Reading Comprehension Test 43

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Question 1
1 / -0

Directions For Questions

In the following passage from a newspaper commentary written in 1968, an architecture critic discusses old theaters and concert halls.
After 50 years of life and 20 years of death, the great Adler and Sullivan Auditorium in Chicago is back in business again. Orchestra Hall, also in Chicago, was beautifully spruced up for its sixty-eighth birthday. In St. Louis, a 1925 movie palace has been successfully transformed into Powell Symphony Hall, complete with handsome bar from New York's demolished Metropolitan Opera House.
Sentimentalism? Hardly. This is no more than a practical coming of cultural age, a belated recognition that fine old buildings frequently offer the most for the money in an assortment of values, including cost, and above all, that new cultural centers do not. It indicates the dawning of certain sensibilities, perspectives, and standards without which arts programs are mockeries of everything the arts stand for.
The last decade has seen city after city rush pell-mell into the promotion of great gobs of cultural real estate. It has seen a few good new theaters and a lot of bad ones, temples to bourgeois muses with all the panache of suburban shopping centers. The practice has been to treat the arts in chamber-of-commerce, rather than in creative terms. That is just as tragic as it sounds.
31897The trend toward preservation is significant not only because it is saving and restoring some superior buildings that are testimonials to the creative achievements of other times, but also because it is bucking the conventional wisdom of the conventional power structure that provides the backing for conventional cultural centers to house the arts.82646 That wisdom, as it comes true-blue from the hearts and minds of real estate dealers and investment bankers, is that you don't keep old buildings; they are obsolete. Anything new is better than anything old and anything big is better than anything small, and if a few cultural values are lost along the way, it is not too large a price to pay. In addition, the new, big buildings must be all in one place so they will show. They'll not only serve the arts, they'll improve the surrounding property values. Build now, and fill them later.
At the same time, tear down the past, rip out cultural roots, erase tradition, rub out the architectural evidence that the arts flowered earlier in our cities and enriched them and that this enrichment is culture. Substitute a safe and sanitary status symbol for the loss. Put up the shiny mediocrities of the present and demolish the shabby masterpieces of the past. That is the ironic other side of the cultural explosion coin. In drama, and in life, irony and tragedy go hand in hand.
Chicago's Auditorium is such a masterpiece. With its glowing, golden ambiance, its soaring arches and super-stage from which whispers can be heard in the far reaches of the theater, it became a legend in its own time. One of the great nineteenth-century works of Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler and an anchor point of modern architectural history, it has been an acknowledged model of acoustical and aesthetic excellence. (Interestingly, the Auditorium is a hard theater in which to install microphones today, and many modern performers, untrained in balance and projection and reliant on technical mixing of sound, find it hard to function in a near-perfect house.)
Until October 1967, the last performance at the Auditorium was of Hellzapoppin in 1941, and the last use of the great stage was for bowling alleys during the Second World War. Closed after that, it settled into decay for the next 20 years. Falling plaster filled the hall, and the golden ceiling was partly ruined by broken roof drains. Last fall the Auditorium reopened, not quite in its old glory, but close to it. The splendors of the house were traced in the eight-candlepower glory of carbon-filament light bulbs of the same kind used in 1889 when the theater, and electricity, were new. Their gentle brilliance picked out restored architectural features in warm gilt and umber.
We have never had greater technical means or expertise to make our landmarks bloom. The question is no longer whether we can bring old theaters back to new brilliance, but whether we can fill them when they're done. As with the new centers, that will be the acid cultural test.

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In lines 56-60, the authors comment about micro-phones implies that

A
The near-perfect acoustics in a new theater divert attention from the buildings aesthetic flaws

B
Audience members seated in the theaters balcony cannot fully appreciate the nuances of the performers intonations

C
The performances of modern-day actors tend to be overly dependent on technology

D
The absence of technically sophisticated equipment has jeopardized the sound quality of performances

E
Old theaters can remain viable because they readily accommodate the new sound technology that enhances a performance

Question 2
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Directions For Questions

The following passage is from a $$1991$$ essay that discusses the debate over which authors should be taught in English classes.

Now, what are we to make of this sputtering debate, in which charges of imperialism are met by equally passionate accusations of vandalism, in which each side hates the other, and yet each seems to have its share of reason? It occurs to me that perhaps what we have here is one of those debates in which the opposing sides, unbeknownst to themselves, share myopia that will turn out to be the most interesting and important feature of the whole discussion, a debate, for instance, like that of the Founding Fathers over the nature of the franchise. Think of all the energy and passion spent debating the question of property qualifications, or direct versus legislative elections, while all long, unmentioned and unimagined, was the fact-to us so central- that women and slaves were never considered for any kind of vote. While everyone is busy fighting over what should be taught in the classroom, something is being overlooked.

That is the state of reading, and books, and literature in our country, at this time. Why, ask yourself, is everyone so hot under the collar about what to put on the required-reading shelf? It is because, while we have been arguing so fiercely about which books make the best medicine, the patient has been slipping deeper and deeper into a coma. Let us imagine a country in which reading was a popular voluntary activity. There, parents read books for their own edification and pleasure and are seen by their children at this silent and mysterious pastime. These parents also read to their children, give them books for presents, talk to them about books, and underwrite, with their taxes, a public library system that is open all day, every day. In school, the children study certain books together but also have an active reading life of their own. Years later, it may even be hard for them to remember if they read Jane Eyre at home and Judy Blume$$^1$$ in class or the other way around.

In college, young people continue to be assigned certain books, but far more important are the books they discover for themselves browsing in the library, in bookstores, on the shelves of friends, one book leading to another, back and forth in history and across languages and cultures. After graduation, they continue to read and in the fullness of time produce a new generation of readers. Oh happy land$$!$$ I wish we all lived there. In that country of real readers, voluntary, active, self-determined readers, a debate like the current one over the canon would not be taking place. Or if it did, it would be as a kind of parlor game: What books would you take to a desert island? Everyone would know that the top-ten list was merely a tiny fraction of the books one would read in a lifetime. It would not seem racist or sexist or hopelessly hidebound to put Nathaniel Hawthorne on the list and not Toni Morrison$$.^2$$ It would be more like putting oatmeal and not noodles on the breakfast menu- a choice partly arbitrary, partly a nod to the national past, and partly, dare one says it, a kind of reverse affirmative action: School might frankly be the place where one reads the books that are a little off-putting, that have gone a little cold, that you might overlook because they do not address, in reader-friendly contemporary fashion, the issues most immediately at stake in modern life but that, with a little study, turn out to have a great deal to say. Being on the list wouldn't mean so much. It might even add to a writer's cachet not to be on the list, to be in one way or another too heady, too daring, too exciting to be ground up into institutional folder for teenagers. Generations of high school kids have been turned off to George Eliot$$^3$$ by being forced to read Silas Marner at a tender age. One can imagine a whole new readership for her of grown-ups were left to approach Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda with open minds, at their leisure. $$^1$$Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bront$$\ddot{e}$$, is a nineteenth-century novel, Judy Blume writes contemporary young adult novels. $$^2$$ Hawthorne was a nineteenth-century American writer. Toni Morrison is a contemporary American writer. $$^3$$ George Eliot was the pseudonym of a nineteenth-century female British novelist.

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According to the author, too much energy today is spent debating.

A
How to improve the education system

B
How to make literature seem relevant

C
Who the better writers are

D
What students should read in school

E
Whether or not to teach classic works

Question 3
1 / -0

Directions For Questions

In the following passage from a newspaper commentary written in 1968, an architecture critic discusses old theaters and concert halls.
After 50 years of life and 20 years of death, the great Adler and Sullivan Auditorium in Chicago is back in business again. Orchestra Hall, also in Chicago, was beautifully spruced up for its sixty-eighth birthday. In St. Louis, a 1925 movie palace has been successfully transformed into Powell Symphony Hall, complete with handsome bar from New York's demolished Metropolitan Opera House.
Sentimentalism? Hardly. This is no more than a practical coming of cultural age, a belated recognition that fine old buildings frequently offer the most for the money in an assortment of values, including cost, and above all, that new cultural centers do not. It indicates the dawning of certain sensibilities, perspectives, and standards without which arts programs are mockeries of everything the arts stand for.
The last decade has seen city after city rush pell-mell into the promotion of great gobs of cultural real estate. It has seen a few good new theaters and a lot of bad ones, temples to bourgeois muses with all the panache of suburban shopping centers. The practice has been to treat the arts in chamber-of-commerce, rather than in creative terms. That is just as tragic as it sounds.
31897The trend toward preservation is significant not only because it is saving and restoring some superior buildings that are testimonials to the creative achievements of other times, but also because it is bucking the conventional wisdom of the conventional power structure that provides the backing for conventional cultural centers to house the arts.82646 That wisdom, as it comes true-blue from the hearts and minds of real estate dealers and investment bankers, is that you don't keep old buildings; they are obsolete. Anything new is better than anything old and anything big is better than anything small, and if a few cultural values are lost along the way, it is not too large a price to pay. In addition, the new, big buildings must be all in one place so they will show. They'll not only serve the arts, they'll improve the surrounding property values. Build now, and fill them later.
At the same time, tear down the past, rip out cultural roots, erase tradition, rub out the architectural evidence that the arts flowered earlier in our cities and enriched them and that this enrichment is culture. Substitute a safe and sanitary status symbol for the loss. Put up the shiny mediocrities of the present and demolish the shabby masterpieces of the past. That is the ironic other side of the cultural explosion coin. In drama, and in life, irony and tragedy go hand in hand.
Chicago's Auditorium is such a masterpiece. With its glowing, golden ambiance, its soaring arches and super-stage from which whispers can be heard in the far reaches of the theater, it became a legend in its own time. One of the great nineteenth-century works of Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler and an anchor point of modern architectural history, it has been an acknowledged model of acoustical and aesthetic excellence. (Interestingly, the Auditorium is a hard theater in which to install microphones today, and many modern performers, untrained in balance and projection and reliant on technical mixing of sound, find it hard to function in a near-perfect house.)
Until October 1967, the last performance at the Auditorium was of Hellzapoppin in 1941, and the last use of the great stage was for bowling alleys during the Second World War. Closed after that, it settled into decay for the next 20 years. Falling plaster filled the hall, and the golden ceiling was partly ruined by broken roof drains. Last fall the Auditorium reopened, not quite in its old glory, but close to it. The splendors of the house were traced in the eight-candlepower glory of carbon-filament light bulbs of the same kind used in 1889 when the theater, and electricity, were new. Their gentle brilliance picked out restored architectural features in warm gilt and umber.
We have never had greater technical means or expertise to make our landmarks bloom. The question is no longer whether we can bring old theaters back to new brilliance, but whether we can fill them when they're done. As with the new centers, that will be the acid cultural test.

...view full instructions

Which challenge is emphasized by the author in the final paragraph (lines 73-77) ?

A
Designating theaters as historical landmarks

B
Renewing a respect for architecture

C
Providing opportunities for new artists

D
Reviving classical plays

E
Attracting appreciative audiences

Question 4
1 / -0

Directions For Questions

The following passage is from a $$1991$$ essay that discusses the debate over which authors should be taught in English classes.

Now, what are we to make of this sputtering debate, in which charges of imperialism are met by equally passionate accusations of vandalism, in which each side hates the other, and yet each seems to have its share of reason? It occurs to me that perhaps what we have here is one of those debates in which the opposing sides, unbeknownst to themselves, share myopia that will turn out to be the most interesting and important feature of the whole discussion, a debate, for instance, like that of the Founding Fathers over the nature of the franchise. Think of all the energy and passion spent debating the question of property qualifications, or direct versus legislative elections, while all long, unmentioned and unimagined, was the fact-to us so central- that women and slaves were never considered for any kind of vote. While everyone is busy fighting over what should be taught in the classroom, something is being overlooked.

That is the state of reading, and books, and literature in our country, at this time. Why, ask yourself, is everyone so hot under the collar about what to put on the required-reading shelf? It is because, while we have been arguing so fiercely about which books make the best medicine, the patient has been slipping deeper and deeper into a coma. Let us imagine a country in which reading was a popular voluntary activity. There, parents read books for their own edification and pleasure and are seen by their children at this silent and mysterious pastime. These parents also read to their children, give them books for presents, talk to them about books, and underwrite, with their taxes, a public library system that is open all day, every day. In school, the children study certain books together but also have an active reading life of their own. Years later, it may even be hard for them to remember if they read Jane Eyre at home and Judy Blume$$^1$$ in class or the other way around.

In college, young people continue to be assigned certain books, but far more important are the books they discover for themselves browsing in the library, in bookstores, on the shelves of friends, one book leading to another, back and forth in history and across languages and cultures. After graduation, they continue to read and in the fullness of time produce a new generation of readers. Oh happy land$$!$$ I wish we all lived there. In that country of real readers, voluntary, active, self-determined readers, a debate like the current one over the canon would not be taking place. Or if it did, it would be as a kind of parlor game: What books would you take to a desert island? Everyone would know that the top-ten list was merely a tiny fraction of the books one would read in a lifetime. It would not seem racist or sexist or hopelessly hidebound to put Nathaniel Hawthorne on the list and not Toni Morrison$$.^2$$ It would be more like putting oatmeal and not noodles on the breakfast menu- a choice partly arbitrary, partly a nod to the national past, and partly, dare one says it, a kind of reverse affirmative action: School might frankly be the place where one reads the books that are a little off-putting, that have gone a little cold, that you might overlook because they do not address, in reader-friendly contemporary fashion, the issues most immediately at stake in modern life but that, with a little study, turn out to have a great deal to say. Being on the list wouldn't mean so much. It might even add to a writer's cachet not to be on the list, to be in one way or another too heady, too daring, too exciting to be ground up into institutional folder for teenagers. Generations of high school kids have been turned off to George Eliot$$^3$$ by being forced to read Silas Marner at a tender age. One can imagine a whole new readership for her of grown-ups were left to approach Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda with open minds, at their leisure. $$^1$$Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bront$$\ddot{e}$$, is a nineteenth-century novel, Judy Blume writes contemporary young adult novels. $$^2$$ Hawthorne was a nineteenth-century American writer. Toni Morrison is a contemporary American writer. $$^3$$ George Eliot was the pseudonym of a nineteenth-century female British novelist.

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The author invokes "the Founding Fathers"(lines $$9-10$$) chiefly in order to.

A
Appeal to the reader's sense of patriostism

B
Introduce a historical parallel

C
Examine the history of legislative debate

D
Remind the reader how attitudes change over time

E
Suggest that progress is compatible with tradition

Question 5
1 / -0

Directions For Questions

In the following passage from a newspaper commentary written in 1968, an architecture critic discusses old theaters and concert halls.
After 50 years of life and 20 years of death, the great Adler and Sullivan Auditorium in Chicago is back in business again. Orchestra Hall, also in Chicago, was beautifully spruced up for its sixty-eighth birthday. In St. Louis, a 1925 movie palace has been successfully transformed into Powell Symphony Hall, complete with handsome bar from New York's demolished Metropolitan Opera House.
Sentimentalism? Hardly. This is no more than a practical coming of cultural age, a belated recognition that fine old buildings frequently offer the most for the money in an assortment of values, including cost, and above all, that new cultural centers do not. It indicates the dawning of certain sensibilities, perspectives, and standards without which arts programs are mockeries of everything the arts stand for.
The last decade has seen city after city rush pell-mell into the promotion of great gobs of cultural real estate. It has seen a few good new theaters and a lot of bad ones, temples to bourgeois muses with all the panache of suburban shopping centers. The practice has been to treat the arts in chamber-of-commerce, rather than in creative terms. That is just as tragic as it sounds.
31897The trend toward preservation is significant not only because it is saving and restoring some superior buildings that are testimonials to the creative achievements of other times, but also because it is bucking the conventional wisdom of the conventional power structure that provides the backing for conventional cultural centers to house the arts.82646 That wisdom, as it comes true-blue from the hearts and minds of real estate dealers and investment bankers, is that you don't keep old buildings; they are obsolete. Anything new is better than anything old and anything big is better than anything small, and if a few cultural values are lost along the way, it is not too large a price to pay. In addition, the new, big buildings must be all in one place so they will show. They'll not only serve the arts, they'll improve the surrounding property values. Build now, and fill them later.
At the same time, tear down the past, rip out cultural roots, erase tradition, rub out the architectural evidence that the arts flowered earlier in our cities and enriched them and that this enrichment is culture. Substitute a safe and sanitary status symbol for the loss. Put up the shiny mediocrities of the present and demolish the shabby masterpieces of the past. That is the ironic other side of the cultural explosion coin. In drama, and in life, irony and tragedy go hand in hand.
Chicago's Auditorium is such a masterpiece. With its glowing, golden ambiance, its soaring arches and super-stage from which whispers can be heard in the far reaches of the theater, it became a legend in its own time. One of the great nineteenth-century works of Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler and an anchor point of modern architectural history, it has been an acknowledged model of acoustical and aesthetic excellence. (Interestingly, the Auditorium is a hard theater in which to install microphones today, and many modern performers, untrained in balance and projection and reliant on technical mixing of sound, find it hard to function in a near-perfect house.)
Until October 1967, the last performance at the Auditorium was of Hellzapoppin in 1941, and the last use of the great stage was for bowling alleys during the Second World War. Closed after that, it settled into decay for the next 20 years. Falling plaster filled the hall, and the golden ceiling was partly ruined by broken roof drains. Last fall the Auditorium reopened, not quite in its old glory, but close to it. The splendors of the house were traced in the eight-candlepower glory of carbon-filament light bulbs of the same kind used in 1889 when the theater, and electricity, were new. Their gentle brilliance picked out restored architectural features in warm gilt and umber.
We have never had greater technical means or expertise to make our landmarks bloom. The question is no longer whether we can bring old theaters back to new brilliance, but whether we can fill them when they're done. As with the new centers, that will be the acid cultural test.

...view full instructions

What does the imagery in lines 40- 43 suggest?

A
The dawning of an enlightened artistic sensibility has stimulated support for preserving historic theaters.

B
The ill-conceived mandate to destroy architectural masterpieces epitomizes the censorship of creative expression.

C
The desire for societal status symbols drives the construction of grandiose cultural centers.

D
The demolition of a historic landmark is tantamount to the destruction of an invaluable cultural legacy.

E
The restoration of intimate old theaters will speed the demise of large new arenas.

Question 6
1 / -0

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 third paragraph (lines $$30-42$$) contributes to the development of the passage primarily by

A
Indicating an interpretation that is eventually ruled out

B
Showing the necessity of multiple explanations

C
Describing an alternate method of observation

D
Supporting a hypothesis with observations from the field

E
Drawing an analogy between animal and human behavior

Question 7
1 / -0

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.

...view full instructions

When designing the experiments described in lines $$43 - 63$$, researchers had to consider all of the following EXCEPT

A
The location of certain monkeys in the group

B
The monkeys' familiarity with one other

C
The location of the equipment

D
The vocalization of predators

E
Individual differences among the monkeys' calls

Question 8
1 / -0

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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What is the relationship between the first paragraph (lines $$1-13$$) and the "simple question" mentioned in lines $$14 - 16$$?

A
The first paragraph contains evidence that will answer the question

B
The question arises from information in the first paragraph

C
The question makes light of the view presented in the first paragraph

D
The first paragraph outlines the way the question will be answered in the rest of the passage

E
The question defines an unorthodox view that was discounted in the first paragraph

Question 9
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Directions For Questions

The following passage is from a $$1991$$ essay that discusses the debate over which authors should be taught in English classes.

Now, what are we to make of this sputtering debate, in which charges of imperialism are met by equally passionate accusations of vandalism, in which each side hates the other, and yet each seems to have its share of reason? It occurs to me that perhaps what we have here is one of those debates in which the opposing sides, unbeknownst to themselves, share myopia that will turn out to be the most interesting and important feature of the whole discussion, a debate, for instance, like that of the Founding Fathers over the nature of the franchise. Think of all the energy and passion spent debating the question of property qualifications, or direct versus legislative elections, while all long, unmentioned and unimagined, was the fact-to us so central- that women and slaves were never considered for any kind of vote. While everyone is busy fighting over what should be taught in the classroom, something is being overlooked.

That is the state of reading, and books, and literature in our country, at this time. Why, ask yourself, is everyone so hot under the collar about what to put on the required-reading shelf? It is because, while we have been arguing so fiercely about which books make the best medicine, the patient has been slipping deeper and deeper into a coma. Let us imagine a country in which reading was a popular voluntary activity. There, parents read books for their own edification and pleasure and are seen by their children at this silent and mysterious pastime. These parents also read to their children, give them books for presents, talk to them about books, and underwrite, with their taxes, a public library system that is open all day, every day. In school, the children study certain books together but also have an active reading life of their own. Years later, it may even be hard for them to remember if they read Jane Eyre at home and Judy Blume$$^1$$ in class or the other way around.

In college, young people continue to be assigned certain books, but far more important are the books they discover for themselves browsing in the library, in bookstores, on the shelves of friends, one book leading to another, back and forth in history and across languages and cultures. After graduation, they continue to read and in the fullness of time produce a new generation of readers. Oh happy land$$!$$ I wish we all lived there. In that country of real readers, voluntary, active, self-determined readers, a debate like the current one over the canon would not be taking place. Or if it did, it would be as a kind of parlor game: What books would you take to a desert island? Everyone would know that the top-ten list was merely a tiny fraction of the books one would read in a lifetime. It would not seem racist or sexist or hopelessly hidebound to put Nathaniel Hawthorne on the list and not Toni Morrison$$.^2$$ It would be more like putting oatmeal and not noodles on the breakfast menu- a choice partly arbitrary, partly a nod to the national past, and partly, dare one says it, a kind of reverse affirmative action: School might frankly be the place where one reads the books that are a little off-putting, that have gone a little cold, that you might overlook because they do not address, in reader-friendly contemporary fashion, the issues most immediately at stake in modern life but that, with a little study, turn out to have a great deal to say. Being on the list wouldn't mean so much. It might even add to a writer's cachet not to be on the list, to be in one way or another too heady, too daring, too exciting to be ground up into institutional folder for teenagers. Generations of high school kids have been turned off to George Eliot$$^3$$ by being forced to read Silas Marner at a tender age. One can imagine a whole new readership for her of grown-ups were left to approach Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda with open minds, at their leisure. $$^1$$Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bront$$\ddot{e}$$, is a nineteenth-century novel, Judy Blume writes contemporary young adult novels. $$^2$$ Hawthorne was a nineteenth-century American writer. Toni Morrison is a contemporary American writer. $$^3$$ George Eliot was the pseudonym of a nineteenth-century female British novelist.

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In line $$23$$, the "coma" represents the.

A
Rebellion of students against traditional texts

B
Lack of enthusiasm for reading in general

C
Scarcity of books on official reading lists

D
Difficulty of understanding archaic language

E
Negative effects of popular media

Question 10
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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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In lines $$9-13$$ ("When . . . state"), the author's observation about ethologists implies that they

A
Are dismissive of issues that concern other biologists

B
Limit themselves by their reliance on traditional explanations of animal behavior

C
Fail to account for discrepancies between field and laboratory observations

D
Try to avoid unjustified conclusions about the meaning of a phenomenon

E
Use an approach that sometimes arouses resentment

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Question Analysis

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Unanswered - 10

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Reading Compreh...

Question 1

The near-perfect acoustics in a new theater divert attention from the buildings aesthetic flaws

Audience members seated in the theaters balcony cannot fully appreciate the nuances of the performers intonations

The performances of modern-day actors tend to be overly dependent on technology

The absence of technically sophisticated equipment has jeopardized the sound quality of performances

Old theaters can remain viable because they readily accommodate the new sound technology that enhances a performance

Question 2

How to improve the education system

How to make literature seem relevant

Who the better writers are

What students should read in school

Whether or not to teach classic works

Question 3

Designating theaters as historical landmarks

Renewing a respect for architecture

Providing opportunities for new artists

Reviving classical plays

Attracting appreciative audiences

Question 4

Appeal to the reader's sense of patriostism

Introduce a historical parallel

Examine the history of legislative debate

Remind the reader how attitudes change over time

Suggest that progress is compatible with tradition

Question 5

The dawning of an enlightened artistic sensibility has stimulated support for preserving historic theaters.

The ill-conceived mandate to destroy architectural masterpieces epitomizes the censorship of creative expression.

The desire for societal status symbols drives the construction of grandiose cultural centers.

The demolition of a historic landmark is tantamount to the destruction of an invaluable cultural legacy.

The restoration of intimate old theaters will speed the demise of large new arenas.

Question 6

Indicating an interpretation that is eventually ruled out

Showing the necessity of multiple explanations

Describing an alternate method of observation

Supporting a hypothesis with observations from the field

Drawing an analogy between animal and human behavior

Question 7

The location of certain monkeys in the group

The monkeys' familiarity with one other

The location of the equipment

The vocalization of predators

Individual differences among the monkeys' calls

Question 8

The first paragraph contains evidence that will answer the question

The question arises from information in the first paragraph

The question makes light of the view presented in the first paragraph

The first paragraph outlines the way the question will be answered in the rest of the passage

The question defines an unorthodox view that was discounted in the first paragraph

Question 9

Rebellion of students against traditional texts

Lack of enthusiasm for reading in general

Scarcity of books on official reading lists

Difficulty of understanding archaic language

Negative effects of popular media

Question 10

Are dismissive of issues that concern other biologists

Limit themselves by their reliance on traditional explanations of animal behavior

Fail to account for discrepancies between field and laboratory observations

Try to avoid unjustified conclusions about the meaning of a phenomenon

Use an approach that sometimes arouses resentment

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Question Analysis

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