Unit Test — Cumulative exam Answers

Read the excerpt from “Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry.”For me, reading has always been a path toward liberation and fulfillment. To learn to read is to start down the road of liberation, a road which should be accessible to everyone. No one has the right to keep you from reading, and yet that is what is happening in many areas in this country today. There are those who think they know best what we should read. These censors are at work in all areas of our daily lives.Which best describes how Anaya uses rhetorical appeal to convince readers that censors want to limit what people can read?

Read the paragraph.The question of whether or not to allow cell phones in school is an important one. Cell phones are a monumental distraction to young people whose attention should be focused on learning. However, they do serve a purpose in that phones allow students to communicate with their parents. Plus, cell phones are great for taking pictures with friends. In all, cell phone use at school must be carefully regulated. Which best explains the inconsistency in writing used in this paragraph?

Read the excerpt from “Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry.”In other cases, the censoring has been direct and brutal. On February 28, 1981 the morning newspaper carried a story about the burning of my novel, Bless Me, Ultima. The book was banned from high school classes in Bloomfield, New Mexico, and a school board member was quoted as saying: “We took the books out and personally saw that they were burned.”Which type of rhetoric used most shows how the powerful use censorship to silence the powerless?

Read the excerpt from the interview with E.Y. (Yip) Harburg.I was relieved when the Crash came. I was released. Being in business was something I detested. When I found that I could sell a song or a poem, I became me, I became alive. Other people didn’t see it that way. They were throwing themselves out of windows.Harburg was relieved when the crash occurred because

Read the excerpt from "As Debris Piles Up, Americans Are Skeptical Enough Will Be Done to Limit Space Junk.”Circling the Earth at speeds around 10 times faster than a bullet, the kinetic energy of even miniscule objects can pack a punch strong enough to puncture the hull of a space station or damage solar panels and communication arrays.As more satellites are launched into space, the probability of collisions grows. There are, however, preventive measures that could mitigate the problem.

Read the excerpt from Wiesel’s All Rivers Run to the Sea.No, let us go no further. Decency and custom forbid it. I said it earlier, when speaking of my grandfather: In Jewish tradition a man’s death belongs to him alone. Let the gas chambers remain closed to prying eyes, and to the imagination. We will never know all that happened behind those doors of steel.Read the text and study the images from Spiegelman’s Maus.Which theme is addressed in both excerpts?

Read this excerpt from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.I stood on all of that and it worked for a second. But then I had the tips of my fingers on the vase, and the tragedies started to wobble, and the tuxedo was incredibly distracting, and the next thing was that everything was on the floor, including me, and including the vase, which had shattered. “I didn’t do it!” I hollered, but they didn’t even hear me, because they were playing music too loud and cracking up too much. How does the narration shape Oskar’s characterization in this excerpt?

Read the excerpt from Brown v. Board of Education.[T]here are findings below that the Negro and white schools involved have been equalized, or are being equalized, with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications and salaries of teachers, and other "tangible" factors.The Supreme Court is most likely interested in these findings because it hopes to determine whether

Read the excerpt from Amy Tan’s essay “Mother Tongue.”I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother’s “limited” English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect.What is the purpose of this text?

Read the excerpt from the interview with E.Y. (Yip) Harburg.Everybody picked the song up in ’30 and ’31. Bands were playing it and records were made. When Roosevelt was a candidate for President, the Republicans got pretty worried about it. Some of the network radio people were told to lay low on the song. In some cases, they tried to ban it from the air. But it was too late. The song had already done its damage. From the content of the excerpt, it can be inferred that

Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics. The bagel data also reflect how much personal mood seems to affect honesty. Weather, for instance, is a major factor. Unseasonably pleasant weather inspires people to pay at a higher rate. Unseasonably cold weather, meanwhile, makes people cheat prolifically; so do heavy rain and wind. Worst are the holidays. The week of Christmas produces a 2 percent drop in payment rates—again, a 15 percent increase in theft, an effect on the same magnitude, in reverse, as that of 9/11. Thanksgiving is nearly as bad; the week of Valentine’s Day is also lousy, as is the week straddling April 15. There are, however, a few good holidays: the weeks that include the Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Columbus Day. The difference in the two sets of holidays? The low-cheating holidays represent little more than an extra day off from work. The high-cheating holidays are fraught with miscellaneous anxieties and the high expectations of loved ones.Which of the following best summarizes the main idea of this paragraph?

Read the excerpt from Poe’s "The Fall of the House of Usher."I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity -- an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn -- a pestilent and mystic vapor. Which observation can be made about the narrator?

Read the excerpt from Elie Wiesel’s All Rivers Run to the Sea.It is unbelievable how fast people adapt. It hurts to admit it, but within hours of first breathing the cattle car’s nauseating air, we began to feel at home. ‘Home’ was the edge of the wooden plank I sat on as I dreamed of the Jewish exiles of antiquity and the Middle Ages. More curious than afraid, I thought of myself as their brother. Mixed into my sadness there was undeniable excitement, for we were living a historic event, a historic adventure.Which best describes the author at this point in his life?

Read the excerpt from "Mother Tongue."Those tests were constructed around items like fill-in-the-blank sentence completion, such as “Even though Tom was ______, Mary thought he was _____.” And the correct answer always seemed to be the most bland combinations of thoughts, for example, “Even though Tom was foolish, Mary thought he was ridiculous.” Well, according to my mother, there were very few limitations as to what Tom could have been and what Mary might have thought of him. So I never did well on tests like that. Which information from the excerpt best supports the inference that achievement tests ignore imagination as an element of language ability?

Read the following passage, which is modeled after an encyclopedia entry about tortillas.A tortilla is a round flatbread that appears in most Mexican dishes, including tacos, enchiladas, and tostadas. Tortillas are made with cornmeal or sometimes wheat flour. Traditionally, the corn or wheat grains are ground on a stone. Next, the meal from these grains is formed into small pieces of dough and patted into thin circles by hand. Finally, the tortilla is baked on a griddle. Today, tortilla dough is usually mixed by machine, flattened into shape, and passed on a conveyor belt to cook over a flame. Tortillas can be purchased at most major grocery stores.Which best describes the purpose of this passage?

Read the following writing prompt.Examine a Department of Education advertising campaign that promotes literacy. Analyze the campaign to discover the target audience and the advertising techniques used. Then evaluate the effectiveness of these advertising techniques. Write a formal essay in which you explain how the advertising campaign effectively promotes literacy to a range of audiences. Now, review the prompt for hints about the audience. Who will read your writing?

Read the sentence.The speaker of Okita’s poem tries to present herself in ways that have little to do with her customs.Which is the best revision of this sentence using academic vocabulary?

Read the excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.What is the author’s purpose for including these sentences?

Read the excerpt from Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Death by Black Hole.”If you stumbled upon a black hole and found yourself falling feet-first toward its center, then as you got closer, the black hole’s force of gravity would grow astronomically. Curiously, you would not feel this force at all because, like anything in free fall, you are weightless. What you do feel, however, is something far more sinister. While you fall, the black hole’s force of gravity at your two feet, they being closer to the black hole’s center, accelerates them faster than does the weaker force of gravity at your head. Read the excerpt from Billy Collins’s “Man Listening to Disc.”the only true point of view,is full of the hope that he,the hub of the cosmoswith his hair blown sideways,will eventually make it all the way downtown.Which choice best describes the differing views Tyson and Collins present of humanity?

Read the paragraph.[1] Studies have shown that kids who eat healthy food have more energy. [2] When students are more energized, they get better grades. [3] Still, half the Lincoln High students eat pizza at its lunchtime. [4] The school plans to start offering healthier options like salads and fruit as an alternative.Which sentence contains a pronoun-antecedent error?