Reading Comprehension Test 43

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Reading Comprehension Test 43

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Question 1
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Directions For Questions

The passage below is from a 1991 autobiography that focuses on an African American woman's adolescent experiences at a prestigious boarding school. The passage describes one pan of a meeting of parents, admissions officers, and prospective students. The story the mother recounts at this meeting took place in 1965.
  My mother began to tell a story about a science award I had won in third grade. She started with the winning, the long, white staircase in the auditorium, and how the Line announcer called my name twice because we were way at (5) the back and it took me so long to get down those steps.
  Mama's eyes glowed. She was a born raconteur, able to increase the intensity of her own presence and fill the room. She was also a woman who seldom found new audiences for her anecdotes, so she made herself happy, she (10) insisted, with us children, her mother, her sisters, her grandparents - an entire clan of storytellers competing for a turn on the family stage. This time all eyes were on my mother. Her body, brown and plump and smooth, was shot through with energy. This time the story had a purpose.
  (15) She told them how my science experiment almost did not get considered in the citywide competition. My third-grade teacher, angry that I'd forgotten to bring a large box for displaying and storing the experiment, made me pack it up to take home. (Our teacher had told us that the boxes (20) were needed to carry the experiments from our class to the exhibition room, and she'd emphasized that she would not be responsible for finding thirty boxes on the day of the fair. Without a box, the experiment would have to go home. Other kids, White kids, had forgotten boxes during the (25) week. They'd brought boxes the next day. I asked for the same dispensation but was denied. The next day was the fair, she said. That was different.)
  I came out of school carrying the pieces of an experiment my father had picked out for me from a textbook. (30) This was a simple buoyancy experiment where I weighed each object in the air and then in water, to prove they weighed less in water. I had with me the scale, a brick, a piece of wood, a bucket, and a carefully lettered poster.
  Well, my mother marched me and my armload of (35) buoyant materials right back into school and caught the teacher before she left. The box was the only problem? Just the box? Nothing wrong with the experiment? An excited eight year old had forgotten a lousy, stinking box that you can get from the supermarket and for that, she (40) was out of the running? The teacher said I had to learn to follow directions. My mother argued that I had followed directions by doing the experiment by myself, which was more than you could say for third graders who'd brought dry-cell batteries that lit light bulbs and papier-mache (45) volcanoes that belched colored lava.
"Don't you ever put me in a position like that again," Mama said when we were out of earshot of the classroom. "You never know who is just waiting for an excuse to shut us out."
(50) We got the box; my experiment went into the fair; I won the prize at school. I won third prize for my age group in the city.
When Mama finished her stay, my ears began to burn. I could not help but believe that they would see through (55) this transparent plug, and before I had even laid hands on an application. They'd think we were forward and pushy. I forgot, for the moment, how relieved I'd felt when Mama had stood in front of that teacher defending me with a blinding sense of purpose, letting the teacher (60) know that I was not as small and Black and alone as I seemed, that I came from somewhere, and where I came from, she'd better believe, somebody was home.
The other mothers nodded approvingly. My father gave me a wide, clever-girl smile. The officials from (65) the school looked at me deadpan. They seemed amused by my embarrassment.
The story was an answer (part rebuke and part condolence) to the school stories that the admissions people told, where no parents figured at all. It was a message (70) about her maternal concerns, and a way to prove that racism was not some vanquished enemy, but a real, live person, up in your face, ready, for no apparent reason, to mess with your kid. When I was in third grade, Mama could do her maternal duty and face down a White teacher (75) who would have deprived me of an award. Who at this new school would stand up for her child in her stead?

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A central purpose of the passage is to.

A
Illustrate the character of the author's mother

B
Portray the admissions process for boarding schools at that time

C
Show the author's repressed hostility toward her mother

D
Comment on examples of racism in the United States

E
Reveal how the author became skeptical of human nature

Solution

The passage illustrates the character of the author's mother, who stood with her during her science fair when she was denied entry into the fair just because she forgot to bring her box. Through the recounting, the author also highlights ways in which racism exists in the country through the fact that all other white students who had forgotten their boxes were allowed entry into the fair. However, her mother stands up for her. So, though the passage touches upon the idea of racism, the central purpose is to highlight the character of the author's mother. So, the correct option is 'Illustrate the character of the author's mother'.
The rest of the options are not directly related to the context of the question. Hence they cannot be taken as the purpose of the passage.
Question 2
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Directions For Questions

In this passage, the narrator considers his family's history and migration from Mexico to Texas, which was once part of Mexico. I never understood people's fascination with immortality.

The idea of life without end gave me chills. Even as a kid, I wanted to be among my family and my ancestors, wailing throughout a short time together. I wanted to bind Texas and Mexico together like a raft strong enough to float out onto the ocean of time, with our past trailing in the wake behind us like a comet tail of memories. But the past can be difficult to conjure again when so little has been left behind. Some families in Mexico have troves of their ancestors' belongings, from the pottery of the ancients and paintings of Mexico City in the eighteenth century to helmets and shields of the Spaniards. By comparison, my family, the Santos, are traveling light through time. Virtually nothing has been handed down, not because there was nothing to give, but after leaving Mexico to come to Texas - so many loved ones left behind, cherished places and things abandoned - they ceased to regard anything as a keepsake. Everything was given away. Or they may have secretly clung so closely to treasured objects that they never passed them on. Then these objects were lost. My uncle Lico ferreted out the past as a passionate genealogist who used research, fantasy, and spells of breathless madness to craft his ancestral charts of the branches of our family. Some are elaborate discs, in which each outward concentric ring represents a new generation. In others, quickly dashed off as notes to himself, ragged trees and jagged lines are drawn between names like Evaristo, Vivano, Blas, and Hermenegilda. In one, going back to $$1763$$, the capstone slot contains the cryptic entry "King of Spain," from whom, presumably, he believed we were descended. Subtle faculties and proclivities were passed, speechlessly, through the flesh of successive generations. The ghosts of Spanish royalty mingled with Indians, Black people, and others from every part of the world in Uncle Lico's secret genealogy. Yet, despite the ridicule of many, he managed to recover numerous names and stories. Lico knew I had some of the same magnetic attraction to the past that fueled his manic genealogies, as if the molecules of our bodies were polarized in a way that drew us both back in time, back, inexorably, toward the ancestors.
In my dreams, the ancestors who have passed on a visit with me in this world. They ask me questions they were once asked: Where did our forbears come from and what have we amounted to in this world? Where have we come to in the span of time, and where are we headed, as an arrow shot long ago into infinite empty space? What messages and markings of the ancient past do we carry in these handed-down bodies we live in today?
With these questions swirling inside me, I have rediscovered some stories of the family past in the landscapes of Texas and Mexico, in the timeless language of stone, river, wind, and trees. My great-uncle Abran was a master of making charcoal. He lived in the Texas hill country, where the cedars needed to make charcoal were planted a century ago. Today, long after he worked there, walking in the central Texas landscape crowded with deep cedar, I feel old Abran's presence, like the whisper of a tale still waiting to be told, wondering whether my intuition and the family's history are implicitly intertwined. Even if everything else had been lost - photographs, stories, rumors, and suspicions - if nothing at all from the past remained for us, the land remains, as the original book of the family. It was always meant to be handed down.

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The image of the "raft" (line $$5$$) most clearly conveys the narrator's childhood

A
Wish to escape his circumstance

B
Desire to merge his family's Texan and Mexican identities

C
Consideration of leaving Texas and returning to Mexico

D
Belief that Texas and Mexico are more similar than not

E
Awareness that he is neither a Texan nor a Mexican
Question 3
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Directions For Questions

In this passage, the narrator considers his family's history and migration from Mexico to Texas, which was once part of Mexico. I never understood people's fascination with immortality.

The idea of life without end gave me chills. Even as a kid, I wanted to be among my family and my ancestors, wailing throughout a short time together. I wanted to bind Texas and Mexico together like a raft strong enough to float out onto the ocean of time, with our past trailing in the wake behind us like a comet tail of memories. But the past can be difficult to conjure again when so little has been left behind. Some families in Mexico have troves of their ancestors' belongings, from the pottery of the ancients and paintings of Mexico City in the eighteenth century to helmets and shields of the Spaniards. By comparison, my family, the Santos, are traveling light through time. Virtually nothing has been handed down, not because there was nothing to give, but after leaving Mexico to come to Texas - so many loved ones left behind, cherished places and things abandoned - they ceased to regard anything as a keepsake. Everything was given away. Or they may have secretly clung so closely to treasured objects that they never passed them on. Then these objects were lost. My uncle Lico ferreted out the past as a passionate genealogist who used research, fantasy, and spells of breathless madness to craft his ancestral charts of the branches of our family. Some are elaborate discs, in which each outward concentric ring represents a new generation. In others, quickly dashed off as notes to himself, ragged trees and jagged lines are drawn between names like Evaristo, Vivano, Blas, and Hermenegilda. In one, going back to $$1763$$, the capstone slot contains the cryptic entry "King of Spain," from whom, presumably, he believed we were descended. Subtle faculties and proclivities were passed, speechlessly, through the flesh of successive generations. The ghosts of Spanish royalty mingled with Indians, Black people, and others from every part of the world in Uncle Lico's secret genealogy. Yet, despite the ridicule of many, he managed to recover numerous names and stories. Lico knew I had some of the same magnetic attraction to the past that fueled his manic genealogies, as if the molecules of our bodies were polarized in a way that drew us both back in time, back, inexorably, toward the ancestors.
In my dreams, the ancestors who have passed on a visit with me in this world. They ask me questions they were once asked: Where did our forbears come from and what have we amounted to in this world? Where have we come to in the span of time, and where are we headed, as an arrow shot long ago into infinite empty space? What messages and markings of the ancient past do we carry in these handed-down bodies we live in today?
With these questions swirling inside me, I have rediscovered some stories of the family past in the landscapes of Texas and Mexico, in the timeless language of stone, river, wind, and trees. My great-uncle Abran was a master of making charcoal. He lived in the Texas hill country, where the cedars needed to make charcoal were planted a century ago. Today, long after he worked there, walking in the central Texas landscape crowded with deep cedar, I feel old Abran's presence, like the whisper of a tale still waiting to be told, wondering whether my intuition and the family's history are implicitly intertwined. Even if everything else had been lost - photographs, stories, rumors, and suspicions - if nothing at all from the past remained for us, the land remains, as the original book of the family. It was always meant to be handed down.

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The primary effect of lines $$21-35$$ ("My uncle genealogy") is to depict the

A
Collaboration between the narrator and his uncle

B
Influence of the uncle on the narrator's generation

C
Unorthodox nature of Uncle Lico's methodology

D
Family's enthusiasm for Uncle Lico's research

E
Rigors of conducting genealogical investigations

Solution

In lines 21-35, the author explains how his uncle Lico was a passionate genealogist who used "research, fantasy and spells of breathless madness" to chart his family's ancestry. Through these lines we realize that the author's uncle did not use ordinary or conventional methods of research. Thus we can conclude that the primary effect of these lines is to depict the unorthodox nature of Uncle Lico's methodology. Thus C is the best answer.
Question 4
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Directions For Questions

This discussion of vervet monkeys is from a $$19844$$ book
about animal communication.
Vervet monkeys have at least three different categories of alarm calls. When a leopard or other large carnivorous mammal approaches, the monkeys given one type of alarm call; quite a different call is used at the sight of a martial eagle, one of the few flying predators that captures vervet monkeys. A third type of alarm call is given when a large snake approached the group. This degree of differentiation of alarm calls is not unique, although it has been described in only a few kings of animals. When ethologists, who study animal behavior, interpret data of this kind, they required proof that variations in animal communication signals convey anything more than information about the communicator's internal state.
The first and relatively simple question is whether the vervet monkey's three types of alarm calls convey to other monkeys information about the type of predator. Such information is important, because the animal's defensive tactics are different in the three cases. When a leopard approaches, the monkeys climb into trees. But leopards are good climbers, so the monkeys can escape them only by climbing out onto the smallest branches, which are too weak to support a leopard. When the monkeys see a martial eagle, they move into thick vegetation close to a tree trunk or at ground level. Thus the tactics that help escape from a leopard make them highly vulnerable to a martial eagle, and vice versa. In response to the threat of a large snake, they stand on their hind legs and look around to locate the snake, then simply more away from it, either along the ground or by climbing into a tree.
Knowing that the monkeys given different alarm calls when they see different predators does not establish beyond a doubt that the calls actually describe the type of predator.
When the monkeys, which are usually close to each other, hear an alarm call, each one quickly around at the caller. Like many other animals, they are adept at the judging the direction in which another animal is looking, so they can easily see what the caller is looking at. This serves much the same function as pointing. When monkeys other than the caller take the appropriate action to avoid the danger, it is difficult to be sure whether they are acting solely on the basis of the call or whether the call simply led them to look at the source of the danger. To clarify this situation, researches conducted some carefully controlled playback experiments under natural conditions. The basic idea was to play from a concealed loudspeaker tape recordings of vervet alarm calls when vervets had just seen a leopard, a martial eagle, or a large python, and to inquire whether these playbacks, in the absence of a predator, would elicit the normal response.
The experiments required many precautions and refinements. For instance, vervet monkeys come to know each other as individuals, not only by visual appearance but by minor differences in their vocalizations. They might not respond even to an alarm call recorded from one of their own companions if that individual was in plain sight some distance from the vegetation concealing the speaker. In all experiments, the loudspeaker reproduced calls of a member of a group, and the speaker was hidden in a place where the monkeys would expect that individual to be. The experiments has to be prepared with tape recordings of a known member of a well-studied group of vervet monkeys and a hidden speaker located where this individual frequently spends time. When all these conditions were satisfied, the playbacks of alarm calls did indeed elicit the appropriate responses.
The monkeys responded to the leopard alarm call by climbing into the nearest tree: the martial eagle alarm caused them to dive into thick vegetation; and the python alarm produced the typical behavior of standing on the hind legs and looking all around for the nonexistent snake. Not all ethologists have accepted the straightforward interpretation that the alarm calls convey information about the type of predator. One alternative interpretation is that the alarm calls are injunctions to behave in certain ways. Thus the leopard alarm might mean "Go climb into a tree." But even this interpretation necessarily ascribes three specific types of injunction to the vocabulary if vervet monkeys. Even such postulated injunctions would be more than a simple reflection of the internal state of the communicator.

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The author's reaction to an "alternative interpretation" $$(line 73)$$ is best characterized as

A
Offended, because it disregards the author's own observations

B
Skeptical, because it perpetrates the falsehood that monkeys possess human traits

C
Supportive, because it provides proof for a hypothesis

D
Receptive, because it is consistent with the data

E
Respectful, because it is shared by many experienced field researches
Question 5
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Directions For Questions

In this passage, the narrator considers his family's history and migration from Mexico to Texas, which was once part of Mexico. I never understood people's fascination with immortality.

The idea of life without end gave me chills. Even as a kid, I wanted to be among my family and my ancestors, wailing throughout a short time together. I wanted to bind Texas and Mexico together like a raft strong enough to float out onto the ocean of time, with our past trailing in the wake behind us like a comet tail of memories. But the past can be difficult to conjure again when so little has been left behind. Some families in Mexico have troves of their ancestors' belongings, from the pottery of the ancients and paintings of Mexico City in the eighteenth century to helmets and shields of the Spaniards. By comparison, my family, the Santos, are traveling light through time. Virtually nothing has been handed down, not because there was nothing to give, but after leaving Mexico to come to Texas - so many loved ones left behind, cherished places and things abandoned - they ceased to regard anything as a keepsake. Everything was given away. Or they may have secretly clung so closely to treasured objects that they never passed them on. Then these objects were lost. My uncle Lico ferreted out the past as a passionate genealogist who used research, fantasy, and spells of breathless madness to craft his ancestral charts of the branches of our family. Some are elaborate discs, in which each outward concentric ring represents a new generation. In others, quickly dashed off as notes to himself, ragged trees and jagged lines are drawn between names like Evaristo, Vivano, Blas, and Hermenegilda. In one, going back to $$1763$$, the capstone slot contains the cryptic entry "King of Spain," from whom, presumably, he believed we were descended. Subtle faculties and proclivities were passed, speechlessly, through the flesh of successive generations. The ghosts of Spanish royalty mingled with Indians, Black people, and others from every part of the world in Uncle Lico's secret genealogy. Yet, despite the ridicule of many, he managed to recover numerous names and stories. Lico knew I had some of the same magnetic attraction to the past that fueled his manic genealogies, as if the molecules of our bodies were polarized in a way that drew us both back in time, back, inexorably, toward the ancestors.
In my dreams, the ancestors who have passed on a visit with me in this world. They ask me questions they were once asked: Where did our forbears come from and what have we amounted to in this world? Where have we come to in the span of time, and where are we headed, as an arrow shot long ago into infinite empty space? What messages and markings of the ancient past do we carry in these handed-down bodies we live in today?
With these questions swirling inside me, I have rediscovered some stories of the family past in the landscapes of Texas and Mexico, in the timeless language of stone, river, wind, and trees. My great-uncle Abran was a master of making charcoal. He lived in the Texas hill country, where the cedars needed to make charcoal were planted a century ago. Today, long after he worked there, walking in the central Texas landscape crowded with deep cedar, I feel old Abran's presence, like the whisper of a tale still waiting to be told, wondering whether my intuition and the family's history are implicitly intertwined. Even if everything else had been lost - photographs, stories, rumors, and suspicions - if nothing at all from the past remained for us, the land remains, as the original book of the family. It was always meant to be handed down.

...view full instructions

The objects mentioned in lines $$10-12$$ ("from pottery ... Spaniards") are examples of

A
Artifacts discovered by Uncle Lico

B
Possessions viewed as impediments to a simple life

C
Gifts bestowed on departing loved ones

D
Necessities valued by earlier generations

E
Items bearing both cultural and personal meaning
Question 6
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Directions For Questions

In this passage, the narrator considers his family's history and migration from Mexico to Texas, which was once part of Mexico. I never understood people's fascination with immortality.

The idea of life without end gave me chills. Even as a kid, I wanted to be among my family and my ancestors, wailing throughout a short time together. I wanted to bind Texas and Mexico together like a raft strong enough to float out onto the ocean of time, with our past trailing in the wake behind us like a comet tail of memories. But the past can be difficult to conjure again when so little has been left behind. Some families in Mexico have troves of their ancestors' belongings, from the pottery of the ancients and paintings of Mexico City in the eighteenth century to helmets and shields of the Spaniards. By comparison, my family, the Santos, are traveling light through time. Virtually nothing has been handed down, not because there was nothing to give, but after leaving Mexico to come to Texas - so many loved ones left behind, cherished places and things abandoned - they ceased to regard anything as a keepsake. Everything was given away. Or they may have secretly clung so closely to treasured objects that they never passed them on. Then these objects were lost. My uncle Lico ferreted out the past as a passionate genealogist who used research, fantasy, and spells of breathless madness to craft his ancestral charts of the branches of our family. Some are elaborate discs, in which each outward concentric ring represents a new generation. In others, quickly dashed off as notes to himself, ragged trees and jagged lines are drawn between names like Evaristo, Vivano, Blas, and Hermenegilda. In one, going back to $$1763$$, the capstone slot contains the cryptic entry "King of Spain," from whom, presumably, he believed we were descended. Subtle faculties and proclivities were passed, speechlessly, through the flesh of successive generations. The ghosts of Spanish royalty mingled with Indians, Black people, and others from every part of the world in Uncle Lico's secret genealogy. Yet, despite the ridicule of many, he managed to recover numerous names and stories. Lico knew I had some of the same magnetic attraction to the past that fueled his manic genealogies, as if the molecules of our bodies were polarized in a way that drew us both back in time, back, inexorably, toward the ancestors.
In my dreams, the ancestors who have passed on a visit with me in this world. They ask me questions they were once asked: Where did our forbears come from and what have we amounted to in this world? Where have we come to in the span of time, and where are we headed, as an arrow shot long ago into infinite empty space? What messages and markings of the ancient past do we carry in these handed-down bodies we live in today?
With these questions swirling inside me, I have rediscovered some stories of the family past in the landscapes of Texas and Mexico, in the timeless language of stone, river, wind, and trees. My great-uncle Abran was a master of making charcoal. He lived in the Texas hill country, where the cedars needed to make charcoal were planted a century ago. Today, long after he worked there, walking in the central Texas landscape crowded with deep cedar, I feel old Abran's presence, like the whisper of a tale still waiting to be told, wondering whether my intuition and the family's history are implicitly intertwined. Even if everything else had been lost - photographs, stories, rumors, and suspicions - if nothing at all from the past remained for us, the land remains, as the original book of the family. It was always meant to be handed down.

...view full instructions

In line $$13$$, "light" most nearly means

A
Unencumbered

B
Illuminated

C
Nimbly

D
Faintly

E
Gently
Question 7
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Directions For Questions

This passage is excerpted from an essay about the novelist Jane Austen $$(1775 - 1817)$$.

When I read collections of letters by eminent authors, I am now and then disposed to suspect that the writers had at the back of their minds the notion that one day the letters might find their way into print. When I learn that they had kept copies of their letters, the suspicion is changed into certainty. When Andre Gide wished to publish his correspondence with Claudel, and Claudel, who perhaps didn't wish it to be published, told him that the letters have been destroyed, Gide answered that it was no matter since he had kept copies of them. Whenever Charles Dickens went on a journey, he wrote long letters to his friends in which he eloquently described the sights he had seen, and which, as his first biographer justly observes, might well have been printed without the alteration of a single word.

People were more patient in those days. Still, one would have thought is a disappointment to receive a letter from a friend only to find that it provided word pictures of mountains and monuments when you would have been glad to know whether your friend had run across anyone of interest, had been to any interesting parties, and had been able to get you the books you wanted. Most of the letters of Jane Austen that have survived were written to her sister Cassandra. Many of Austen's warmest admirers have found the letters to be paltry. These people have said they showed that she was cold and unfeeling and that her interests were trivial. I am surprised. The letters are very natural. Austen never imagined that anyone but Cassandra would read them, and she told her sister just the sort of things she knew would interest her. She wrote about what people were wearing, how much she had paid for the flowered muslin she had bought, what acquaintance she had made, what old friends she had met, and what gossip she had heard.

In one of her letters, Austen said, "I have now attained the true art of letter writing, which we are always told is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth. I have been talking to you almost as fast as I could the whole of this letter." Of course. she was right. That is the art of letter writing. She attained it with consummate ease. Since she says that her conversation was exactly like her letters, and her letters are full of witty, ironic, and malicious remarks, we can be pretty sure that her conversation was delightful.

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The "suspicion" mentioned in para 1 refers to____.

A
An uncertainty about how a letter will end

B
A doubt about the literary merit of some authors

C
A skepticism about Austen's letters to her sister

D
A belief about the way a certain group of people behave

E
A feeling about how a particular event will turn out

Solution

The author mentions 'suspicion' with regard to his intuition that certain 'eminent author' wrote letters with the thought that these letters might someday be printed existing somewhere in their mind. Thus D is the best answer: 'suspicion' as used by the author refers to a belief about the way a certain group of people behaves.
Question 8
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Directions For Questions

This passage is excerpted from an essay about the novelist Jane Austen $$(1775 - 1817)$$.

When I read collections of letters by eminent authors, I am now and then disposed to suspect that the writers had at the back of their minds the notion that one day the letters might find their way into print. When I learn that they had kept copies of their letters, the suspicion is changed into certainty. When Andre Gide wished to publish his correspondence with Claudel, and Claudel, who perhaps didn't wish it to be published, told him that the letters have been destroyed, Gide answered that it was no matter since he had kept copies of them. Whenever Charles Dickens went on a journey, he wrote long letters to his friends in which he eloquently described the sights he had seen, and which, as his first biographer justly observes, might well have been printed without the alteration of a single word.

People were more patient in those days. Still, one would have thought is a disappointment to receive a letter from a friend only to find that it provided word pictures of mountains and monuments when you would have been glad to know whether your friend had run across anyone of interest, had been to any interesting parties, and had been able to get you the books you wanted. Most of the letters of Jane Austen that have survived were written to her sister Cassandra. Many of Austen's warmest admirers have found the letters to be paltry. These people have said they showed that she was cold and unfeeling and that her interests were trivial. I am surprised. The letters are very natural. Austen never imagined that anyone but Cassandra would read them, and she told her sister just the sort of things she knew would interest her. She wrote about what people were wearing, how much she had paid for the flowered muslin she had bought, what acquaintance she had made, what old friends she had met, and what gossip she had heard.

In one of her letters, Austen said, "I have now attained the true art of letter writing, which we are always told is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth. I have been talking to you almost as fast as I could the whole of this letter." Of course. she was right. That is the art of letter writing. She attained it with consummate ease. Since she says that her conversation was exactly like her letters, and her letters are full of witty, ironic, and malicious remarks, we can be pretty sure that her conversation was delightful.

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The lines in para 2 ("whether ...wanted") provides examples of

A
Individual insight

B
Personal information

C
Embarrassing revelation

D
Eloquent musings

E
Dramatic statements

Solution

The lines contain examples of the kind of personal information that the recipient of an informal, personal letter would have expected it (the letter) to carry. Thus B is the best answer: given lines provide examples of personal information.
Question 9
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Directions For Questions

This passage is excerpted from an essay about the novelist Jane Austen $$(1775 - 1817)$$.

When I read collections of letters by eminent authors, I am now and then disposed to suspect that the writers had at the back of their minds the notion that one day the letters might find their way into print. When I learn that they had kept copies of their letters, the suspicion is changed into certainty. When Andre Gide wished to publish his correspondence with Claudel, and Claudel, who perhaps didn't wish it to be published, told him that the letters have been destroyed, Gide answered that it was no matter since he had kept copies of them. Whenever Charles Dickens went on a journey, he wrote long letters to his friends in which he eloquently described the sights he had seen, and which, as his first biographer justly observes, might well have been printed without the alteration of a single word.

People were more patient in those days. Still, one would have thought is a disappointment to receive a letter from a friend only to find that it provided word pictures of mountains and monuments when you would have been glad to know whether your friend had run across anyone of interest, had been to any interesting parties, and had been able to get you the books you wanted. Most of the letters of Jane Austen that have survived were written to her sister Cassandra. Many of Austen's warmest admirers have found the letters to be paltry. These people have said they showed that she was cold and unfeeling and that her interests were trivial. I am surprised. The letters are very natural. Austen never imagined that anyone but Cassandra would read them, and she told her sister just the sort of things she knew would interest her. She wrote about what people were wearing, how much she had paid for the flowered muslin she had bought, what acquaintance she had made, what old friends she had met, and what gossip she had heard.

In one of her letters, Austen said, "I have now attained the true art of letter writing, which we are always told is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth. I have been talking to you almost as fast as I could the whole of this letter." Of course. she was right. That is the art of letter writing. She attained it with consummate ease. Since she says that her conversation was exactly like her letters, and her letters are full of witty, ironic, and malicious remarks, we can be pretty sure that her conversation was delightful.

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The "people" mentioned in para 2 line 6 would probably consider the subjects listed in para 2 lines 10-12 ("what ... heard") to be

A
Representative of Austen's artistry

B
Worthy of more detailed investigation

C
Witty and ironic critiques

D
Interesting only to academic specialists

E
Boring and mundane matters

Solution

The 'people' mentioned in para 2 line 6 refers to Austen's warmest fans who, however, did not find her letters to their liking: personal letters which discussed matters a personal letter should. They found Austen's letters to her sister to be inadequate. These 'people' would find the examples of subjects that a personal letter should contain in para 2 lines 10-12 as boring and mundane as these examples are quite ordinary and discuss everyday, normal issues. Thus, in the given context, E is the best answer. The other options are incorrect as they do not fit the context of the passage.
Question 10
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Directions For Questions

This passage is excerpted from an essay about the novelist Jane Austen $$(1775 - 1817)$$.

When I read collections of letters by eminent authors, I am now and then disposed to suspect that the writers had at the back of their minds the notion that one day the letters might find their way into print. When I learn that they had kept copies of their letters, the suspicion is changed into certainty. When Andre Gide wished to publish his correspondence with Claudel, and Claudel, who perhaps didn't wish it to be published, told him that the letters have been destroyed, Gide answered that it was no matter since he had kept copies of them. Whenever Charles Dickens went on a journey, he wrote long letters to his friends in which he eloquently described the sights he had seen, and which, as his first biographer justly observes, might well have been printed without the alteration of a single word.

People were more patient in those days. Still, one would have thought is a disappointment to receive a letter from a friend only to find that it provided word pictures of mountains and monuments when you would have been glad to know whether your friend had run across anyone of interest, had been to any interesting parties, and had been able to get you the books you wanted. Most of the letters of Jane Austen that have survived were written to her sister Cassandra. Many of Austen's warmest admirers have found the letters to be paltry. These people have said they showed that she was cold and unfeeling and that her interests were trivial. I am surprised. The letters are very natural. Austen never imagined that anyone but Cassandra would read them, and she told her sister just the sort of things she knew would interest her. She wrote about what people were wearing, how much she had paid for the flowered muslin she had bought, what acquaintance she had made, what old friends she had met, and what gossip she had heard.

In one of her letters, Austen said, "I have now attained the true art of letter writing, which we are always told is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth. I have been talking to you almost as fast as I could the whole of this letter." Of course. she was right. That is the art of letter writing. She attained it with consummate ease. Since she says that her conversation was exactly like her letters, and her letters are full of witty, ironic, and malicious remarks, we can be pretty sure that her conversation was delightful.

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The author of the passage discusses Jane Austen primarily in order to

A
Compare the novels of Austen to those of Dickens and Gide

B
Contrast letters written by ordinary people with those written by celebrities

C
Explain why letters written by eminent authors are usually interesting to read

D
Emphasize the distinctive style of Austen's novels

E
Champion a particular kind of letter writing

Solution

The author argues that the letters written by Jane Austen to her sister are as natural as a personal letter written to a relative or a friend should be whereas the letters written by many other eminent authors is not so. In this context, we can conclude that the writer of the passage champions a particular kind of letter. Thus E is the best answer.

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Reading Comprehension Test 43

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Reading Comprehension Test 43

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SHARING IS CARING

Question 1

Illustrate the character of the author's mother

Portray the admissions process for boarding schools at that time

Show the author's repressed hostility toward her mother

Comment on examples of racism in the United States

Reveal how the author became skeptical of human nature

Solution

Question 2

Wish to escape his circumstance

Desire to merge his family's Texan and Mexican identities

Consideration of leaving Texas and returning to Mexico

Belief that Texas and Mexico are more similar than not

Awareness that he is neither a Texan nor a Mexican

Question 3

Collaboration between the narrator and his uncle

Influence of the uncle on the narrator's generation

Unorthodox nature of Uncle Lico's methodology

Family's enthusiasm for Uncle Lico's research

Rigors of conducting genealogical investigations

Solution

Question 4

Offended, because it disregards the author's own observations

Skeptical, because it perpetrates the falsehood that monkeys possess human traits

Supportive, because it provides proof for a hypothesis

Receptive, because it is consistent with the data

Respectful, because it is shared by many experienced field researches

Question 5

Artifacts discovered by Uncle Lico

Possessions viewed as impediments to a simple life

Gifts bestowed on departing loved ones

Necessities valued by earlier generations

Items bearing both cultural and personal meaning

Question 6

Unencumbered

Illuminated

Nimbly

Faintly

Gently

Question 7

An uncertainty about how a letter will end

A doubt about the literary merit of some authors

A skepticism about Austen's letters to her sister

A belief about the way a certain group of people behave

A feeling about how a particular event will turn out

Solution

Question 8

Individual insight

Personal information

Embarrassing revelation

Eloquent musings

Dramatic statements

Solution

Question 9

Representative of Austen's artistry

Worthy of more detailed investigation

Witty and ironic critiques

Interesting only to academic specialists

Boring and mundane matters

Solution

Question 10

Compare the novels of Austen to those of Dickens and Gide

Contrast letters written by ordinary people with those written by celebrities

Explain why letters written by eminent authors are usually interesting to read

Emphasize the distinctive style of Austen's novels

Champion a particular kind of letter writing

Solution

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