The SAT Writing section does an excellent job of rewarding those students who read the passage carefully and penalizing those who do not. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the Transitions question type, in which a student must choose the best word to transition within or between sentences. To master Transition questions, we recommend that you read at least the whole sentence, identify the relationship that your transition word must convey, and select the most succinct possible answer choice accordingly.
Read the Whole Sentence
Some students like to take shortcuts on the SAT Writing section. Indeed, it can be tempting to skip straight to the blank and start plugging in the answer choices one by one. However, transitions questions are almost impossible to answer correctly if you don’t read at least the whole sentence or pair of sentences joined by the transition. Here’s an example:
If we look only at the second sentence, we simply won’t have enough information to decide which word should go in the blank. In fact, any one of the answer choices could conceivably work. We need to widen our field of vision and read the prior sentence to understand the relationship between the first and second sentences.
Identify the Relationship
After you read all of the necessary context, decide which type of connector word you need to fit in the blank. In general, there are four main types of relationships your word should convey: contrast, support, causation, and time.
Contrast
A contrast word demonstrates that two ideas disagree or go against one-another.
Example: I went to the store, but I didn’t buy anything.
Support
Support words show that two ideas are connected and reinforce one-another.
Example: She is my best friend, and I’d do anything for her!
Causation
Causation words signal that one thing causes another to occur.
Example: He didn’t pay the meter, so he received a ticket.
Time
Time words indicate the order or time at which something occurs in relation to another.
Example: After three hours of waiting in the lobby, we were finally admitted into the office.
Here are a few more examples for your reference:
Let’s look at our sample question one more time:
In this question, we know that Josephine’s volunteer activity will help her satisfy her volunteerism requirement. In other words, it will cause her to fulfill the requisite hours. We need a causation word.
Go Concise
Occasionally, you’ll find that two or more answer choices fall under the same transition category. In the above example, two answer choices seem to indicate a causal relationship: answers B and C. However, answer C is nice and concise whereas answer B uses excess verbiage. In these cases, always go concise. Nine times out of ten, the shorter transition word will be the correct transition word.
Now that we know how to approach Transition questions, let’s try a sample question.
After reading the entire excerpt above, we can see that the blank must act as a transition between the first and the second sentence. We must therefore understand what each sentence means in order to identify the relationship between them. The first sentence appears to define the term “fifth amendment,” as a law protecting citizen silence. The second sentence, on the other hand, indicates that some people do not know they are protected and therefore feel forced to speak. The relationship between these two sentences is thus a contrast, with the second sentence highlighting a departure between truth and reality. Since we need a contrast word, we can quickly eliminate C, a causal word, and D, a support word. Both of our remaining answer choices are contrast words, so let’s pick the more concise. The correct answer is A.
To recap, Transition questions are easy to master with three easy steps. If you approach them prepared to read all necessary context, think about relationships, and eliminate excess verbiage, you too will master this question type.
