Reading Comprehension Test 46

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Question 1
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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 last paragraph suggest that the narrator has discovered

A
A collection of cedar mementos left by his great-uncle

B
A way to remain in touch with his family's past without keepsakes

C
An area in Texas that reminds him of the home he had left

D
Stories that supply direct answers to the questions in his dreams

E
A method of using the land as a valuable source of income

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 characterization of the "bodies" in line $$49$$ underscores the narrator's preoccupation with

A
Genealogical method

B
Personal destiny

C
Family harmony

D
Familial identity

E
Genetic variability

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 narrator indicates that the questions his ancestors pose (lines $$43 - 49$$) are ones that

A
He cannot possibly answer truthfully

B
Are meant to forewarn as well as confuse

C
Are not really intended to elicit a response

D
Contain the answers hidden within themselves

E
Have been asked before and will be asked again

Question 4
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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 suggests that an important difference between the letters of Gide and Dickens and the letters of Austen is the

A
Ultimate intended audience of the letters

B
Era during which the letters were written

C
Gender and nationality of the letter writers

D
Number of surviving letters by each author

E
Influence of the letters on each author's novels

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.

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The overall tone of the passage is best described as

A
Analytical

B
Whimsical

C
Dramatic

D
Reflective

E
Speculative

Question 6
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Directions For Questions

Both passages discuss the issue of the intelligence of dogs.
Passage 1 was adapted from a 2001 book on animal
intelligence. Passage 2 was written in 2001 by a dog
trainer and writer.

Passage 1
It was no accident that nineteenth-century naturalist
Charles Darwin strove to connect the mentality and
emotionality of people with that of dogs, rather than, say,
doves or horses. Neither his theory of evolution nor any
general understanding of biology demanded that he pref-
erentially underline our similarity to dogs over other
species. But politically and emotionally, the choice was
inevitable for an English gentleman who had set himself
the task of making the idea of evolutionary continuity
palatable. Darwin wrote that "dogs possess something
very similar to a conscience. They certainly possess
some power of self-command. . . . Dogs have long been
accepted as the very type of fidelity and obedience."
Darwin was not alone in his beliefs that dogs possess
human virtues. The characteristics of loyalty and obedience,
coupled with an expressive face and body, can account
for why dogs are such popular and valued pets in many
cultures. Depending on the breed and the individual, dogs
can be noble, charming, affectionate, and reliable. But
while all dog owners should rightly appreciate these and
other endearing traits in their pets, nothing says that the
cleverness of a highly intelligent primate such as a chim-
panzee is part of the package. Scientists generally believe
the reasoning abilities of chimps to be considerably greater
than that of dogs. But many people nonetheless believe that
dogs are smarter than chimps precisely because of our
familiarity and emotional ties with the dogs that we love.
We apply the same secret rules to our fellow humans: the
old in-group, out-group story. People in your in-group are
those who are similar to you, either because they belong
to the same organizations as you, or enjoy the same
activities, or, and this is the kicker, because they are simply
around more often. Dogs, because of their proximity to
their owners, are definitely in. The intensity of our
relationship with dogs causes us, quite naturally, to imbue
them with high-level mental abilities, whether they have
earned those extra intelligence points or not. We like them,
so we think well of them.

Passage 2
Every dog trainer that I know had the same childhood, a
childhood filled with the brilliant, heroic dogs of literature.
We read about dogs who regularly traveled thousands of
miles to be reunited with owners who somehow misplaced
them, repeatedly saved people from certain death, and
continually exhibited a better grasp of strategic problem-
solving than the average Ph.D. In the preface to one of his
many dog stories, S. P. Meek a bit shamefacedly remarked
that in writing of dogs "I endeavored to hold these heroes
down to the level of canine intelligence, and to make them,
above all, believable. If at times I seem to have made them
show supercanine intelligence, it is because my enthusiasm
has run away with me." We forgave him, of course.
It was something of a shock, therefore, to discover
how the learning theory "experts" believed dogs think
and learn. I was told that dogs, unlike chimpanzees, have
no real reasoning ability. Dogs don't think: rather, they
learn to avoid the unpleasant (negative reinforcement), seek
the pleasant (positive reinforcement), or some combination
of the two. To contend otherwise was to be guilty of the sin
of anthropomorphizing, the attribution to an animal of
motivations and consciousness that only a human being
could possess.
Yet as a dog trainer, I find myself siding more with the
Meeks than I do with the learning theorists: nobody could
believe dispassionately in the totality of positive and nega-
tive reinforcement after seeing the pure intelligence shining
in the face of a border collie intent upon helping a shepherd
herd sheep. Dogs do think and reason. Granted, a dog might
not be able to run a maze as quickly as a chimp. But a dog
outshines any other animal that I know in the ability to
work willingly with a human being, to communicate with
a puzzling creature who often makes incomprehensible
demands. Researchers have increasingly come to view
intelligence as a complex collection of mental abilities
that cannot be fully captured in any simple way. Dogs
are geniuses at being useful, and it is this usefulness
that we admire when we praise their intelligence. As
Jonica Newby, a specialist in animal-human interaction,
writes, "In some ways intelligence is a matter of match-
ing behavior to environment. To compare intelligence
in creatures that have evolved differently is a bit like
deciding which has hit upon the best mode of travel: the
dolphin or the horse." And it is dogs, not chimps, who
possess the most helpful mode of travel for human beings.

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Both the author of Passage 1 and the "experts" mentioned in line 53 of Passage 2 directly support the idea that

A
Writers of dog stories intentionally distort the truth for dramatic purposes

B
Comparing the intelligence of dogs to that of chimps is a pointless enterprise

C
Many people have an excessive emotional attachment to their dogs

D
Dogs are less intelligent than many people believe

E
Few people are familiar with learning theory as it applies to dogs

Question 7
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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 lines $$33-34$$, the author cites Jane Eyre and Judy Blume primarily in order to.

A
Propose that a love of reading might blur a commonly perceived distinction

B
Show that younger readers cannot distinguish between literature of different eras

C
Argue that most modern novels have no lasting impact on readers

D
Observe that classic literature has great appeal for even reluctant readers

E
Indicate that certain works are interchangeable

Question 8
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Directions For Questions

Passage $$1$$ is adapted from a $$1994$$ report by a major U.S. educational task force. Passage $$2$$ is from a $$1999$$ book written by a consultant on educational issues.

Passage $$1$$
The first three years of life appear to be a crucial starting point - a period particularly sensitive to the protective mechanisms of parental and family support. For millennia, parents have recognized the newborn's basic need for safety, nourishment, warmth, and nurturing. Now science has added stunning revelations about human development from birth to age three, confirming that parent and other adult caregivers play a critical role in influencing the child's development. The importance of the first three years of life lies in the pace at which the child is growing and learning. In no other period do such profound changes occur so rapidly: the newborn grows from a completely dependent human being into one who walks, talks, plays, and explores. Babies raised by caring, attentive adults in safe, predictable environments are better learners than those raised with less attention in less secure settings. Unfortunately, in contrast to all the other leading industrialized nations, the United States fails to give parents time to be with their newborns, It fails to ensure pre- and postnatal health care for mothers and infants, and it fails to provide adequate childcare. The result is significant losses in the quality of its future workforce, citizenry, and parents. There are, of course, reasons other than economic ones for protecting young children and their families. Children need to be treasured for their own sake, not merely for what they do for the labor market when they are grown. But the issues of "human capital" - the combined skills, knowledge, and ideas of a nation's people - are real.

America's business and political leaders are understandably worried about the nation's children and its educational system. Their concern is well founded, but school reform alone is not the answer. Any effort to strengthen the workforce must begin with the family, a key factor in the development of human capital. By supporting families during the child's earliest years, society ensures that children will enter school ready to learn and will be ready, in time, to enter the workforce and be good parents. It is time to sound - and answer - the alarm about the neglect of our nation's young children and their families. All Americans must take responsibility for reversing this trend. As the risks to our children intensify, so must out determinations to enact family-centered programs and policies to ensure all of our youngest children the decent start that they deserve.

Passage $$2$$
Much early childhood literature suggests that the first three years of life is the critical period for brain development. It's a time when the young brain's learning power is almost limitless. After this period, as a child psychiatrist, Felton Earls remarks. "A kind of irreversibility sets in. There is this shaping process that goes on early, and then at the end of this process, you have essentially designed a brain that probably is not going to change very much more." "Neuroscientists see it a little differently. In a review of child development and neuroscience issues, Charles Nelson and Floyd Bloom discuss some genuinely new findings in neuroscience - what happens in the brain when the adult learn new motor skills and the rapidity with which the adult brain can reorganize after the loss of sensory input from an amputated limb. The new findings that Nelson and Bloom allude to suggest that the brain retains its ability to reorganize itself in response to experience or injury throughout life. They conclude, "It may be useful to question the simplistic view that the brain becomes unbendable and increasingly difficult to modify beyond the first few years of life. Although clearly much of brain development occurs through the first years of life, the brain is far from set in its trajectory, even at the completion of adolescence." If so, we should be wary of claims that parents have only a single, biologically delimited, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help their children build better brains.

Some might ask why we should care about the scientific accuracy of a view put forth by those who want to help children: isn't any argument leading to improved opportunities and outcomes for children a good argument? Many well-intentioned early childhood advocates do take this position. It's the hard-nosed but often realistic view that everyone knows that policy argument are merely exercises in political rhetoric. Helping society's children is a worthy aim. But if we want to take the science seriously, then we have to care if we are acting on a science-based agenda or a myth. What a science-based policy argument should do is add some evidence, beyond our own prejudices and ideological tastes, for what the preferable policy might be.

What the science can add to the policy debate are insights about leverage points that we could most effectively exploit to reach our goal. If the science is wrong, then we are trying to achieve our policy goals by pushing the wrong buttons.

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The quotation from Felton Earls in lines $$28-30$$ serves primarily to

A
Voice an incontrovertible fact

B
Challenge an a typical claim

C
Rectify an unjust misconception

D
Express a widely held point of view

E
Support the argument made by the author of Passage $$2$$

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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Lines $$30-39$$("In school.... cultures") present a model of education where students learn to.

A
Value cultural diversity over tradition

B
Respect the views of both sides of the debate

C
Reflect critically on the nature of American schooling

D
Differentiate between classic and contemporary works

E
Explore the world through wide-ranging reading

Question 10
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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 lines $$35-39$$("In college... cultures"), the education illustrated is best described as.

A
Elitist

B
Philanthopric

C
Eclectic

D
Methodical

E
Rudimentary

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Unanswered - 10

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Reading Compreh...

Question 1

A collection of cedar mementos left by his great-uncle

A way to remain in touch with his family's past without keepsakes

An area in Texas that reminds him of the home he had left

Stories that supply direct answers to the questions in his dreams

A method of using the land as a valuable source of income

Question 2

Genealogical method

Personal destiny

Family harmony

Familial identity

Genetic variability

Question 3

He cannot possibly answer truthfully

Are meant to forewarn as well as confuse

Are not really intended to elicit a response

Contain the answers hidden within themselves

Have been asked before and will be asked again

Question 4

Ultimate intended audience of the letters

Era during which the letters were written

Gender and nationality of the letter writers

Number of surviving letters by each author

Influence of the letters on each author's novels

Question 5

Analytical

Whimsical

Dramatic

Reflective

Speculative

Question 6

Writers of dog stories intentionally distort the truth for dramatic purposes

Comparing the intelligence of dogs to that of chimps is a pointless enterprise

Many people have an excessive emotional attachment to their dogs

Dogs are less intelligent than many people believe

Few people are familiar with learning theory as it applies to dogs

Question 7

Propose that a love of reading might blur a commonly perceived distinction

Show that younger readers cannot distinguish between literature of different eras

Argue that most modern novels have no lasting impact on readers

Observe that classic literature has great appeal for even reluctant readers

Indicate that certain works are interchangeable

Question 8

Voice an incontrovertible fact

Challenge an a typical claim

Rectify an unjust misconception

Express a widely held point of view

Support the argument made by the author of Passage $$2$$

Question 9

Value cultural diversity over tradition

Respect the views of both sides of the debate

Reflect critically on the nature of American schooling

Differentiate between classic and contemporary works

Explore the world through wide-ranging reading

Question 10

Elitist

Philanthopric

Eclectic

Methodical

Rudimentary

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