Vocabulary
The invention in 1958 of the integrated circuit (or microchip) radically altered the semiconductor industry. In fact, some historians argue that it fundamentally ______ the industry by enabling it to take advantage of mass production methods for the first time.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. overwhelmed B. bypassed
C. obstructed D. transformed
D. transformed
Historians Tiya Miles and Roy E. Finkenbine have both documented the assistance Indigenous peoples gave to Black freedom seekers leaving the South before the US Civil War. Much of the historical evidence of this help comes from Indigenous oral traditions and from autobiographies written by the freedom seekers. One such narrative is Jermain Loguen’s autobiography, which tells about how Neshnabé (Potawatomi) villagers offered him food, lodging, and directions during his 1835 journey from Tennessee to Canada.
Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence?
A. It provides an example of an autobiography that describes help given by an Indigenous people to a Black freedom seeker.
B. It shows why Loguen decided to write in great detail about his experiences traveling from Tennessee to Canada in his autobiography.
C. It argues that autobiographies are particularly important sources of information about geography in the United States before the Civil War.
D. It suggests that most historians believe that Neshnabé villagers were more successful in assisting freedom seekers than other people were.
A. It provides an example of an autobiography that describes help given by an Indigenous people to a Black freedom seeker.
When fashion designer Lloyd Henri Kiva New opened his store in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1945, he quickly became known for creating delicately crafted leather goods, like belts and hats. He was perhaps most renowned for his colorful handbags, which he made by hand using a long and painstaking process. As he gained more customers, New began using sewing machines and other tools to help him produce bags more efficiently, though he continued to handcraft the crucial details that made each bag unique.
Based on the text, what would have been the most likely consequence if New had not begun using sewing machines?
A. He would have been unable to ensure that each bag included unique, handcrafted details.
B. He would have struggled to meet the increasing demand for his bags.
C. He would have had to individually design each bag he produced.
D. He would not have been able to generate as much interest in his bags.
B. He would have struggled to meet the increasing demand for his bags.
The human brain is primed to recognize faces—so much so that, due to a perceptual tendency called pareidolia, ______ will even find faces in clouds, wooden doors, pieces of fruit, and other faceless inanimate objects. Researcher Susan Magsamen has focused her work on better understanding this everyday phenomenon.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. she B. they
C. it. D. those
C. it.
Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier’s star quilt poems offer an unusually open-ended reading experience. With ______ eight panels of text stitched together in the shape of a traditional eight-pointed Lakota star quilt, the poems present viewers with a seemingly infinite number of ways to read them.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. their B. it’s
C. they’re D. its
A. their
Biologist Jane Edgeloe and colleagues have located what is believed to be the largest individual plant in the world in the Shark Bay area of Australia. The plant is a type of seagrass called Posidonia australis, and it ______ approximately 200 square kilometers.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. acknowledges B. produces
C. spans D. advances
C. spans
Archeological excavation of Market Street Chinatown, a nineteenth-century Chinese American community in San Jose, California, provided the first evidence that Asian food products were imported to the United States in the 1800s: bones from a freshwater fish species native to Southeast Asia. Jinshanzhuang—Hong Kong–based import/export firms—likely coordinated the fish’s transport from Chinese-operated fisheries in Vietnam and Malaysia to North American markets. This route reveals the (often overlooked) multinational dimensions of the trade networks linking Chinese diaspora communities.
Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?
A. It explains why efforts to determine the country of origin of the items mentioned in the previous sentence remain inconclusive.
B. It provides information that helps support a claim about a discovery’s significance that is presented in the following sentence.
C. It traces the steps that were taken to locate and recover the objects that are described in the previous sentence.
D. It outlines a hypothesis that additional evidence discussed in the following sentence casts some doubt on.
B. It provides information that helps support a claim about a discovery’s significance that is presented in the following sentence.
Ochre sea stars live in tidal pools along the shoreline of the Pacific Ocean. At night, they move to higher shore levels in search of prey. But scientists Corey Garza and Carlos Robles noticed that ochre sea stars stayed at lower levels at night after heavy rains. Garza and Robles hypothesized that a layer of fresh water formed by rainfall was a barrier to the sea stars. To test their hypothesis, the scientists did an experiment. They placed some sea stars in a climbable tank of seawater and other sea stars in a similar tank of seawater with a layer of fresh water on top. Then, the scientists watched the sea stars’ behavior at night.
Which finding from the experiment, if true, would most directly support Garza and Robles’s hypothesis?
A. None of the sea stars climbed to the tops of the tanks, but sea stars in the tank with only seawater moved around the bottom of the tank more than sea stars in the other tank did.
B. Sea stars in the tank with only seawater climbed to the top of the tank, but sea stars in the other tank stopped climbing just below the layer of fresh water.
C. Both groups of sea stars climbed to the tops of the tanks, but sea stars in the tank with only seawater climbed more slowly than sea stars in the other tank did.
D. Sea stars in the tank with only seawater mostly stayed near the bottom of the tank, but sea stars in the other tank climbed into the layer of fresh water.
B. Sea stars in the tank with only seawater climbed to the top of the tank, but sea stars in the other tank stopped climbing just below the layer of fresh water.
Classical composer Florence Price’s 1927 move to Chicago marked a turning point in her career. It was there that Price premiered her First Symphony—a piece that was praised for blending traditional Romantic motifs with aspects of Black folk music—and ______ supportive relationships with other Black artists.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. developing
B. developed
C. to develop
D. having developed
B. developed
In 2008, two years after the death of science fiction writer Octavia Butler, the Huntington Library in ______ received a collection of more than 8,000 items, including Butler’s private notes, research materials, manuscripts, photos, and drawings. Today, the Octavia E. Butler Collection is one of the most researched archives at the library.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. California,
B. California:
C. California—
D. California
D. California
The work of molecular biophysicist Enrique M. De La Cruz is known for ______ traditional boundaries between academic disciplines. The university laboratory that De La Cruz runs includes engineers, biologists, chemists, and physicists, and the research the lab produces makes use of insights and techniques from all those fields.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. epitomizing B. transcending
C. anticipating D. reinforcing
B. transcending
Studying late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artifacts from an agricultural and domestic site in Texas, archaeologist Ayana O. Flewellen found that Black women employed as farm workers utilized hook-and-eye closures to fasten their clothes at the waist, giving themselves a silhouette similar to the one that was popular in contemporary fashion and typically achieved through more restrictive garments such as corsets. Flewellen argues that this sartorial practice shows that these women balanced hegemonic ideals of femininity with the requirements of their physically demanding occupation.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
A. To describe an unexpected discovery that altered a researcher’s view of how rapidly fashions among Black female farmworkers in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Texas changed during the period
B. To discuss research that investigated the ways in which Black female farmworkers in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Texas used fashion practices to resist traditional gender ideals
C. To evaluate a scholarly work that offers explanations for the impact of urban fashion ideals on Black female farmworkers in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Texas
D. To summarize the findings of a study that explored factors influencing a fashion practice among Black female farmworkers in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Texas.
D. To summarize the findings of a study that explored factors influencing a fashion practice among Black female farmworkers in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Texas.
Archeological excavation of Market Street Chinatown, a nineteenth-century Chinese American community in San Jose, California, provided the first evidence that Asian food products were imported to the United States in the 1800s: bones from a freshwater fish species native to Southeast Asia. Jinshanzhuang—Hong Kong–based import/export firms—likely coordinated the fish’s transport from Chinese-operated fisheries in Vietnam and Malaysia to North American markets. This route reveals the (often overlooked) multinational dimensions of the trade networks linking Chinese diaspora communities.
Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?
A. It explains why efforts to determine the country of origin of the items mentioned in the previous sentence remain inconclusive.
B. It provides information that helps support a claim about a discovery’s significance that is presented in the following sentence.
C. It traces the steps that were taken to locate and recover the objects that are described in the previous sentence.
D. It outlines a hypothesis that additional evidence discussed in the following sentence casts some doubt on.
B. It provides information that helps support a claim about a discovery’s significance that is presented in the following sentence.
Rabinal Achí is a precolonial Maya dance drama performed annually in Rabinal, a town in the Guatemalan highlands. Based on events that occurred when Rabinal was a city-state ruled by a king, ______ had once been an ally of the king but was later captured while leading an invading force against him.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. Rabinal Achí tells the story of K’iche’ Achí, a military leader who
B. K’iche’ Achí, the military leader in the story of Rabinal Achí,
C. the military leader whose story is told in Rabinal Achí, K’iche’ Achí,
D. there was a military leader, K’iche’ Achí, who in Rabinal Achí
A. Rabinal Achí tells the story of K’iche’ Achí, a military leader who
When they were first discovered in Australia in 1798, duck-billed, beaver-tailed platypuses so defied categorization that one scientist assigned them the name Ornithorhynchus paradoxus: “paradoxical bird-snout.” The animal, which lays eggs but also nurses ______ young with milk, has since been classified as belonging to the monotremes group.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. they’re. B. their
C. its D. it’s
C. its
Economist Marco Castillo and colleagues showed that nuisance costs—the time and effort people must spend to make donations—reduce charitable giving. Charities can mitigate this effect by compensating donors for nuisance costs, but those costs, though variable, are largely ______ donation size, so charities that compensate donors will likely favor attracting a few large donors over many small donors.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. supplemental to B. predictive of
C. independent of D. subsumed in
C. independent of
Some studies have suggested that posture can influence cognition, but we should not overstate this phenomenon. A case in point: In a 2014 study, Megan O’Brien and Alaa Ahmed had subjects stand or sit while making risky simulated economic decisions. Standing is more physically unstable and cognitively demanding than sitting; accordingly, O’Brien and Ahmed hypothesized that standing subjects would display more risk aversion during the decision-making tasks than sitting subjects did, since they would want to avoid further feelings of discomfort and complicated risk evaluations. But O’Brien and Ahmed actually found no difference in the groups’ performance.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
A. It argues that research findings about the effects of posture on cognition are often misunderstood, as in the case of O’Brien and Ahmed’s study.
B. It presents the study by O’Brien and Ahmed to critique the methods and results reported in previous studies of the effects of posture on cognition. C. It explains a significant problem in the emerging understanding of posture’s effects on cognition and how O’Brien and Ahmed tried to solve that problem.
D. It discusses the study by O’Brien and Ahmed to illustrate why caution is needed when making claims about the effects of posture on cognition.
D. It discusses the study by O’Brien and Ahmed to illustrate why caution is needed when making claims about the effects of posture on cognition.
Marta Coll and colleagues’ 2010 Mediterranean Sea biodiversity census reported approximately 17,000 species, nearly double the number reported in Carlo Bianchi and Carla Morri’s 2000 census—a difference only partly attributable to the description of new invertebrate species in the interim. Another factor is that the morphological variability of microorganisms is poorly understood compared to that of vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, and algae, creating uncertainty about how to evaluate microorganisms as species. Researchers’ decisions on such matters therefore can be highly consequential. Indeed, the two censuses reported similar counts of vertebrate, plant, and algal species, suggesting that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. Coll and colleagues reported a much higher number of species than Bianchi and Morri did largely due to the inclusion of invertebrate species that had not been described at the time of Bianchi and Morri’s census.
B. some differences observed in microorganisms may have been treated as variations within species by Bianchi and Morri but treated as indicative of distinct species by Coll and colleagues.
C. Bianchi and Morri may have been less sensitive to the degree of morphological variation displayed within a typical species of microorganism than Coll and colleagues were.
D. the absence of clarity regarding how to differentiate among species of microorganisms may have resulted in Coll and colleagues underestimating the number of microorganism species.
B. some differences observed in microorganisms may have been treated as variations within species by Bianchi and Morri but treated as indicative of distinct species by Coll and colleagues.
In a 2016 study, Eastern Washington University psychologist Amani El-Alayli found that, among the study participants who experienced frisson (a physiological response akin to goosebumps or getting the chills) while listening to music, there was one personality trait that they scored particularly ______ openness to experience.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. high. On
B. high on;
C. high on
D. high on:
D. high on:
Researcher Lin Zhi developed a process for increasing the tensile strength—measured in gigapascals, or GPa—of silkworm ______ dissolving and reweaving the silk in a solution of iron metal ions, zinc, and sugar, Zhi increased the amount of force required to stretch it from approximately 0.5 GPa to 2 GPa.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. silk, by B. silk by
C. silk and by D. silk. By
D. silk. By
Rejecting the premise that the literary magazine Ebony and Topaz (1927) should present a unified vision of Black American identity, editor Charles S. Johnson fostered his contributors’ diverse perspectives by promoting their authorial autonomy. Johnson’s self-effacement diverged from the editorial stances of W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke, whose decisions for their publications were more ______.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. proficient B. dogmatic
C. ambiguous D. unpretentious
B. dogmatic
The following text is adapted from Herman Melville’s 1857 novel The Confidence-Man. Humphry Davy was a prominent British chemist and inventor.
Years ago, a grave American savant, being in London, observed at an evening party there, a certain coxcombical fellow, as he thought, an absurd ribbon in his lapel, and full of smart [banter], whisking about to the admiration of as many as were disposed to admire. Great was the savant’s disdain; but, chancing ere long to find himself in a corner with the jackanapes, got into conversation with him, when he was somewhat ill-prepared for the good sense of the jackanapes, but was altogether thrown aback, upon subsequently being [informed that he was] no less a personage than Sir Humphry Davy.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
A. It portrays the thoughts of a character who is embarrassed about his own behavior.
B. It presents an account of a misunderstanding.
C. It offers a short history of how a person came to be famous.
D. It explains why one character dislikes another.
B. It presents an account of a misunderstanding.
Scientists studying Mars long thought the history of its crust was relatively simple. One reason for this is that geologic and climate data collected by a spacecraft showed that the crust was largely composed of basalt, likely as a result of intense volcanic activity that brought about a magma ocean, which then cooled to form the planet’s surface. A study led by Valerie Payré focused on additional information—further analysis of data collected by the spacecraft and infrared wavelengths detected from Mars’s surface—that revealed the presence of surprisingly high concentrations of silica in certain regions on Mars. Since a planetary surface that formed in a mostly basaltic environment would be unlikely to contain large amounts of silica, Payré concluded that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. the information about silica concentrations collected by the spacecraft is likely more reliable than the silica information gleaned from infrared wavelengths detected from Mars’s surface.
B. high silica concentrations on Mars likely formed from a different process than that which formed the crusts of other planets.
C. having a clearer understanding of the composition of Mars’s crust and the processes by which it formed will provide more insight into how Earth’s crust formed.
D. Mars’s crust likely formed as a result of other major geological events in addition to the cooling of a magma ocean.
D. Mars’s crust likely formed as a result of other major geological events in addition to the cooling of a magma ocean.
Known as Earth’s “living skin,” biocrusts are thin layers of soil held together by surface-dwelling microorganisms such as fungi, lichens, and cyanobacteria. Fortifying soil in arid ecosystems against erosion, ______
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. a recent study’s estimate is that these crusts reduce global dust emissions by 60 percent each year.
B. an estimated 60 percent reduction in global dust emissions each year is due to these crusts, according to a recent study.
C. these crusts reduce global dust emissions by an estimated 60 percent each year, according to a recent study.
D. a recent study has estimated that these crusts reduce global dust emissions by 60 percent each year.
C. these crusts reduce global dust emissions by an estimated 60 percent each year, according to a recent study.
In discussing Mary Shelley’s 1818 epistolary novel Frankenstein, literary theorist Gayatri Spivak directs the reader’s attention to the character of Margaret Saville. As Spivak points out, Saville is not the protagonist of Shelley’s ______ as the recipient of the letters that frame the book’s narrative, she’s the “occasion” of it.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. novel B. novel,
C. novel; rather, D. novel, rather,
C. novel; rather,