Track how ideas develop across sentences (support, contrast, cause, elaboration).
核心知识
Each sentence builds on the previous one in a specific way — it might support, contrast, cause, or elaborate — and transition words plus the logical relationship between sentences reveal which.
深入理解
SAT passages are short, which means every sentence does real work. Tracking how ideas develop means reading each sentence and asking: "How does this connect to what came before?" The four most common relationships are support (adding evidence for the same point), contrast (introducing a different angle), cause (showing that one thing leads to another), and elaboration (giving more detail about something just mentioned).
Transition words help, but don't rely on them alone. Sometimes the relationship is implicit. Two sentences might contrast without the word "however" — you have to notice that the second sentence pulls in the opposite direction from the first.
A useful trick: label each sentence with one word (claim, evidence, contrast, detail) and then see how the labels flow. On the SAT, the question will usually ask about the relationship between two specific sentences, and your label sequence will point you straight to the answer.
示例解析
The volcanic soil of Iceland's interior is among the most nutrient-poor in Europe. Yet Icelandic farmers have cultivated barley there for over a thousand years by rotating fields and allowing long fallow periods that let the soil slowly recover its mineral content.
How does the second sentence relate to the first?
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