sat suite question viewer

Craft and Structure / Text Structure and Purpose Difficulty: Easy

The following text is from Reyna Grande’s 2012 memoir The Distance Between Us. In the text, Grande reflects on a time when she and her older sister Mago were children. A Barbie is a type of doll.

I begged Mago to come play with me. She wasn’t as interested in my Barbie as she had been just two months before, which made me sad because that was the only thing Mago had envied me for. Usually, it was me doing the envying. After I pestered her relentlessly, she finally put her notebook down and came over to me.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined portion in the text?

It indicates Grande’s unhappiness over Mago’s disinterest in Grande’s doll.

It expresses Grande’s anger over Mago’s refusal to spend time with her.

It presents an example of how Mago and Grande generally played together as children.

It provides a reason for why Mago is unwilling to play with Grande.

Back question 126 of 130 Next

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130

Explanation

Choice A is the best answer because it most accurately describes the function of the underlined portion in the text. The underlined portion ("which made me sad because that was the only thing Mago had envied me for") directly expresses Grande’s unhappiness about her sister’s diminished interest in her Barbie doll. The underlined text specifically identifies that Grande feels sad and explains why Mago’s disinterest particularly affects her—because it was the one rare instance where her older sister had envied her, rather than the reverse.

Choice B is incorrect because the underlined portion expresses sadness, not anger. Although there is some correspondence between the emotions anger and envy and the text does indicate that Grande usually envies her sister, the underlined portion states that Grande feels sad about Mago’s disinterest in Grande’s Barbie, not angry about Mago’s refusal to spend time with her. Choice C is incorrect. While the first part of the sentence that contains the underlined portion indicates that Mago has previously taken an interest in Grande’s Barbie, implying that the sisters may regularly have played with the Barbie together in the past, the underlined portion doesn’t provide an example of this. The underlined portion instead explains why Mago’s recently developed disinterest in the Barbie saddens Grande. Choice D is incorrect because neither the underlined portion nor the text as a whole explains why Mago is unwilling to play with Grande. Rather than addressing Mago’s motivation or reasoning, the underlined portion describes Grande’s emotional reaction to Mago’s disinterest in Grande’s Barbie and explains why this lack of interest matters to Grande.