15 questions · Shuffled order · Progress saved locally when available
Covers topics across Reading and Sentence Foundations.
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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These questions combine the five foundations. Choose one answer per item. Record confidence and, if useful, elapsed time. This is a skills review, not an adaptive module or a score-conversion test.
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Question 1
Guide question C01
Transfer
The proposal to convert two vacant offices into rehearsal rooms, supported by several local ensembles, ______ before the council next week.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
Why this answer
1 | Finite predicate
Correct choice: will appear
Will appear supplies the finite predicate for the subject proposal. To convert is an infinitive; supported introduces added descriptive information.
A: Appearing is nonfinite here and leaves the main clause without a finite predicate.
B: To appear is another infinitive, not a main finite predicate.
D: Having appeared is a nonfinite perfect participial phrase and also conflicts with the future time cue.
If you missed it: Find the head subject, then ask whether it has a finite predicate.
The report that the committee commissioned after residents questioned the earlier estimates does not reject the project; rather, it recommends reducing its initial size until demand can be measured more accurately.
Which choice best describes the report's recommendation?
Why this answer
2 | Nested description
Correct choice: Begin on a smaller scale while obtaining better information about demand.
The report preserves the project while limiting its initial size until demand is better measured. Its recommendation is conditional, not a rejection.
B: The report recommends a smaller initial project while improving measurement, not postponing the entire project.
C: The report recommends reducing, not increasing, the initial size.
D: It recommends more accurate measurement rather than acceptance of the earlier estimates.
If you missed it: Preserve both does not reject and reducing its initial size.
A theater director attributes a production's success to its elaborate scenery. A reviewer notes, however, that audiences responded enthusiastically to an earlier staged reading of the same play, when there was no scenery at all. The reviewer suggests that the dialogue deserves more credit than the director gives it.
What role does the staged reading play in the reviewer's argument?
Why this answer
3 | Contrasting explanations
Correct choice: It provides a case of positive audience response without elaborate scenery, supporting an alternative emphasis.
An enthusiastic response without scenery supports the reviewer's argument that dialogue deserves more credit. The example does not establish that scenery contributed nothing to the later production or isolate dialogue as the only cause of either response.
A: An earlier success without scenery does not establish that scenery added nothing to a later production.
B: Authorship is not discussed.
C: No identical preferences are established.
If you missed it: State what the comparison demonstrates, then stop before claiming it isolates one cause.
In three of the eight villages surveyed, residents reported fewer water interruptions after a storage tank was installed. The researchers did not collect comparable reports from the other five villages.
Which conclusion is best supported?
Why this answer
4 | Scope and limits
Correct choice: Fewer interruptions were reported after installation in at least some of the surveyed villages.
The text gives reports of fewer interruptions in three villages. That supports at least some. The lack of comparable reports prevents conclusions about the remaining villages or the cause of the reported changes.
A: Three of eight is not most, and causal attribution is not established.
C: Missing reports do not establish an increase.
D: Exactly three rules out improvement elsewhere, which the missing evidence cannot do; benefited may also imply causation.
If you missed it: Separate the observed subset from the unmeasured cases.
The archive's earliest register lists donors alphabetically; its later register lists them by neighborhood. This change in arrangement does not, by itself, account for the sharp rise in the number of recorded donations.
As used in the text, "account for" most nearly means
Why this answer
5 | Academic sense
Correct choice: explain
A change in arrangement is being considered as an explanation for a rise in recorded donations. The sentence says the change alone is not an adequate explanation.
B: Constitute would describe making up a total, not explaining the increase.
C: The issue is why the number rose, not where donations are found.
D: Financing donations has no support in the context.
If you missed it: Replace the phrase with a plain verb that fits what the sentence is trying to explain.
The evidence from the interviews, together with the two surviving schedules, ______ that the service operated throughout the winter.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
Why this answer
1 | Subject across interruption
Correct choice: indicates
The subject is the singular mass noun evidence. The together with phrase adds information but does not create a compound subject. Indicates supplies the agreeing finite verb.
A: Indicate does not agree with singular evidence in this sentence.
B: Have indicated likewise uses plural agreement.
C: Indicating leaves the main clause without a finite predicate.
If you missed it: Read The evidence indicates before restoring the intervening phrases.
Only when the last visitor had gone did Mara unfold the sketch. She had not concealed it out of shame; she wanted, before hearing anyone else's opinion, to decide whether it captured the room as she remembered it.
Which choice best describes Mara's reason for waiting?
Why this answer
2 | Literary syntax and restraint
Correct choice: She wanted to assess the sketch against her own memory before others influenced her judgment.
The purpose clause states that she wanted to make her own assessment before hearing other opinions. The inversion did Mara unfold still means Mara unfolded.
A: The passage does not specify what she expected visitors to think.
C: No memory lapse about the sketch's location is given.
D: The passage does not attribute the drawing to someone else or indicate deception.
If you missed it: Restore ordinary word order, then use the explicit purpose clause to explain the action.
A researcher initially argues that a sudden increase in a magazine's references to bicycles reflects a rise in local cycling. On inspecting the index, she discovers that later issues included advertisements in the reference count, whereas earlier issues did not. She therefore suspends her original conclusion.
Which statement best explains the researcher's decision?
Why this answer
3 | Revised conclusion
Correct choice: The counts may reflect a change in what was counted rather than a change in cycling.
The measurements use different inclusion rules. That offers an alternative explanation for the increase and makes the behavioral conclusion uncertain.
A: The counting change establishes neither decline nor growth in cycling.
B: The passage does not state that the original count was zero. Its stated comparability problem is that the rules for including advertisements changed.
D: This blanket claim goes beyond the specific comparability problem.
If you missed it: Ask whether both measurements counted the same kind of thing.
At the start of a project, 40 of 200 records in Collection A and 18 of 60 records in Collection B were damaged. No further information about the collections is provided.
Which statement accurately compares the damage?
Why this answer
4 | Comparison and quantity
Correct choice: Collection A contained more damaged records but a smaller damaged share.
Collection A has 40 damaged records versus 18 in B. Its damaged share is 40/200 = 20%. Collection B's damaged share is 18/60 = 30%. A therefore has the larger count and smaller share.
A: B has the larger share but the smaller count.
B: Both parts reverse the stated comparison.
C: 20% and 30% are not equal.
If you missed it: Write count and proportion separately before evaluating the choices.
The surviving letters mention the artist's interest in glass, but none describes her working with it. The curator therefore calls a glass sculpture's proposed attribution to the artist ______: it is plausible, yet the evidence does not establish it.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word?
Why this answer
5 | Strength of evidence
Correct choice: tentative
Plausible but not established describes a provisional or tentative attribution. The word must preserve uncertainty without rejecting the attribution.
B: Definitive would treat the attribution as settled.
C: The curator treats the attribution as plausible but uncertain; the concern is its evidentiary support, not its relevance.
D: Insufficient evidence is different from contradictory evidence.
If you missed it: Place the claim on a scale from unsupported possibility to settled conclusion.
The laboratory that examined the samples concluded that the residue came from a later repair.
Which description accurately distinguishes the two clauses beginning with "that"?
Why this answer
1 | Clause structure
Correct choice: The first describes the laboratory; the second supplies the content of its conclusion.
That examined the samples is a relative clause modifying laboratory. That the residue came from a later repair is a content clause giving what the laboratory concluded.
A: The first modifies laboratory, and the second states the conclusion.
B: It reverses the two functions.
D: Both clauses are embedded; the main structure is The laboratory concluded [something].
If you missed it: Ask which noun the first clause describes and which question the second clause answers.
The survey's failure to detect a difference between the two neighborhoods, each represented by a small sample of residents, should not be read as evidence that no difference exists.
Which choice best restates the sentence?
Why this answer
2 | Preserving the limits of a result
Correct choice: The survey did not find a difference, but that result does not establish that the neighborhoods do not differ.
The sentence distinguishes not detecting a difference from establishing the absence of one. The small samples add context without proving either equality or inequality.
A: It draws the very conclusion the sentence rejects.
C: It invents both a demonstrated difference and a causal explanation.
D: The survey failed to detect a difference; it did not detect and ignore one.
If you missed it: Keep failure to detect separate from proof of absence.
A city's plan to extend library hours would not address every obstacle to access: residents still need transportation, and some require materials in additional languages. Nevertheless, an evening opening would help residents whose work schedules prevent daytime visits.
Which choice best captures the passage's position?
Why this answer
3 | Concession and main position
Correct choice: The plan has limitations but could address a specific access barrier.
The passage concedes remaining barriers, then identifies a particular benefit. Its support is limited rather than absolute.
A: The opening sentence explicitly identifies remaining barriers.
B: Several barriers are named, and none is declared the only important one.
C: The passage supports a particular benefit but explicitly leaves other access barriers unresolved; adequate resolution of the overall problem is not established.
If you missed it: Join the concession and main point using although or but without deleting either.
The archive will release a digital image only if its donor has authorized online access. Authorization does not guarantee release; staff must also complete a condition review.
Which statement must be true?
Why this answer
4 | Conditional requirement
Correct choice: If an image is released, its donor has authorized online access.
Only if makes donor authorization necessary for release. The following sentence explicitly says it is insufficient by itself.
B: The passage directly denies this guarantee.
C: An authorized image could remain unreleased because the review is incomplete or for another unstated reason.
D: Authorization is also required; the text does not say these requirements guarantee release.
If you missed it: Test the direction: release requires authorization, not authorization guarantees release.
The historian does not dismiss the memoir; she uses its descriptions of daily routines while treating its claims about the author's political influence with reserve.
As used in the text, "with reserve" most nearly means
Why this answer
5 | Nuance and scope
Correct choice: with caution
The historian accepts some uses of the memoir while withholding full confidence in another set of claims. With reserve means cautiously here.
A: The passage does not express admiration for the influence claims.
B: She evaluates the claims rather than ignoring them.
D: Nothing suggests that her evaluation is secret.
If you missed it: Use the contrast between usable descriptions and less trusted claims to identify the attitude.