Open Practice Tests

Unpacking Difficult Sentences — Topic practice

12 exercises · 12 automatically checked · Untimed

Instructions and review guidance

12 questions · Shuffled order · Progress saved locally when available

Identify the evidence for each answer and the specific flaw in its nearest competitor. Complete the four written drills in the lesson before this practice set. Question numbers follow the shuffled order; Guide question labels match the lesson references.

Guide question labels stay the same when the order changes. Check answers when you are ready to review.

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The drill

Question 5

  • Guide question 2.05

The catalog that the volunteers assembled from photographs of objects stored in the basement contains several entries absent from the museum's earlier inventory.

Which choice states the sentence's main claim?

Question 6

  • Guide question 2.06

The apartments that overlook the courtyard retain their original windows; the apartments facing the street have replacement windows.

Which statement accurately preserves the distinction?

Question 7

  • Guide question 2.07

The ceramic panels arrived in wooden crates. After the crates were opened, they were removed one by one and mounted side by side to form a continuous ceramic mural.

What does 'they' refer to?

Question 8

  • Guide question 2.08

The town published the proposed bus timetable before adopting it and invited riders to identify difficult connections. This led planners to revise two departure times.

What does 'This' most directly refer to?

Question 9

  • Guide question 2.09

The unusually neat handwriting may indicate that the page was copied for presentation, but neatness alone cannot establish its intended audience.

Which paraphrase is most accurate?

Question 10

  • Guide question 2.10

Unlike the sketches preserved in the artist's notebook, the drawings donated by her former assistant depict completed buildings rather than proposed designs.

What distinction does the sentence make?

Question 11

  • Guide question 2.11

Little did Ravi expect applause when he entered the hall; he had come merely to retrieve the coat he had forgotten.

Which choice best restates Ravi's expectation and purpose?

Question 12

  • Guide question 2.12

By the time the caretaker reached the gallery, the damaged frame had been removed, though the painting itself remained on the wall.

Which statement is supported by the sentence?

Question 13

  • Guide question 2.13

The explanation favored by critics who regard the novel's abrupt ending as accidental depends on a letter whose authenticity is accepted but whose date remains disputed.

Which choice accurately reconstructs the sentence?

Question 14

  • Guide question 2.14

The reviewers did not object to the model's use of simplified assumptions. Rather, they objected to treating predictions derived from those assumptions as though the assumptions had already been verified. This, they argued, gave the predictions an appearance of certainty they had not earned.

What does 'This' refer to?

Question 15

  • Guide question 2.15

Although the essays that mention the strike were written after the factory closed, their failure to mention the closure is difficult to interpret: the writers may have assumed that readers already knew of it.

Which paraphrase best preserves the sentence's reasoning?

Question 16

  • Guide question 2.16

The chair remained beside the window, as it had throughout her childhood. It was not its emptiness that unsettled Mira, who had expected to find the room unoccupied, but the new cushion, bright and unfamiliar, resting where her grandfather's worn shawl had always lain.

Which choice best explains what unsettles Mira?

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