Question 63·200 Super-Hard SAT Reading Questions·Expression of Ideas
Historians comparing oral accounts of an ancient kingdom sometimes treat agreement among geographically separated communities as evidence that each community independently preserved an early memory. Records showing that performers traveled among those communities complicate that inference, but the records rarely identify which stories the performers told. Some historians therefore set the records aside when deciding whether a shared episode is ancient or was spread later. ______ the records bear on a prior question: whether the accounts can be treated as independent evidence in the first place.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
For difficult transition questions, track not only whether claims contrast but also whether they have the same scope. A sentence may concede that evidence cannot answer one question while showing that the evidence remains relevant to another; choose the transition that captures that precise relationship rather than a broader restatement, contradiction, or result.
Hints
Track the scope
Compare the question the records cannot settle with the question to which the final sentence says they remain relevant.
Classify the relationship
Determine whether the final sentence directly contradicts, restates, follows from, or qualifies the preceding conclusion.
Step-by-step Explanation
Distinguish the two questions
The third sentence concerns whether the records can determine the origin of a shared episode. The final sentence concerns a logically prior issue: whether accounts from different communities should be treated as independent evidence.
Identify the relationship
Some historians set aside the records because the records cannot resolve the first question. The final sentence qualifies that response by explaining that the records still matter to the second question.
Choose the precise transition
The final claim remains true despite the limitation and resulting decision described previously. Therefore, the transition must signal concession rather than direct contradiction, restatement, or consequence.