The following text is from Rudolfo Anaya' s 1972 novel Bless Me, Ultimo. The young narrator and his friend Cico are staring into the water of a stream in rural New Mexico.

The golden fish swam by gracefully, cautiously, as if tasting the water after a long sleep in his subterranean waters. His powerful tail moved in slow strokes as he slid through the water towards us.
As used in the text, what does the word “tasting” most nearly mean?

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase? A number of recording artists____ Indigenous music with other musical styles. For example, Wolastoq musician Jeremy Dutcher incorporated traditional Wolastoq songs into experimental pop on his album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, and Tuscarora/Taino singer-songwriter Pura Fe combined Indigenous rhythms and vocals with R&B on her album Socred Seed.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase? While modern composers may often get inspiration from past greats like Ludwig van Beethoven, the extent of their influences is broad. The music of Ernesto Lecuona, for example, can be said to ____ clements of both the dassical European tradition and the social, political, and cultural landscape of his native Cuba.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase? Though most hoaxes perpetrated as jokes by mischievous users of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that almost anyone can freely edit, have quickly been detected and removed, a few invented entries, such as those for the town of Stone Ridge, Maryland, and the Civil War general George K. Broomhall, persisted on the site for many years before they were finally recognized as ____ and deleted.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase? In a garden, ____ the spread of unwelcome weeds such as chickweed can be difficult because weeds usually spread easily and quickly become unmanageable, making it hard to remove them completely.

In 1827, Rev. John Wilk and other free Black men in New York City founded Freedom's Journal, America's first Black-owned-and-operated newspaper. Wilk's accomplishment is just one example of the rich history of Black journalism in the United States. That history is preserved by the National Association of Black Journalists, which was founded in Washington, DC, in 1975 to support Black media professionals and honor people like 3 Wilk. Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

Though Vasily Grossman's novel Stalingrad is considered inferior to his later work Life and Fate, some critics praise it despite an arduous writing process required to satisfy Soviet censors. Marcel Theroux in The Guardian called Stalingrad "lucid and readable". Of the novel's eleven drafts, the first is largely illegible, the sixth closely hews to Soviet orthodoxy, and published versions most resemble the fifth. The English edition's translators culled material from unpublished drafts and published Russian versions to create a comprehensive edition. Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

Hydroelectric generators and many other widely used mechanical systems have moving parts that rub or slide against one another, creating friction. This friction increases energy consumption and causes wear, which decreases the stability and life span of the system. Using carbon nanotubes and oil, Chanaka Kumara and colleagues at a US Department of Energy lab have created a coating for moving parts that reduces friction to the point where it is almost nonexistent. The new coating is suitable for common applications, unlike other approaches that require special conditions. What does the text most strongly suggest about the coating created by Kumara and colleagues?

Optimal foraging theory (OFT) holds that animals' foraging behaviors reflect cost-benefit trade-offs that vary by species and with dynamic ecological circumstances. One such circumstance is lunar intensity, which 4 Paul C. Griffiths and colleagues found to be negatively associated with foraging by snowshoe hares but Ian C. Colquhoun found to be positively associated with foraging by black lemurs. This discrepancy is explicable in terms of OFT: the lemurs' greater reliance on vision means that higher lunar intensity benefits them more than it benefits the hares. Information in the text best supports which statement about OFT?

High-speed rail (HSR) systems have trains that move at much higher speeds than traditional trains. HSR is expanding in Switzerland, Uzbekistan, and many other countries around the world. The United States, however, has been slow to build HSR systems. Researchers surveyed United States residents about their attitudes toward HSR. The researchers claim that this survey reveals that there is strong support for building more HSR lines in the United States.

Which quotation from a survey respondent would best illustrate the underlined claim?