SAT Practice Test #8 Answer Explanations | SAT Suite of Assessments – The College Board

Section 1: Reading Test QUESTION 1 Choice A is the best answer. The first paragraph explains the narrator’s love of reading: “Even then my only friends were made of paper and ink. . . . Where my school friends saw notches of ink on incomprehensible pages, I saw light, streets, and people.” The fourth paragraph reiterates this love in its description of the bookshop as a “sanctuary” and “refuge.” The shift in focus occurs in the last six paragraphs, which recount the gift of a book that transforms the narrator’s love of reading into a desire to write: “I did not think there could be a better [book] in the whole world and I was beginning to suspect that Mr. Dickens had written it just for me. Soon I was convinced that I didn’t want to do anything else in life but learn to do what Mr. Dickens had done.” Thus the passage’s overall focus shifts from the narrator’s love of reading to a specific incident that influences his decision to become a writer.