Cross-text connections — Digital SAT Reading & Writing practice
Compare how two texts relate.
Key ideas to know
Cross-Text Relationship Types
When comparing two texts on the same topic, what must you do first to accurately identify their relationship?
Summarize each text's position separately before looking for how they connect. Typical links include agree, disagree, add detail, qualify, or give an example.
Watch out: Jumping straight to find the relationship without first isolating each author's main claim leads to misreading their stance.
Answering Cross-Text Inference Questions
A question asks what Text 2's author would likely say about Text 1's main claim. How should you choose the correct option?
Predict Text 2's response based only on its own evidence and tone, then match it to an option that reflects agreement, disagreement, qualification, or added detail.
Watch out: Choosing an answer that sounds reasonable but relies on your own real-world knowledge instead of strictly using Text 2's stated perspective.
Avoiding Outside Ideas in Cross-Text Items
You select an answer for a cross-text question because it introduces a new policy debate mentioned in the news, but not in either passage. Why is this wrong?
The choice imports outside ideas instead of using only information present in or logically derived from the two texts. Cross-text connections must stay strictly within the provided passages.
Watch out: Letting general knowledge or personal opinions fill gaps instead of sticking to what the passages actually state or imply about each other.
Sample questions
Question 1
<b>Text 1:</b> Paleontologists long believed that Tyrannosaurus rex was a solitary hunter, based on the rarity of fossil sites containing multiple individuals.<br><br><b>Text 2:</b> A site in Utah containing several T. rex individuals of different ages, apparently buried together, has led some researchers to propose that the species may have lived in groups, though skeptics note that floods can gather unrelated carcasses in one place.
How does Text 2 relate to the view described in Text 1?
- It confirms the view with additional fossil evidence.
- It presents evidence that complicates the view, while acknowledging an alternative explanation.
- It rejects the view as deliberately misleading.
- It explains the origin of the view in early paleontology.
Show answer and explanation
Answer: It presents evidence that complicates the view, while acknowledging an alternative explanation.
Text 2 offers evidence against the solitary-hunter view (a group burial site) but also notes the skeptics' flood explanation — it complicates rather than confirms or flatly rejects.
Question 2
<b>Text 1:</b> Some historians argue that the rapid adoption of the automobile in the early twentieth century reflected consumers' enthusiasm for personal freedom and modern technology.<br><br><b>Text 2:</b> Historian Lena Okafor notes that many cities dismantled their streetcar systems under pressure from automotive interests, leaving residents with few alternatives. Enthusiasm, she argues, is difficult to distinguish from necessity when other options have been removed.
Based on the texts, how would Okafor (Text 2) most likely respond to the historians described in Text 1?
- By agreeing that consumer enthusiasm was the primary driver of automobile adoption
- By suggesting that what looks like enthusiasm may partly reflect a lack of alternatives
- By arguing that streetcars were technologically superior to automobiles
- By denying that automobile adoption was rapid
Show answer and explanation
Answer: By suggesting that what looks like enthusiasm may partly reflect a lack of alternatives
Okafor's point is that 'enthusiasm is difficult to distinguish from necessity when other options have been removed' — a direct qualification of Text 1's enthusiasm claim.