Module I: Reading and Writing

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The following text is from Mark Twain’s 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Tom, a child, has been told by his aunt to paint their house’s fence.
Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high.
As used in the text, what does the word "surveyed" most nearly mean?
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Promoted
Organized
Transformed
Examined
Though Vasily Grossman’s novel Stalingrad is not as beloved as his later work Life and Fate, some critics commend it despite its mangling by Soviet censors: Luke Harding in The Guardian called it “one of the great novels of the twentieth century.” Several draft versions have been ______, and translators consulted those drafts when working on what they hoped would be a definitive English edition.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
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assigned
hypothesized
detracted
preserved
Writer Lydia Davis observed that while ______ literary forms, such as the novel, are recognizable as such even as they evolve, there are pathbreaking “intergeneric” forms that might, for example, use elements of both fiction and essays to create something unclassifiable. The late-period pieces of James Tate arguably fit in this category, since they straddle the line between prose and poetry.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
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established
ambiguous
innovative
elusive
Analysis of preserved plants cataloged in the United States Virtual Herbarium indicates that rising temperatures correlate with earlier leaf production, but such specimens represent only brief moments in plants’ overall development. ______ this research with studies involving live plants would enable a fuller understanding of how these observed changes affect plant fitness.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
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Foregrounding
Complementing
Categorizing
Anticipating
One challenge faced by researchers studying global urbanization is that different countries have different definitions of what constitutes an urban settlement. Many countries define urban settlements based on the number of people living in them. However, countries do not all use the same number to define an urban settlement; for example, Iceland uses a minimum population of 200, while Mali uses 30,000. Other countries use a combination of population and other factors, like the number of buildings in the area. This variation makes it difficult for researchers to compare aspects of urbanization in different countries.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
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To compare the urban populations of two different countries
To explain why researchers are interested in studying global urbanization
To illustrate a problem faced by researchers studying global urbanization
To object to a method that some countries use to classify different types of settlements
In their study of fossils of the extinct arthropod Mollisonia symmetrica, Javier Ortega-Hernández, Rudy Leroseyr-Aubril, and team reported some obvious indications of M. symmetrica’s nervous system—for example, nerves extending into the animal’s body parts. Most intriguingly, they also saw signs of what might be a synanglion, a brain-like nerve mass, in the animal’s head. This is an exciting possibility: without evidence of a synanglion, we can’t tell exactly how M. symmetrica relates to mosquitoes, slipper lobsters, and other arthropods.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
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To describe M. symmetrica and the way nerves extending into the animal’s body parts functioned
To question whether the fossils the team studied were actually of M. symmetrica
To discuss a significant feature that may have been found in a study of M. symmetrica fossils
To argue that M. symmetrica may have been more similar to mosquitoes than to slipper lobsters

Charles Fuller’s critically acclaimed play The Brownsville Raid was produced in 1976 by the groundbreaking Negro Ensemble Company (NEC). NEC cofounder Douglas Turner Ward, who worked as an actor, director, and playwright, had met actor and producer Robert Hooks while they were performing in a 1960 touring production of Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun. Together, they envisioned a theater company that would nurture and showcase the work of Black theater professionals. Since NEC’s founding in 1967, its workshops and performances have given Black playwrights, including Fuller, a forum for their compelling stories.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

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It provides additional information about a person mentioned in the text.
It emphasizes the ongoing significance of the theater company discussed in the text.
It illustrates the widespread influence of a play discussed earlier in the text.
It explains the circumstances that led to the formation of the theater company discussed in the text.
In the Greek village of Pyrgi, the buildings are embellished with xysta, a traditional design featuring rows upon rows of carved geometric shapes on the facades of buildings. Deeply rooted in Pyrgi’s cultural history and handed down over generations, the techniques used for creating these precise patterns involve mathematical principles and tools, such as compasses and rulers. Studying the history of xysta, therefore, has given researchers an understanding of how mathematics has been used in this region dating to the medieval period.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
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Research on techniques used to construct xysta has helped reveal the role of mathematics in the culture of Pyrgi.
There is more academic interest in the tools the Pyrgi people use to construct xysta than in the appearance of xysta.
The people of Pyrgi constructed xysta on their buildings to show an appreciation for mathematics.
The construction of xysta on buildings was first completed in the village of Pyrgi during the medieval period.
Online surveys are a common tool researchers use to collect information. These surveys are usually designed for use on personal computers (PCs), but more people are using smartphones to complete them than they are PCs. This shift in device usage may change how participants interact with online surveys. When researchers Jean Philippe Décieux and Philipp E. Sischka investigated, they found that PC users were more likely to multitask while taking surveys than smartphone users were, but PC users were also more likely to complete the surveys.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
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People are choosing to take online surveys on smartphones more often than they are on PCs because smartphones are convenient.
A study shows that the type of device people use to complete online surveys affects how they interact with these surveys.
Researchers prefer online surveys to other ways of collecting information because they think online survey results are more reliable.
Researchers are investigating why survey completion rates are higher on PCs than they are on smartphones, despite increased multitasking on PCs.
Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge is an 1838 historical account by Elleanor Eldridge and Frances Harriet Whipple Green. In the book, the authors suggest that many memoirs of renowned people aren’t particularly straightforward or candid, writing, ______
Which quotation from Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge most effectively illustrates the claim?
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“There is often a kind of [deceptive] light, playing around such [famous] names, calculated to dazzle and mislead, by their false lustre, until the eye can no longer receive the pure light of Truth, or the mind appreciate real excellence, or intrinsic worth.”
“It should not be considered essential to the interest and value of biography, that its subject be of exalted rank, or illustrious name.”
“How careful ought we to be to speak nothing but the truth, even in regard to the most trifling circumstances; and not only so, but to be well assured that what we suppose to be true, is truth, before we receive it as such.”
“But we must not dwell too long amid these tender scenes, which,”
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