Ace the Virginia 8th Grade Reading SOL 2026 – Unleash Your Inner Bookworm!

Understanding how transition words connect ideas is key here. A word that signals similarity shows that the next idea is like the one before. Similarly does exactly that, marking a comparison and pointing out that two ideas share a likeness. The other options point to differences or are not used to connect ideas in the same way: unlike and in contrast signal contrast or opposition, while same describes sameness but isn’t a connective that signals a relationship between sentences the way similarly does.