Information and Ideas
A main goal of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), an arts organization founded in 1965, is to advance new works by Black musicians. The AACM achieves this goal in part by focusing on young artists. By having established musicians and composers serve as mentors, the AACM gives young artists the benefits of expert technical training and creative guidance. Numerous organizations offer similar kinds of support to new generations of painters, writers, and other artists, suggesting that ______blank
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A) artists of all ages benefit more from technical training than from creative guidance.
B) many arts organizations recognize the importance of providing opportunities for young artists to learn from experienced mentors.
C) most established artists could become even better artists by serving as mentors.
D) finding a mentor is more important for musicians than it is for painters, writers, and other types of artists.
B: many arts organizations recognize the importance of providing opportunities for young artists to learn from experienced mentors.
Ronyoung Kim creatively captures the Korean American immigrant experience in her novel Clay Walls by writing about a family from three ______blank perspectives. The first section of the novel is from the mother Haesu’s perspective, the second is from the father Chun’s perspective, and the last is from the daughter Faye’s perspective.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word?
A) distinct
B) required
C) unintended
D) unknown
A: distinct
Phytoplankton play a crucial role in the ocean’s uptake of carbon from the atmosphere. When alive, these tiny marine organisms absorb atmospheric carbon via photosynthesis. ______blank after they die, the phytoplankton sink to the seafloor, where the carbon in their cells gets stored in sediment, preventing it from cycling back into the atmosphere.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
A) Specifically,
B) By contrast,
C) Nevertheless,
D) Then,
D: Then,
Located in the northern United States, the Great Lakes Basin contains roughly 35,000 islands. Lake Superior has Grand Island, for example. Lake Michigan has Belle Isle. Lake Huron, though, is home ______blank the largest island of them all: Manitoulin Island.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A) to;
B) to—
C) to
D) to,
C: to
In the 2011 documentary The Barber of Birmingham, civil rights activist James Armstrong recounts how his barbershop in Birmingham, Alabama, ______blank as a political hub for members of the Black community during the 1950s.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A) serving
B) having served
C) served
D) to serve
C: served
Violins made by Antonio Stradivari and other craftspeople in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries in Cremona, Italy, produce a sound that is considered superior to that of modern stringed instruments. Some experts have claimed that the type of wood used to create Cremonese violins is responsible for their prized sound, but modern and Cremonese violins are made of the same kinds of wood: maple and spruce. New analysis, however, has revealed unique indications that the wood in the older violins was chemically treated by the makers, leading researchers to suggest that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A) Cremonese violins probably were not considered superior to other instruments at the time they were made.
B) the sound quality of Cremonese violins results in part from a method the craftspeople used to alter the wood.
C) if modern violins were made of a wood other than maple or spruce, they likely would sound as good as Cremonese violins.
D) the current process of making violins is the same process that was used centuries ago by Cremonese craftspeople.
B: the sound quality of Cremonese violins results in part from a method the craftspeople used to alter the wood.
Text 1
Polar bears sustain themselves primarily by hunting seals on the Arctic sea ice, but rising ocean temperatures are causing the ice to diminish, raising concerns about polar bear population declines as these large predators’ seal-hunting habitats continue to shrink. A 2020 study examining polar bear populations across the Arctic concluded that populations affected by sea-ice loss are at great risk of extinction by the end of the twenty-first century.
Text 2
Monitoring carried out by researchers from the Norwegian Polar Institute shows that the polar bear population on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard remains stable and well nourished despite rapidly declining sea ice in recent years. The researchers attribute this population’s resilience in part to a shift in feeding strategies: in addition to hunting seals, the Svalbard polar bears have begun relying on a diet of reindeer meat and birds’ eggs.
Based on the texts, how would the researchers in Text 2 most likely respond to the conclusion presented in the underlined portion of Text 1?
A) By noting that it neglects the possibility of some polar bear populations adapting to changes in their environment
B) By suggesting that it is likely incorrect about the rates at which warming ocean temperatures have caused sea ice to melt in the Arctic
C) By asserting that it overlooks polar bear populations that have not yet been affected by loss of seal-hunting habitats
D) By arguing that it fails to account for polar bears’ reliance on a single seal-hunting strategy
A: By noting that it neglects the possibility of some polar bear populations adapting to changes in their environment
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
The student wants to emphasize a similarity between the two works. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?
A) Erasure (2008) uses discarded objects such as audiocassette tapes and magnets; Home Grown (2009), however, includes pushpins, plastic plates and forks, and wood.
B) Tubbs’s work, which often features discarded objects, has been shown both within the United States and abroad.
C) Like many of Tubbs’s sculptures, both Erasure and Home Grown include discarded objects: Erasure uses audiocassette tapes, and Home Grown uses plastic forks.
D) Tubbs completed Erasure in 2008 and Home Grown in 2009.
C: Like many of Tubbs’s sculptures, both Erasure and Home Grown include discarded objects: Erasure uses audiocassette tapes, and Home Grown uses plastic forks.
Horsepower is a unit of measurement used to determine how much power a vehicle produces. The measurement is based on how much and how quickly weight can be ______blank one unit of mechanical horsepower is equivalent to the amount of power it takes to lift 550 pounds one foot off the ground in one second.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A) moved, for example,
B) moved,
C) moved; for example,
D) moved
C: moved; for example,
Swedish scientists Eva Engvall and Peter Perlmann developed a method for measuring the concentration of different proteins in a biological sample. Their ______blank ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay), is used to detect and measure proteins that indicate the presence of certain diseases.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A) method (called
B) method—called
C) method, called
D) method called
C: method, called
Cats can judge unseen people’s positions in space by the sound of their voices and thus react with surprise when the same person calls to them from two different locations in a short span of time. Saho Takagi and colleagues reached this conclusion by measuring cats’ levels of surprise based on their ear and head movements while the cats heard recordings of their owners’ voices from two speakers spaced far apart. Cats exhibited a low level of surprise when owners’ voices were played twice from the same speaker, but they showed a high level of surprise when the voice was played once each from the two different speakers.
According to the text, how did the researchers determine the level of surprise displayed by the cats in the study?
A) They watched how each cat moved its ears and head.
B) They examined how each cat reacted to the voice of a stranger.
C) They studied how each cat physically interacted with its owner.
D) They tracked how each cat moved around the room.
A: They watched how each cat moved its ears and head.
Diego Velázquez was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain during the seventeenth century, but his influence was hardly ______blank Spain: realist and impressionist painters around the world employed his techniques and echoed elements of his style.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A) derived from
B) recognized in
C) confined to
D) repressed by
C: confined to
The Sun and other stars are powered by nuclear fusion reactions, in which two atoms collide to form a single heavier atom, releasing energy. Scientists have long believed that fusion has the potential to meet humanity’s clean energy needs. ______blank prior to December 2022, no fusion reaction in a laboratory setting had ever generated a net energy gain.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
A) For this reason,
B) Moreover,
C) Specifically,
D) That said,
D: That said,
To humans, it does not appear that the golden orb-weaver spider uses camouflage to capture its ______blank the brightly colored arachnid seems to wait conspicuously in the center of its large circular web for insects to approach. Researcher Po Peng of the University of Melbourne has explained that the spider’s distinctive coloration may in fact be part of its appeal.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A) prey, rather,
B) prey rather,
C) prey, rather;
D) prey; rather,
D: prey; rather,
One popular theory of the origin of the Moon, the “big whack,” posits that a protoplanet called Theia collided with Earth, flinging debris into orbit that eventually coalesced into the Moon. Until recently, Theia was ______blank, but researcher Qian Yuan and colleagues now claim to have identified pieces of the protoplanet in the lowermost section of Earth’s mantle.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A) desultory
B) spurious
C) veritable
D) notional
D: notional
To better understand the burrowing habits of Alpheus bellulus (the tiger pistol shrimp), some studies have used resin casting to obtain precise measurements of the shrimps’ burrows. Resin casting involves completely filling an empty burrow with a liquid plastic that hardens to create a three-dimensional model; however, recovering the model inevitably requires destroying the burrow. In their 2022 study, Miyu Umehara and colleagues discovered that an x-ray computed tomography (CT) scanner can accurately record a burrow’s measurements both at a moment in time and throughout the entire burrow-building process, something that’s impossible with resin casting because ______blank
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A) it can only be used on burrows below a certain size.
B) it does not allow for multiple castings of the same burrow over time.
C) the casting process takes more time than A. bellulus takes to construct a burrow.
D) the process of recovering the model distorts the resin’s shape.
B: it does not allow for multiple castings of the same burrow over time.
The 1967 release of Harold Cruse’s book The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual isolated him from almost all other scholars and activists of the American Civil Rights Movement—though many of those thinkers disagreed with each other, he nonetheless found ways to disagree with them all. He thought that activists who believed that Black people such as himself should culturally assimilate were naïve. But he also sharply criticized Black nationalists such as Marcus Garvey who wanted to establish independent, self-contained Black economies and societies, even though Cruse himself identified as a Black nationalist.
Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?
A) It describes a direction that Cruse felt the Civil Rights Movement ought to take.
B) It indicates that Cruse’s reputation as a persistent antagonist of other scholars is undeserved.
C) It describes a controversy that Cruse’s work caused within the Black nationalist movement.
D) It helps explain Cruse’s position with respect to the community of civil rights thinkers.
D: It helps explain Cruse’s position with respect to the community of civil rights thinkers.
While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:
The student wants to identify an accomplishment of the NCAI. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?
A) The NCAI, founded by representatives of fifty tribal governments, had Napoleon B. Johnson (Cherokee) as its first president.
B) Founded in 1944, the NCAI was created by representatives of tribal governments from fifty sovereign Indigenous tribes.
C) The NCAI’s advocacy was key to the passing of Public Law 96-638, legislation formally acknowledging Indigenous tribes’ right to self-governance.
D) In 1975, the NCAI passed the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, which was created to protect the sovereignty of Indigenous tribes.
C: The NCAI’s advocacy was key to the passing of Public Law 96-638, legislation formally acknowledging Indigenous tribes’ right to self-governance.
After immigrating from Mexico and obtaining U.S. citizenship, Octaviano Ambrosio Larrazolo entered politics, earning a reputation for being a fervent defender of Hispanic civil rights. In 1919 Larrazolo was elected governor of ______blank in 1928 he became the nation’s first Hispanic U.S. Senator.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A) New Mexico and
B) New Mexico,
C) New Mexico, and
D) New Mexico
C: New Mexico, and
Given that stars and planets initially form from the same gas and dust in space, some astronomers have posited that host stars (such as the Sun) and their planets (such as those in our solar system) are composed of the same materials, with the planets containing equal or smaller quantities of the materials that make up the host star. This idea is also supported by evidence that rocky planets in our solar system are composed of some of the same materials as the Sun.
Which finding, if true, would most directly weaken the astronomers’ claim?
A) Most stars are made of hydrogen and helium, but when cooled they are revealed to contain small amounts of iron and silicate.
B) A nearby host star is observed to contain the same proportion of hydrogen and helium as that of the Sun.
C) Evidence emerges that the amount of iron in some rocky planets is considerably higher than the amount in their host star.
D) The method for determining the composition of rocky planets is discovered to be less effective when used to analyze other kinds of planets.
C: Evidence emerges that the amount of iron in some rocky planets is considerably higher than the amount in their host star.
Data collected by the Mars rover Curiosity at the Gale Crater’s Murray Formation are suggestive of hydrological deposition of sediment in the distant past. To characterize the nature of the depositional environment, Frances Rivera-Hernández et al. analyzed the grain size of Murray Formation sediment, finding that although there are intervals of coarse grains, most of the sediment consists of fine grains that show signs of cracking due to episodic desiccation. Rivera-Hernández et al. concluded that the coarse grains are sandstone, which tends to be deposited by flowing water, whereas the fine grains are mudstone, which is slowly deposited by settling out of suspension in low-flow water, leading the researchers to posit that ______blank
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A) although the area of the Murray Formation experienced a prolonged period of dryness that prevented a lake from forming, water flowing from a distant source was present.
B) a lake existed at the Murray Formation for a prolonged period, though the lake occasionally experienced drying and there were periods in which one or more streams were present.
C) one or more streams existed at the Murray Formation for an extended period until being replaced by a lake that persisted for only a brief period before permanently drying.
D) a stream-fed lake was present at the Murray Formation for an extended period, and although the streams experienced occasional drying, the lake did not.
B: a lake existed at the Murray Formation for a prolonged period, though the lake occasionally experienced drying and there were periods in which one or more streams were present.
To demonstrate that the integrity of underground metal pipes can be assessed without unearthing the pipes, engineer Aroba Saleem and colleagues ______blank the tendency of some metals’ internal magnetic fields to alter under stress: the team showed that such alterations can be measured from a distance and can reveal concentrations of stress in the pipes.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A) hypothesized
B) discounted
C) redefined
D) exploited
D: exploited
Upon first approaching artist Kurt Wenner’s Dies Irae, a colorful scene painted on the surface of a cobblestone street in Mantua, Italy, one might assume a deep hole filled with life-sized, classically styled sculptures had opened up in the street. ______blank by expertly applying the principles of perspective, Wenner created merely the illusion of depth.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
A) Additionally,
B) On the contrary,
C) As a result,
D) Next,
B: On the contrary,
Recent pollen analyses of the Aran Islands have led some researchers to propose that the now treeless islands were once wooded. This hypothesis ______blank that certain trees, such as P. sylvestris, survived without interruption or human intervention throughout the Holocene cannot stand, researchers Michael O’Connell and Karen Molloy counter, unless other explanations can first be ruled out.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A) suggesting
B) suggested
C) suggests
D) has suggested
A: suggesting
If the formation of Earth’s mantle had been purely a product of core differentiation—whereby heavier elements sink toward the core and lighter elements rise—the upper mantle would be depleted of heavy siderophile elements. Siderophiles are much more abundant in the mantle than predicted in that model, however. ______blank extraterrestrial material containing siderophiles, likely from asteroid or comet impacts, almost certainly accreted to Earth following core differentiation.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
A) That said,
B) Hence,
C) For example,
D) Likewise,
B: Hence,