Hi, guys. I am helping my nephew on his SAT preparation. We are not native english speakers. We got stumbled on a vocabulary in context question in the reading section. Just couldn't figure it out myself. the question goes like this Sometimes people simply lie to the researchers when asked about how sleepy they are. This occurs because in many areas of society admitting that one is fatigued and sleepy is considered a mark of weakness or a lack of ambition and drive. "drive" most nearly means A. propulsion B. instict C. campaign D. vitality E. momentum I thought A was approriate. However, answer sheet shows D is correct. Can anyone help and explain why? Lots of thanks in advance.
The drive you selected refers to the movement of something. Drive in this context is talking about a "driving force within the person" not actual movement but an immeasurable motivation. So you throw out A and E, those are dealing with actual movements. C - campaign, doesn't make much sense at all. So we are left with B and D. Instinct is internal, but is choosing to not admit you are sleepy b/c of a stigma an instinct...no. Even if you do not know what vitality means you can eliminate the others. Hope this may have helped.
You have to find a word that pairs the word "drive" to ambition. Context clues. In the future, when I took the SAT a few years ago, I found it helpful just to look at a pairing word (if there is any) and just look at the synonyms for that word in that context.
Probably means the relationship of the phrases I colored. GO and STOP. No one can move (be driven) to do anything if sleepy.
Fatigue and sleepiness are your context clues. Propulsion is more about the force that results movement or change. The antonym of propulsion would result in lack of change or movement, not necessarily fatigue and sleepiness. Vitality and drive are close cousins who are related in terms of energy, betterment of life, etc. Hope that helps.
They are making SAT easier or more relevant, used to have more obscure words you would never use in your life.
Ambition and propulsion makes very little sense there. You look at the relationship between the context and the word in question, much like Swoly laid out. The SAT is very flawed, but on the whole, I do think it tests the ability to draw conclusions based on evidence given, and that's a skill that can be valuable in academic and real-world atmospheres.
