of it. The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked off the day before just at dinner-time; the kitchen maid and the coachman had given warning.
Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky—Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world—woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o clock in the morning, not in his wife's bedroom, but on the leather-covered sofa in his study. He turned over his stout, well-cared-for person on the springy sofa, as though he would sink into a long sleep again; he vigorously embraced the pillow on the other side and buried his face in it; but all at once he jumped up, sat up on the sofa, and opened his eyes.
“Yes, yes, how was it now?” he thought, going over his dream. “Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but then, Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables sang, II mio tesoro—not II mio tesoro, though, but something better, and there were some sort of little decanters on the table, and they were women too,” he remembered.
Noticing a gleam of light peeping in beside one of the serge curtains, he cheerfully dropped his feet over the edge of the sofa, and felt about with them for his slippers, a present on his last birthday, worked for him by his wife on gold-colored morocco. And, as he had done every day for the last nine years, he stretched out his hand, without getting up, towards the place where his dressing-gown always hung in his bedroom. And thereupon he suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife’s room, but in his study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, he knitted his brows.
Most unpleasant of all was the first minute when, on coming, happy and good-humored, from the theatre, with a huge pear in his hand for his wife, he had not found his wife in the drawing-room, to his surprise had not found her in the study either, and saw her at last in her bedroom with the unlucky letter that revealed everything in her hand. She, his Dolly, forever fussing and worrying over household details, and limited in her ideas, as he considered, was sitting perfectly still with the letter in her hand, looking at him with an expression of horror, despair, and indignation.
“What’s this? This?” she asked, pointing to the letter.
And at this recollection, Stepan Arkadyevitch, as is so often the case, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he had met his wife’s words.
There happened to him at that instant what does happen to people when they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in adapting his face to the position in which he was placed towards his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt, denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent even—anything would have been better than what he did do—his face utterly involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was fond of physiology)—utterly involuntarily assumed its habitual, good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile.
This idiotic smile he could not forgive himself. Catching sight of that smile, Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, broke out with her characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the room. Since then she had refused to see her husband.
“It’s that idiotic simile that’s to blame for it all,” thought Stepan Arkadyevitch.
Which of the following is NOT an effect of Stiva’s wife finding the letter?
Stiva sleeps on the sofa in his study.
The English governess begins looking for a new household in which to work.
No one gets the children to behave well.
The cook eats all of the expensive food in the house himself.
The coachman and the kitchen-maid formally say that they will be quitting their jobs.
You can use the SAT Critical Reading Question of the Day to get into the habit of thinking about SAT Critical Reading content on a daily basis when studying for the SAT. Varsity Tutors' SAT Critical Reading Questions of the Day are drawn from each topic and question type covered on the Critical Reading section of the SAT.
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