SAT transitions questions: how to answer them

The library extended its opening hours on weekdays. ______ it began opening on Sunday afternoons for the first time.

Most spiders build webs to catch their prey. Jumping spiders, ______ hunt by stalking insects and leaping on them from a distance.

Early critics dismissed the composer's use of everyday noises, such as typewriters and car horns, as a gimmick. ______ these same sounds are now studied as a turning point in twentieth-century music.

The two species of finch look almost identical and share the same island. They do not compete for food, ______ since one cracks large, hard seeds and the other eats small, soft ones.

The novel's first chapters follow a single character through one ordinary day. ______ the final chapter leaps forward fifty years, revealing in a few pages what became of everyone the reader has met.

Heavy rain fell for three days without stopping. ______ the river rose above its banks and flooded several streets.

The painter used only three colors in her early works: red, yellow, and black. ______ her later paintings include dozens of subtle shades of blue and green.

To prepare for the marathon, Malik ran a few short distances each week at first. ______ he gradually increased his distance until he could run thirty kilometers without stopping.

The new vaccine produced a strong immune response in laboratory mice. ______ the researchers caution that results in mice often fail to carry over to humans, and trials in people have not yet begun.

Some historians argue that the town declined because a new railroad bypassed it. Records show, ______ that the town's population had begun falling a decade before the railroad was built.

The city's bike-share program was meant mainly for commuters. Data from its first year, ______ show that most trips were taken on weekends, for leisure.

The sculpture appears to be carved from a single block of marble. ______ it is made of more than forty separate pieces, joined so precisely that the seams are almost invisible.

Researchers expected that students given more time on a math test would score higher. Extra time, ______ made almost no difference for most students; only those who had been running out of time improved noticeably.

The archive's earliest photographs are fragile; exposure to light causes them to fade. ______ they are kept in dark, climate-controlled drawers and shown to researchers only as digital copies.

The poet rarely gave interviews and almost never discussed her work in public. ______ when a journalist once asked what a famous poem meant, she replied only that it meant what it said.

Engineers first tried to stop the tower from leaning by adding heavy weights to its north side. This helped only slightly. ______ they removed soil from beneath the north side, allowing the tower to settle back toward vertical.

In most mammals, the heart rate slows as body size increases: a mouse's heart beats hundreds of times a minute, an elephant's only about thirty. ______ larger mammals tend to live longer, so that, over a lifetime, the total number of heartbeats is roughly similar across many species.

The play received mixed reviews when it opened, and ticket sales were slow. ______ by the end of its first month, word of mouth had made it the most popular show in the city.

The team hoped the new fertilizer would increase wheat yields. In dry years, it did: yields rose by about 15 percent. ______ yields were no higher than with the old fertilizer, because heavy rain washed the new fertilizer away before plants could absorb it.