Module I: Reading and Writing

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Farmhouse Interior, painted in the realist style by Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch, depicts a peasant woman knitting at a table while a cat sits underneath. The realists' emphasis on accurately portraying the experiences of average working people was largely a rejection of the romantic style evident in many paintings by Pierre-Auguste Cot, which instead ________ blank their subjects' positive traits, altering subjects to appear more beautiful or heroic than they actually were.Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

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Mark for Review
rectify
counteract
magnify
apprehend

Cacao was domesticated in South America. Its physical structure is no longer identical to the structure of the wild plant it is descended from. Maize (corn) also________ blank its wild ancestor. That ancestor plant had a few small kernels. Indigenous people in Mexico carefully bred the crop until it had numerous fleshy kernels.Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

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varies from
helps with
reacts to
argues with

The collectibles market is one of the most difficult segments of the consumer economy to ________ blank. Few economists would have predicted, for example, that the prices of vintage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures would soar in the 2010s, but soar they did.Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

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Mark for Review
monitor
avoid
forecast
exchange

Chengdu, China, was named a City of Gastronomy by UNESCO in 2010, a title that ________ blank that Chengdu has a unique and vibrant food culture worthy of celebration.Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

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Mark for Review
renounces
discovers
complains
denotes

The following text is from Louise Erdrich’s 1986 novelThe Beet Queen.Celestine takes her infant daughter with her to the butcher shop where she makes sausages.Sometimes Celestine turned around and met the direct gaze of her daughter, a look so penetrating that Celestine’s breath caught. She dropped the spice, the string, the knife she was using, and took the girl up in her arms, ready for her to speak as if a spell had suddenly lifted.When the baby flexed her entire body and struggled to free herself, Celestine put her down. No matter how thorough Celestine’s exhaustion, no matter how little sleep she’d had, there was a nerve of excitement running through each hour.Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

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Mark for Review
To show that Celestine enjoys imagining her daughter’s future life
To explain how Celestine’s coworkers bond with her daughter
To portray Celestine’s excitement about her daughter
To imply that Celestine is dissatisfied with her job

In 1940, John H. Sengstacke founded the National Newspaper Publishers Association to support Black-owned newspapers. Sengstacke'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 likeSengstacke.Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

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Mark for Review
It introduces the history of an organization honoring Black journalists, then suggests how that organization might recruit more members.
It summarizes a theory about journalism, then explains how a journalistic practice has changed over time.
It describes the career of a well-known figure in Black journalism, then compares that career to one of a figure who is lesser known.
It mentions a specific achievement in Black journalistic history, then describes an organization dedicated to upholding that history.

Though Vasily Grossman's novelStalingradis considered inferior to his later workEverything Flows, some critics praise it despite an arduous writing process required to satisfy Soviet censors (Jordan Penney inPopMatterscalledStalingrad"powerful"). Of the novel's eleven drafts, the second is inexplicably missing, 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?

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Mark for Review
It notes a novel’s critical reception, addresses the complicated history of the novel’s development, and suggests how that history informed the work of the novel’s English translators.
It describes a novel whose critical reputation has declined over time, explains the cause of that decline, and reports the effort of translators to rehabilitate a work they believe has been unjustly ignored.
It mentions a novel whose quality critics do not agree on, discusses obstacles that make it difficult to determine what the best version of that novel might be, and offers a reason why some critics find a translation of the novel to be superior to the original.
It refers to a novel that has several different published and unpublished versions, identifies characteristics that have led critics to prefer one version to others, and tells how translators justified their choice to bring one particular version of the novel into another language.

Vehicle transmissions 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, Jun Qu 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 Qu and colleagues?

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Mark for Review
It is unlikely to reduce wear in mechanical systems that have multiple moving parts.
It is unlikely to be widely used because it can be applied only under special conditions.
It can likely be used to reduce energy consumption and wear in vehicle transmissions and other common mechanical systems.
It can likely improve the energy consumption of certain mechanical systems but not of vehicle transmissions.

Probabilistic models generate predictions based on outcomes of analogous past events, but even as these models project likely outcomes, they implicitly acknowledge that lower-frequency events may occur instead. Because they accommodate multiple potential outcomes, such models may seem incompatible with causal determinism—the view that particular outcomes are inevitable given certain preconditions. But complete foreknowledge of relevant conditions is generally unavailable, suggesting that a state of uncertainty ultimately prevails in which outcomes can be predicted but not definitively foretold.What does the text most strongly imply about the relationship between probabilistic models and causal determinism?

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Mark for Review
The predictive use of probabilistic models can be reconciled with acceptance of causal determinism because causal determinism does not necessarily entail the existence of absolute certainty.
The predictive use of probabilistic models represents a rejection of causal determinism because such models associate a single event with multiple potential outcomes.
Probabilistic models reflect the influence of causal determinism because their predictions of future outcomes are informed by concrete information about past events.
Probabilistic models can be understood as compatible with causal determinism only when their predictions of future events overwhelmingly favor one potential outcome.

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, whichBurt Kotler and colleagues found to be negatively associated with foraging by greater Egyptian gerbils but Eduardo Fernández-Duque and colleagues found to be positively associated with foraging by Azara's night monkeys. This discrepancy is explicable in terms of OFT: the monkeys' greater reliance on vision means that higher lunar intensity benefits them more than it benefits the gerbils.Information in the text best supports which statement about OFT?

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Mark for Review
It may be weakened by the finding that the costs and benefits associated with a particular ecological circumstance vary by species.
It can explain why some species act in accordance with cost-benefit trade-offs and others do not.
It can account for observations of different species responding differently to similar ecological circumstances.
It tends to allow for a better understanding of the benefits of ecological circumstances than the costs of those circumstances.
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