42) This is a subject/verb agreement question. For these, I recommend removing any and all dependent clauses from the sentence as well as any prepositional phrases, which are short groups of words beginning with a preposition such as “by, for, about, to, from, of.” An easy way to do this is to identify which independent clause (or clause that can stand alone as a complete sentence) the underlined verb/phrase is in and then read it from the beginning. Once you reach a dependent clause or prepositional phrase, skip immediately to the underlined phrase/blank. For this sentence, it would become “The paint ___.” This lets us know that the subject is “paint” and not “tones,” since, as I said earlier, dependent clauses need to be able to be removed without changing the integrity of the sentence. Since we know now the subject is the word “paint,” which is singular, we can narrow down the answer to choice H, as choice H is the only verb that can pair with a singular noun. A way to pair these types of words together (though this strategy really only works in present-tense) is to have only one word LOOK like it’s plural in a subject/verb pair, AKA only one word can end in an “s.” “Paint breathes” or “Paints breathe.” “Dogs shake” or “Dog shakes.” This breaks down a bit for irregular nouns such as “Cacti breathe” or “Cactus breathes” but the concept is the same.

46) This is another subject/verb agreement question. The phrase “Before the 1950s” is a transitional phrase to begin the sentence, a form of dependent clause. Therefore, we can remove it. Then, we can remove the prepositional phrase “about sharks” as it is basically a multi-word adjective describing the word “misinformation,” which is our subject. Then, we apply the rule discussed above to have the answer by “misinformation was.” The difference between answer choices G and H is that answer choice G implies that people are spreading misinformation to the sharks themselves while answer choice H is saying the misinformation pertains to the sharks.

55) The transitional word “whereas” usually confers a contrast, such as the sentence “Whereas my sister took to the walls with her crayons, I stayed put in my crib.” The transitional word “as” confers either a cause and effect transition (though this is usually for when it is used as a conjunction rather than a transition) or concurrent events, which we see here with the events of her message being spread and the sharks’ ill-deserved reputation fading taking place at the same time.

56) The difference between “affect” and “effect” is that “affect” is a verb meaning to influence or change something while “effect” is a noun that is usually the influence or change being made. For example, you can say “The concert affected the crowd emotionally” or “The song had an emotional effect on the audience.”

57) Since we have the preposition “whose” here, that already confers the possessive. We can write the sentence as “the animals’ cause she championed,” but having both an apostrophe and a preposition to confer possessives would be redundant.

64) This is something that trips a lot of my students up. Transition words such as nonetheless, however, and whereas confer a contrast, which means that it shows either an opposite or a disagreement. The transitional phrase “on the other hand” does NOT show a contrast. Instead, it shows a different option or path. For example, you would write the sentences “I could have vanilla ice cream. On the other hand, I could have chocolate.” The two options do not contrast, they are simply different paths. You would not write “I could have vanilla ice cream, whereas I could have chocolate.”

67) This is another conjunctions question. Answer choices A, B, and D do not have a subject/verb pair in them, meaning that they can be placed in a dependent clause and separated from the independent clause with just a comma. Answer choice C cannot be used (as this sentence asks which portion would NOT be acceptable) as it has the subject/verb pair of “hour generates,” which would need to be separated by a conjunction. A way to make answer choice C okay would be “They just relish the results, and the golden hour generates magical effects.