Unit Test — Cumulative exam Answers

Read the excerpt from “First Generation” of Dreaming in Cuban, by Cristina Garcia.She considers the vagaries of sports, the happenstance of El Líder, a star pitcher in his youth, narrowly missing a baseball career in America. His wicked curveball attracted the major league scouts, and the Washington Senators were interested in signing him but changed their minds. Frustrated, El Líder went home, rested his pitching arm, and started a revolution in the mountains.Which best explains how Garcia’s word choice helps establish her voice in the excerpt?

What is the fundamental idea behind the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which is mentioned in Brown v. Board of Education?

Read this excerpt from the text "Not a Dove, But No Longer a Hawk."There were many disappointments those first two years, but when I left Vietnam in 1964, I was still, to use the current parlance, a hawk. I returned to Saigon in 1965 for another year. Now I have left again, and much has changed. There were 17,000 American servicemen in Vietnam at the time of my first departure and there are now 317,000 and I, while not a dove, am no longer a hawk. . . . Based on this excerpt, Neil Sheehan would most likely agree that

Read the excerpt from part 2 of Zeitoun.Zeitoun went outside, the air humid and gusty. He tied the canoe to the back porch. The water was whispering through the cracks in the back fence, rising up. It was flowing into his yard at an astonishing rate. As he stood, it swallowed his ankles and crawled up his shins.Back inside, he continued to move everything of value upward. As he did, he watched the water erase the floor and climb the walls. In another hour there was three feet of water indoors. And his house was three feet above street level.What conclusion can readers draw about this character vs. nature conflict?

Read the excerpt from Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban.“Lourdes, I’m back,” Jorge del Pino greets his daughter forty days after she buried him with his Panama hat, his cigars, and a bouquet of violets in a cemetery on the border of Brooklyn and Queens.His words are warm and close as a breath. Lourdes turns, expecting to find her father at her shoulder but she sees only the dusk settling on the tops of the oak trees, the pink tinge of sliding darkness. “Don’t be afraid, mi hija. Just keep walking and I’ll explain,” Jorge del Pino tells his daughter.The sunset flares behind a row of brownstones linking them as if by a flaming ribbon.Which best identifies the magic realism found in the excerpt?

Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.Despite all the attention paid to rogue companies like Enron, academics know very little about the practicalities of white-collar crime. The reason? There are no good data. A key fact of white-collar crime is that we hear about only the very slim fraction of people who are caught cheating. Most embezzlers lead quiet and theoretically happy lives; employees who steal company property are rarely detected.With street crime, meanwhile, that is not the case. A mugging or a burglary or a murder is usually tallied whether or not the criminal is caught. A street crime has a victim, who typically reports the crime to the police, who generate data, which in turn generate thousands of academic papers by criminologists, sociologists, and economists. But white-collar crime presents no obvious victim. From who, exactly, did the masters of Enron steal? And how can you measure something if you don’t know to whom it happened, or with what frequency, or in what magnitude?The excerpt helps the authors support their conclusion by

Read the excerpt from Leslie Marmon Silko’s story "The Man to Send Rain Clouds."They found him [Teofilo] under a big cottonwood tree. His Levi jacket and pants were faded light blue so that he had been easy to find. . . . He had been dead for a day or more, and the sheep had wandered and scattered up and down the arroyo. . . . . Ken came sliding down the low, crumbling bank about fifty yards down, and he was bringing the red blanket. . . . ."Send us rain clouds, Grandfather." They laid the bundle in the back of the pickup and covered it with a heavy tarp before they started back to the pueblo.They turned off the highway onto the sandy pueblo road. Not long after they passed the store and post office they saw Father Paul's car coming toward them. When he recognized their faces he slowed his car and waved for them to stop. The young priest rolled down the car window."Did you find old Teofilo?" he asked loudly.Leon stopped the truck. "Good morning, Father. We were just out to the sheep camp. Everything is O.K. now.""Thank God for that. Teofilo is a very old man. You really shouldn't allow him to stay at the sheep camp alone.""No, he won't do that any more now.""Well, I'm glad you understand. I hope I'll be seeing you at Mass this week—we missed you last Sunday. See if you can get old Teofilo to come with you." The priest smiled and waved at them as they drove away.What does this dialogue reveal about the priest’s standing within the community?

Which line from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close reveals a nostalgic tone?

Which statement best describes why an author might choose to write a memoir over other nonfiction formats?

Read the sentence.There were a finite number of tickets to the game, as the stadium could only hold 20,000 people.Which word is closest in meaning to the underlined word?

Read the sentence.The president of the company was attending the mandatory sales meeting.Which type of phrase or clause is underlined in the sentence?

Read the paragraph.Tortillas are delicious round flatbreads made with cornmeal or wheat flour. Although they are most often used in tacos, enchiladas, and tostadas, tortillas can __________ any dish.If the purpose of this paragraph is to persuade readers to eat tortillas, which word or phrase best fits in the blank?

Read the excerpt from “First Generation” of Dreaming in Cuban.He stops at the ocean’s edge, smiles almost shyly, as if he fears disturbing her, and stretches out a colossal hand. His blue eyes are like lasers in the night. The beams bounce off his fingernails, five hard blue shields. They scan the beach, illuminating shells and sleeping gulls, then focus on her. The porch turns blue, ultraviolet. Her hands, too, are blue. Celia squints through the light, which dulls her eyesight and blurs the palms on the shore.Which is an example of a hyperbole?

Read the excerpt from the interview with E.Y. (Yip) Harburg.In the song the man is really saying: I made an investment in this country. Where the hell are my dividends? Is it a dividend to say: “Can you spare a dime?” What the hell is wrong? Let’s examine this thing. It’s more than just a bit of pathos. It doesn’t reduce him to a beggar. It makes him a dignified human, asking questions—and a bit outraged, too, as he should be.According to Harburg, the song “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”