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| 8 | A. One of the most frustrating habits students learn from test-obsessed and textbook-oriented schooling is to acquiesce in their own lack of understanding. Students become conditioned to get through a chapter rather than think it through. They are always swept off to the next quiz or test, and when they don't understand something they learn to fudge it. This is partly because they are afraid to display their ignorance to the teacher. If they read the text and don't understand a concept, that's their problem. Instead of being a challenge, "not knowing" is internalized as a sign of some inner deficiency that should, at best, be hidden from public view. What I try to do is encourage my students to feel comfortable enough with me and with the rest of the class to let their lack of knowledge show. When this freedom to struggle toward understanding becomes a part of the class mentality, a vibrant and challenging intellectual life begins to thrive. --Herbert Kohl, The Discipline of HopeThe mode of discourse in this paragraph is |
 | A) | narration. |
| B) | description. |
| C) | persuasion. |
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| 9 | A good title for this paragraph would be |
| A) | "The Modern Educational System." |
| B) | "Why Students Learn to 'Fudge' Their Ignorance." |
| C) | "Deficiencies in Textbooks." |
| D) | "How to Achieve the Proper Intellectual Life." |
| E) | "Teaching as a Profession." |
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| 10 | Which method of development is most evident in the paragraph? |
| A) | example. |
| B) | analogy. |
| C) | classification. |
| D) | cause-effect. |
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| 11 | The word acquiesce, used in line 2, most probably means, according to the context, |
| A) | to rest satisfied whether physically or mentally. |
| B) | to accept passively and without protest. |
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| 12 | Which two of the following choices does Kohl blame for students' inability to understand their textbooks? |
| A) | the students themselves for not trying hard enough. |
| B) | the teachers for not seeking out those students who need help. |
| C) | the textbooks for being too difficult to understand. |
| D) | our test-obsessed and textbook-oriented educational system. |
| E) | the school administration |
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| 13 | B. . . . this is Las Vegas, the never-ending boomtown where the American dream lives large: in particular, the dream of holding a job and owning your own home. Hundreds of people flood this desert town daily to park cars, scrub toilet bowls, deal cards, and build houses on foundations of fantasy. Most of them make their homes well beyond the central (yet non-urban) span of bright, blinking hotel towers that defines Las Vegas in the world's imagination. When they can afford to, they migrate to stucco houses painted seashell pink and desert ecru, topped with Spanish-tile roofs, on roads named Sweetwater Place, Shorecrest Drive, and Snorkel Circle. Huddled around newly paved cul-de-sacs, these homes form master-planned communities (MPCs) that seem to rise and expand across the desert overnight. Others live on horse ranches or around exclusive golf courses and synthetic lakes, surrounded by guarded gates. They live in row after row after row of identical three-bedroom adobe homes, or in mobile-home parks for retirees, or in pastel apartment complexes overlooking blue swimming pools full of well-tanned singles working the night shift. Those who cannot afford homes like these live in public housing. Those who can't get into public housing live on the streets. --Lisa Moskowitz, "For Sale," The Real Las VegasIn sentence 1 the writer states that Las Vegas is a "boomtown where the American dream lives large." What does the writer mean by the term "boomtown"? |
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| 14 | Read sentence 1 again. What is the logical relationship between the two parts of sentence 1, divided by the colon? |
| A) | steps in a process |
| B) | a general statement followed by specific examples |
| C) | cause-effect |
| D) | a term and its definition |
| E) | contrasting views of the same subject. |
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| 15 | The predominant method of paragraph development is |
| A) | informative process. |
| B) | comparison. |
| C) | facts/statistics. |
| D) | classification. |
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| 16 | Although the writer does not say so in the paragraph, Las Vegas has a very limited natural water supply and, in fact, imports most of its water from elsewhere. Which of the following phrases from the paragraph suggests why Las Vegas home developers name streets Sweetwater Place, Shorecrest Drive, and Snorkel Circle? |
| A) | "the American dream lives large" |
| B) | "master-planned communities" |
| C) | "[they] build houses on foundations of fantasy" |
| D) | "synthetic lakes" |
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| 17 | Which of these inference choices is most accurate? |
| A) | Las Vegas is an old city by Western standards. |
| B) | Las Vegas's high cost of living attracts affluent newcomers. |
| C) | Housing is affordable in Las Vegas. |
| D) | Not every new arrival who moves to Las Vegas achieves the American dream. |
| E) | All of the above. |
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| 18 | C. A star begins to die when the last of the hydrogen fuel at its center succumbs to the star's fusion furnace and the center collapses into a highly compressed, white-hot core. With the contraction, the core's temperature rises. The heat becomes so intense that helium, a fusion by-product, begins to burn both within the core and just outside it, along with hydrogen remaining outside the core. Effects of this heat are felt all the way out to the star's outer layers, which begin to expand, ballooning the star into a monstrously swollen red giant. The outermost layers of the star are now slowly cast off in a phenomenon known as stellar wind, until, eventually, comparatively little gas is left around the core. This remaining gas is heated rapidly and pushed outward at very high speed. Soon it collides with the slower, cooler gas ahead of it, piling it up into a bright, dense cloud called a planetary nebula. In a brief 10,000 years or so the core, now left in the middle of a vast cloud of dust and gas, finally begins to cool and fade. --Jeffrey Winters, DiscoverA good title for this paragraph would be |
| A) | "A Lesson in Astronomy." |
| B) | "The Effects of Heat." |
| C) | "The Origins of Stars." |
| D) | "The Death of a Star." |
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| 19 | The method of paragraph development is process. More specifically, it is |
| A) | an informative process. |
| B) | a directive process. |
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| 20 | The pattern of organization is |
| A) | deductive. |
| B) | inductive. |
| C) | chronological. |
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| 21 | The primary scientific activities responsible for the phenomenon described here are |
| A) | expansion and contraction. |
| B) | heating and cooling. |
| C) | swelling and collapse. |
| D) | fusion and explosion. |
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| 22 | Which of the following is an accurate inference? |
| A) | Stars die from the inside out. |
| B) | Stars die from the outside in. |
| C) | Stars die 10,000 years after they come into existence. |
| D) | Only stars that form a planetary nebula die. |
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| 23 | D. (1) The views of the medical profession on chocolate vary wildly. (2) Some doctors claim it to be an anti-depressant, interacting with female hormones in a way that produces incredible premenstrual cravings for chocolate. (3) Others can find no such effect. (4) The most extensive medical study of chocolate is by a French doctor, Hervé Robert, who published a book in 1990 called Les vertus thérapeutiques du chocolat [The Therapeutic Virtues of Chocolate]. (5) He disproves, to his own satisfaction, any possibility that chocolate could cause such unpleasant ailments as migraine, acne, obesity, and tooth decay. (6) Quite the reverse: he finds that the caffeine, theobromine, serotonin, and phenylethylamine that chocolate contains make it a tonic, and an anti-depressive and anti-stress agent, enhancing pleasurable activities, including making love. . . . (7) Future research may show whether there is any truth in the claims that chocolate has an aphrodisiac effect. (8) Its reputation as an aphrodisiac goes back as far as the European conquest of Mexico . . . --Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, The True History of ChocolateIn your own words, explain the relationship or logical connection between sentence 1 and sentences 2 and 3. |
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| 24 | The phrase "Quite the reverse" (see the underlined words) represents a transition. What relationship or logical relationship does it suggest? |
| A) | emphasis |
| B) | a conclusion |
| C) | a contrast |
| D) | a concession |
| E) | a statement of additional importance |
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| 25 | The passage suggests that |
| A) | has been proved to be an aphrodisiac. |
| B) | may or may not have aphrodisiac properties. |
| C) | has virtually no therapeutic value. |
| D) | the authors are conducting scientific research on chocolate's properties. |
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| 26 | Which of the following is an accurate inference? |
| A) | Europeans brought chocolate to Mexico. |
| B) | Chocolate is indigenous to Mexico and was "discovered" by Europeans. |
| C) | Mexicans taught Europeans about the delights of chocolate. |
| D) | The paragraph does not suggest where chocolate originated. |