12 questions · Shuffled order · Progress saved locally when available
Work through the set before checking solutions. Note the evidence for each answer and why the nearest alternative fails. Question numbers follow the shuffled order; Guide question labels match the guide references.
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Choose one answer per item. Work untimed, record confidence, and note a short clue or relationship. Read the explanations after completing the set.
Items
Chapter to revisit
D01-D04
1. Words in Context
D05-D08
2. Text Structure and Purpose
D09-D12
3. Cross-Text Connections
Use results as a starting signal
Four questions per area cannot establish mastery. Revisit a chapter when an answer is wrong, uncertain, or correct for an unsupported reason. If you missed a vocabulary item, distinguish not knowing a word from misreading a clue; those problems require different repairs.
Check your reasoning
Check the reason as well as the answer. If you guessed correctly or relied on something the text does not establish, treat the item as unfinished. Each explanation identifies why the best answer works, why its alternatives fail, and how to repair the relevant error.
The drill
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Question 1
Guide question D01
Foundation
The transportation analyst admired the new bus system's frequent service and direct routes. She nevertheless Underlined: tempered End underlined. her praise by noting that the buses were often overcrowded during the evening commute. Her review remained favorable, but it was less enthusiastic than her initial notes, written before she had observed the busiest departures, had been.
As used in the text, what does the word "tempered" most nearly mean?
Why this answer
Familiar word, contextual meaning | Review lesson 1.4
Correct choice: Moderated
The praise remains favorable but becomes less enthusiastic after a criticism is added. "Moderated" captures this reduction in intensity without turning praise into rejection.
A: The praise remains in the review but is qualified, not hidden.
B: The added observation limits the praise rather than explaining why the system deserves it.
D: The passage emphasizes a change in the strength of the praise, not another occurrence of it.
If you missed it: When a familiar verb has several senses, describe the change it produces in its object: here, praise becomes less strong.
A community swimming pool can reduce its water consumption by using a cover, but only if staff deploy the cover whenever the pool is closed. At pools where the covers remain rolled up overnight, purchasing the equipment produces little improvement. The conservation benefit is therefore ______ a consistent maintenance routine.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
Why this answer
Condition and precise completion | Review lesson 1.3
Correct choice: contingent on
"Only if" establishes a necessary condition: the routine must be followed for the equipment to yield its benefit. "Contingent on" means dependent on that condition.
B: "Incidental" would make the benefit secondary or merely accompanying the routine, losing the stated dependence.
C: "Proportional" asserts a particular quantitative relationship. The passage identifies a condition, not a ratio between maintenance and water saved.
D: "Independent of" denies dependence on the maintenance routine, contradicting the stated requirement that staff consistently use the cover.
If you missed it: Turn a condition into a short prediction: the benefit depends on use. Then distinguish dependence from a numerical relationship.
The idea that city departments should report how many service requests remained unresolved gained Underlined: currency End underlined. among municipal agencies. Reports that had once listed only the number of requests received increasingly included the number still awaiting action. The practice spread even to departments whose managers had not attended the meetings where it was first proposed.
As used in the text, what does the word "currency" most nearly mean?
Why this answer
Figurative phrase in an argument | Review lesson 1.7
Correct choice: General acceptance
The following sentences show an idea spreading through municipal reporting practices. To gain currency here is to become commonly accepted or used.
A: The context concerns the adoption of a reporting practice, not its price or the money allocated to departments.
B: Immediate relevance concerns present applicability, whereas the context stresses the spread and adoption of the practice.
C: The passage emphasizes widespread adoption, not a formal decision by an authority to approve the practice.
If you missed it: Treat the sentences after an unfamiliar phrase as evidence of its result: widespread adoption points to acceptance.
In revising her account of the storm, the writer removed most adjectives and replaced several long descriptions with single concrete verbs. The result was not difficult to understand: readers could readily picture each event. Rather, the revised prose was strikingly ______, conveying the scene with very few words.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word?
An engineer built a full-size mock-up of a delivery cart from a preliminary drawing. The mock-up could not establish how much cargo the finished cart would carry: the drawing specified neither the motor's power nor the frame's thickness. Yet trying the mock-up helped the engineer identify whether people of different heights could comfortably reach its handles. A limited model can thus answer a question different from the one it initially seems suited to address.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
Correct choice: To illustrate how a model can be informative despite an important limitation
The text first limits what the mock-up can establish and then identifies what it can reveal. The final sentence generalizes this example: a limited model can still answer a useful question.
A: The drawing supports a model that does provide useful information. The text does not broadly dismiss preliminary drawings as inadequate.
C: The text compares what can be learned, not the technical importance of comfort and capacity.
D: Handle reach is the different question the model helps answer; it does not determine the missing load capacity.
If you missed it: For purpose, connect the limitation and the useful result. Do not mistake the opening obstacle for the whole point.
Some gardeners attribute the lower soil temperatures beneath pale gravel to the gravel's reflection of sunlight. Others propose that the spaces between the stones allow more water to enter the soil, and that evaporation provides most of the cooling. A horticulturist plans to compare pale and dark gravel while holding soil moisture constant. If color still predicts a temperature difference, the comparison would count against the claim that evaporation alone explains the cooling.
Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?
Correct choice: It presents competing explanations and describes a proposed test that could help distinguish them.
The first two sentences attribute explanations to different groups. The remaining sentences describe a planned comparison and what one possible outcome would mean. No result has yet been obtained.
A: The second explanation is not accepted as a replacement, and the proposed study has not produced confirming evidence.
B: Neither explanation is rejected, and holding moisture constant is a test design, not a third explanation.
C: Reflection and evaporation are explanations for an observation, not two recommended gardening methods.
If you missed it: Mark the status of each stage: proposed explanations, planned test, conditional interpretation. Do not promote a plan into a finding.
At dinner, Arun announced that the cooking competition had been a pleasant diversion and that he had hardly thought about the results. His sister asked whether the judges had written any comments. Underlined: He recited all three of their remarks, in order, before reaching for his glass. End underlined. Then he changed the subject to the weather, with a carelessness so deliberate that she decided not to question him further.
Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?
Correct choice: It reveals an investment in the competition that Arun's earlier statement attempts to minimize.
Arun claims scarcely to have thought about the results, yet he remembers every comment in its original order. This mismatch supports the sister's recognition that his apparent indifference is deliberate.
B: Remembering the remarks precisely does not show agreement with them. Their content is not supplied.
C: The passage does not identify improvement as his motive; his response exposes concern about the results.
D: Arun changes the subject and his sister refrains from questioning him. No request for a fairness challenge appears.
If you missed it: Explain what the detail reveals in relation to the preceding claim; do not invent the missing content of the judges' remarks.
Electronic counters recorded a substantial increase in visits to a riverside path after the city added lighting. Planners cited the figures when proposing lights for another path. Underlined: The counters cannot distinguish one person making several trips from several people making one trip each. End underlined. The increase therefore shows greater traffic, but the records alone cannot establish that more residents began using the path.
Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?
Why this answer
Function of a methodological qualification | Review lesson 2.7
Correct choice: It identifies a limit on what the recorded increase can establish about the number of users.
The sentence distinguishes counted trips from unique people. That distinction explains the final sentence: more traffic is documented, but a larger number of individual users is not.
A: The sentence concerns what the device measures, not why residents would be discouraged.
B: Counting each trip is not shown to be erroneous. The limitation concerns an inference from trips to people.
D: The records do not establish no effect. They cannot by themselves settle how the number of distinct users changed.
If you missed it: A limitation on an inference is not necessarily a flaw in the measurement. Name the exact quantity the device does and does not record.
The city's next tree-planting budget should produce shade where it will benefit the greatest number of pedestrians. Busy shopping streets deserve priority because thousands of people walk there each day. When funds are limited, maximizing the total number of shaded pedestrian trips is the clearest measure of a successful program.
TEXT 2
New trees should first go to residential blocks that currently have the least shade, even when fewer pedestrians use those blocks. Planting on already leafy shopping streets may improve the city's total shade statistics, but it would leave the largest differences in residents' access to shade largely intact.
The authors of the two texts would most likely disagree about which issue?
Why this answer
Locating a precise disagreement | Review lesson 3.3
Correct choice: Which goal should determine the priority assigned to planting locations
Text 1 prioritizes the total number of shaded trips. Text 2 prioritizes reducing unequal access to shade. Their disagreement concerns the goal used to rank locations, not whether shade helps pedestrians.
A: Both authors treat shade as beneficial; they differ over where the benefit should be directed.
B: Text 1 considers pedestrian traffic, while Text 2 considers existing shade. Both use current conditions in choosing locations.
C: Both recommend priorities. Text 2 does not deny that choices among locations are necessary.
If you missed it: Write the rival criteria in parallel form: maximize total use versus reduce unequal access. That is the shared decision axis.
A translator should preserve the order and identity of a poem's images as closely as possible. A reader can reconstruct the poem's movement from those images, even when the original sound pattern cannot be reproduced. Altering an image merely to reproduce a rhythm risks sacrificing the poem's central achievement for a secondary effect.
TEXT 2
In some poems, a recurring rhythm establishes a pattern that a later disruption makes emotionally significant. A translation may accurately reproduce every image and still lose that progression. For such poems, adjusting an image to preserve the rhythmic contrast can be more faithful to the poem's effect than retaining every image unchanged.
How would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the view expressed in Text 1?
Correct choice: By suggesting that retaining the images may not preserve a progression created partly by rhythm
Text 2 identifies some poems whose emotional progression depends on a rhythmic pattern and its disruption. It directly challenges the assumption that preserving the images alone preserves that progression.
A: Familiarity to the new audience is never offered as a reason for changing images.
C: Text 2 explicitly permits adjusting an image to preserve rhythmic contrast, so it does not make unchanged images necessary.
D: Text 2 makes a claim about some poems, not a general ranking of rhythm and imagery across poetry.
If you missed it: Keep the response tied to the specific claim challenged. A counterexample to a general rule does not establish the opposite general rule.
Tracking devices attached to the same group of migratory birds over several seasons recorded the dates when the birds left their breeding grounds. The departures occurred earlier in the warmer seasons. Because the devices recorded the birds' locations continuously, the trend concerns the start of migration, regardless of which routes the birds later followed.
TEXT 2
An earlier date of first arrival at a monitoring station need not mean that birds started migrating earlier. A change in route can shorten the distance to the station. Studies that infer departure dates solely from arrival records should account for that possibility before attributing earlier station records to earlier departures.
How would the author of Text 1 most likely respond to the concern raised in Text 2?
Correct choice: By noting that the study recorded departures directly instead of inferring them from station arrivals
Text 2 warns about inferring a departure from an arrival. Text 1 directly observes departures through continuous location records, so the particular route-based ambiguity does not undermine its reported departure trend.
A: Text 1 allows that routes may vary. It does not claim that warm weather prevents route changes.
B: Identifying departures is exactly what the tracking devices are described as doing.
D: Text 1 need not reject all uses of arrival records to explain why its own measurement avoids this specific concern.
If you missed it: Check whether a methodological criticism actually applies to the other text's measurement. Similar topics can use importantly different evidence.
An ensemble's choices during rehearsal can transform a written score: players adjust pacing, emphasize unexpected connections, and sometimes persuade the composer to revise a passage. Still, the score supplies the work's governing design. These contributions enrich a composition whose principal author remains the person who established that design.
TEXT 2
Rehearsal is part of composition, not merely preparation for performance. When players discover a new pacing or persuade a composer to revise a passage, they help determine what the work becomes. The resulting piece may retain a single composer's name, but its authorship is more collaborative than that convention suggests.
Based on the texts, both authors would most likely agree with which statement?
Why this answer
Agreement beneath different evaluations | Review lesson 3.2
Correct choice: Decisions made by performers in rehearsal can shape the resulting musical work.
Both texts describe rehearsal choices and performer suggestions as shaping the work. Their disagreement concerns how those contributions should affect the description of authorship.
B: Text 1 explicitly assigns principal credit to the score's creator. Text 2 emphasizes collaboration without assigning principal credit, so this is not an established point of agreement.
C: Text 2 criticizes what the convention suggests but does not explicitly demand its abandonment; Text 1 does not support that demand.
D: Text 1 specifically says that the score supplies the governing design.
If you missed it: For agreement, look below the authors' evaluations for a factual relationship both accept. Do not import one author's conclusion into the shared ground.