Sat practice Test #8 Answer Explanations

Choice A is the best answer. The last paragraph makes clear the 
narrator’s enthusiasm for Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, and 
it can be inferred from the last sentence of this paragraph that this 
enthusiasm motivated the narrator to aspire to a career as a writer: 
“Soon I was convinced that I didn’t want to do anything else in life but 
learn to do what Mr. Dickens had done.”

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ANSwER ExPlANATIONS
| SAT Practice Test #8
Choice B is incorrect because the passage doesn’t discuss gifts the 
narrator has received in the past; although the father sometimes gave 
the narrator money to buy sweets and snacks, these weren’t gifts since 
the narrator made the purchases himself. Choice C is incorrect because 
although it is clear from the passage that Sempere was kind and even 
indulgent to the narrator, there is no suggestion that this treatment 
was inspired by respect for the narrator. Choice D is incorrect because 
there is no suggestion that the narrator took Sempere’s figurative 
designation of Dickens as a “lifelong friend” in the ninth paragraph to 
be a literal statement.
QUESTION 6
Choice D is the best answer. The previous question asks why the 
narrator considers Great Expectations to be the greatest gift he ever 
received. The answer, that the book convinced him to become a writer, 
is best supported by the last sentence of the last paragraph: “Soon I 
was convinced that I didn’t want to do anything else in life but learn to 
do what Mr. Dickens had done.”
Choices A, B, and C are incorrect because the cited lines don’t 
support the answer to the previous question. Instead, they explain 
the narrator’s interactions with the bookseller (choice A), describe the 
book’s physical condition (choice B), and indicate the narrator’s initial, 
erroneous assumption that Sempere knew Charles Dickens personally 
(choice C).
QUESTION 7