Goal: Describe or Identify Something

When the stated goal is to identify or describe something, the sentence you build has to answer one question: what is this thing? That means it needs definition shape, not story shape. A narrative sentence strings events in time: discovered, then measured, then moved, then studied. A definition sentence instead freezes the subject in place and tells a reader meeting it for the first time what kind of thing it is and what marks it out. That is why the correct choice almost always pulls from whichever note gives the category plus a defining feature, and leaves the rest of the notes alone, however accurate they are.

The mechanism is simple: name + category + one distinguishing trait. The category comes from a word like mineral, parrot, or basin — something that tells you what shelf to put the thing on. The trait is whatever separates it from other members of that category, and which trait qualifies depends on the notes given, not on a fixed list; sometimes that is a hardness rating, sometimes a weight, sometimes the mechanism by which it forms. A sentence can be loaded with correct, specific detail and still fail the goal completely if it never actually places the thing in a category. Describing where fluorite is found or how loud a kakapo's call is tells a reader something true, but not what the thing is.

This sits right next to the connector-choosing question in the same block because both ask you to read a stated goal literally and match sentence shape to it, resisting the pull toward whichever note sounds most vivid or most detailed.