SAT Writing & Language:
Practice Test 6

Questions 1–11 are based on the following passage.

My First Trip to Paris

The first time my parents took me to Paris, I was ten years old. I had never been to a foreign country before,  1  but my older brother was studying abroad for a semester while in college, and so my parents decided we would visit him. I was an awkward and shy child, and was incredibly nervous about leaving our hometown.  2  It was my first airplane ride, and that also made me nervous.

After we got off the airplane at Orly airport and gathered our suitcases at baggage claim, my mother  3  decided we would take public transportation from the terminal to the city center. As I held her hand, I gazed in awe at the terminal’s shops and signs. I had never imagined what it would be like to see everything around me written in an unknown language! I was in such a daze, I let go of my mother’s hand and wandered over to a perfume and cosmetics shop.  4  It’s sweet-smelling exterior lured me in  5  like the luring of Odysseus by the Sirens.

 6  Inside, several elegant women wearing furs, scarves, a couple of them clutching poodles, strolled the aisles. They looked nothing like the women I saw in the grocery store back home. All around me were bottles of sweet-smelling colognes with exotic  7  names such as: “Yves Saint Laurent,” “Givenchy,” and “Christian Dior.” I picked up one in a sleek, pink, square bottle. The label said, “Chanel No. 5.” I inhaled deeply. A burst of lemons and flowers filled my nostrils. I imagined myself wearing high heels with a big round hat, driving a convertible along twisting mountain roads in the south of France. The scent reminded me of the women in old black-and-white movies my grandmother used to watch on cable. I was completely lost to the olfactory charms of the liquid. Suddenly, I heard a loud crash. Startled, I opened my eyes, and looked down. The beautiful bottle had slipped from my hands  8  during I was lost in my fantasy and lay on the floor of the store, shattered in pieces. I was horrified.

 9  The salesgirl, dressed in a pencil skirt and tight bun, marched over to me, and she was scowling. “Qu’est-ce que vous avez fait?,” she hissed, and sharply pulled me by the arm away from the display. My cheeks turned bright red, and I opened my mouth to apologize, but I had no idea what to say. I did not even know the French word for “sorry”! “Eh bien , qu’est-ce que vous avez à dire pour vous-même?,” she exclaimed sharply, obviously annoyed at my silence. I could feel the tears start to form in the corner of my eyes, and my nose began to go numb, as it always did when I was embarrassed. “Uh…uh…,” I stammered.

Suddenly, one of the women I  10  had seen earlier stepped towards me and placed a well-manicured hand on my shoulder. “C’est ma fille. Elle est tellement désolé. Ici, ce sera de couvrir le coût?,” she purred at the salesgirl, before reaching into her Louis Vuitton handbag and extracting a large bill. She handed the money over to the salesgirl, who nodded and turned back towards the register. Even though I did not understand what she had said, I could tell from her kind eyes and warm smile that she had fixed everything. “Thank you,” I said to her. “Ah, non!” she replied, with a twinkle in her eye, and went on in English, “Here we say, ‘merci.’” I smiled at her. “Merci,” I said. Before I  11  was saying anything else, I heard my mother calling me from the front of the store. I had many unforgettable experiences during that two-week trip to Paris, but I have never forgotten the first French person I met and her kindness to me. To this day, Chanel No. 5 is still one of my favorite scents.