Which paragraphs from the excerpt best support the conclusion that the author’s primary purpose is to teach a lesson? Select two options.
Read the passage from Animal Farm."Comrades!" cried Squealer, making little nervous skips, "a most terrible thing has been discovered. Snowball has sold himself to Frederick of Pinchfield Farm, who is even now plotting to attack us and take our farm away from us! Snowball is to act as his guide when the attack begins. But there is worse than that. We had thought that Snowball's rebellion was caused simply by his vanity and ambition. But we were wrong, comrades. Do you know what the real reason was? Snowball was in league with Jones from the very start! He was Jones's secret agent all the time. It has all been proved by documents which he left behind him and which we have only just discovered. To my mind this explains a great deal, comrades. Did we not see for ourselves how he attempted—fortunately without success—to get us defeated and destroyed at the Battle of the Cowshed?"The animals were stupefied. This was a wickedness far outdoing Snowball's destruction of the windmill. But it was some minutes before they could fully take it in. They all remembered, or thought they remembered, how they had seen Snowball charging ahead of them at the Battle of the Cowshed, how he had rallied and encouraged them at every turn, and how he had not paused for an instant even when the pellets from Jones's gun had wounded his back. At first it was a little difficult to see how this fitted in with his being on Jones's side. Even Boxer, who seldom asked questions, was puzzled. He lay down, tucked his fore hoofs beneath him, shut his eyes, and with a hard effort managed to formulate his thoughts."I do not believe that," he said. "Snowball fought bravely at the Battle of the Cowshed. I saw him myself. Did we not give him 'Animal Hero, First Class,' immediately afterwards?""That was our mistake, comrade. For we know now—it is all written down in the secret documents that we have found—that in reality he was trying to lure us to our doom."
When participating in a group discussion, a good group member maintains a balance between
A student is writing a conclusion for a research-based informative essay on the possibility of exploring and inhabiting Mars. What should he include in his conclusion? Select two options.
Which aspects of Russian history does the passage most reflect? Select three options.
Read the passage from Animal Farm.Once again it was being put about that all the animals were dying of famine and disease, and that they were continually fighting among themselves and had resorted to cannibalism and infanticide. Napoleon was well aware of the bad results that might follow if the real facts of the food situation were known, and he decided to make use of Mr. Whymper to spread a contrary impression. Hitherto the animals had had little or no contact with Whymper on his weekly visits: now, however, a few selected animals, mostly sheep, were instructed to remark casually in his hearing that rations had been increased. In addition, Napoleon ordered the almost empty bins in the store-shed to be filled nearly to the brim with sand, which was then covered up with what remained of the grain and meal. On some suitable pretext Whymper was led through the store-shed and allowed to catch a glimpse of the bins. He was deceived, and continued to report to the outside world that there was no food shortage on Animal Farm.
Read the excerpt from "A Genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez.When the novel came out, I decided to go ahead and risk her anger. I inscribed a copy to both Mami and Papi with a note: "Thank you for having instilled in me through your sufferings a desire for freedom and justice." I mailed the package and—what I seldom do except in those moments when I need all the help I can get—I made the sign of the cross as I exited the post office. Days later, my mother called me up to tell me she had just finished the novel. "You put me back in those days. It was like I was reliving it all," she said sobbing. "I don't care what happens to us! I'm so proud of you for writing this book."I stood in my kitchen in Vermont, stunned, relishing her praise and listening to her cry. It was one of the few times since l had learned to talk that I did not try to answer my mother back. If there is such a thing as genetic justice that courses through the generations and finally manifests itself full-blown in a family moment, there it was.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.The end of slavery was a great step for human rights. But what did it mean on the sugar plantations—which had depended on extremely cheap labor to keep up with the twenty-four-hour cycle from harvest to mill? In 1836, the same John Gladstone whose sugar estate had exhibited the chained body of the slave leader Quamina wrote to a shipping company. Gladstone asked it to provide a hundred workers (the slang name was "coolies") from India to labor on his plantations. Gladstone's first ships, the Whitby, carrying 249 passengers, and the Hesperus, carrying 244, sailed for Demerara in 1838.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.No one interviewed the Africans who labored in the sugar fields to ask them about their hard labor. They were meant to work and die. But there is one way we can hear them. The Africans invented music, dances, and songs that carry on the pulse, the beat, of their lives. (To hear examples of music from the sugar lands, go to www.sugarchangedtheworld.com.) In Puerto Rico, bomba is a form of music and dance that the sugar workers invented. It is a kind of conversation in rhythm involving a woman, the man dancing with her, and the drummers who watch her and find the right rhythm for her movements. A master coming by would see dancing—no words of anger or rebellion. But as she moved and swayed, as the drummers "spoke" back in their beats, the workers were saying that they were not just labor, not just bodies born to work and die. Instead, they were alive and speaking to one another in movements and sounds that were all their own.In Cuba, sugar workers told their stories in the words and sounds of rumba. As one song said, "The boss does not want me to play the drum.” Overseers feared the slaves were using drums to send messages and spread thoughts of rebellion.Similarly, in Brazil there is a dance called Maculelê, which some trace to the sugar fields. Maculelê is danced with sticks or sugar cane stalks, and it looks very much like training for combat. On many of the sugar islands, Africans created similar dances in which people spin, jump, and seem to menace each other, then, just on the beat, click sticks and twirl away. The dances were a way of imitating warfare without actually defying the master.
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.In the 1400s, Spain and Portugal were competing to explore down the coast of Africa and find a sea route to Asia. That way, they could have the prized Asian spices they wanted without having to pay high prices to Venetian and Muslim middlemen. Spanish and Portuguese sailors searching for that sea route conquered the Canary Islands and the Azores. Soon they began building Muslim-style sugar plantations on the islands, some of them staffed by slaves purchased from nearby Africa. One sailor came to know these islands particularly well because he traded in "white gold"—sugar. And then, as he set off on his second voyage across the sea to what he thought was Asia, he carried sugar cane plants from Gomera, one of the Canary Islands, with him on his ship.His name was Christopher Columbus.
Read the excerpt from chapter 6 of Animal Farm.Afterwards Squealer made a round of the farm and set the animals’ minds at rest. He assured them that the resolution against engaging in trade and using money had never been passed, or even suggested. It was pure imagination, probably traceable in the beginning to lies circulated by Snowball. A few animals still felt faintly doubtful, but Squealer asked them shrewdly, "Are you certain that this is not something that you have dreamed, comrades? Have you any record of such a resolution? Is it written down anywhere?”
Read the writing prompt.Drones are becoming a bigger part of everyday life. The rules and regulations for using drones are not yet fully established. Write a research-based essay discussing the many uses of drones, the potential future uses of drones, and the laws that are being discussed to regulate their use.
Read the passage from chapter 2 of Animal Farm.The stupidest questions of all were asked by Mollie, the white mare. The very first question she asked Snowball was: "Will there still be sugar after the Rebellion?”"No,” said Snowball firmly. "We have no means of making sugar on this farm. Besides, you do not need sugar. You will have all the oats and hay you want.”
Read the passage from a story in The Arabian Nights Entertainments.The fisherman was very unhappy. "What an unlucky man I am to have freed you! I implore you to spare my life.""I have told you," said the genius, "that it is impossible. Choose quickly; you are wasting time."The fisherman began to devise a plot."Since I must die," he said, "before I choose the manner of my death, I conjure you on your honour to tell me if you really were in that vase?""Yes, I was," answered the genius."I really cannot believe it," said the fisherman. "That vase could not contain one of your feet even, and how could your whole body go in? I cannot believe it unless I see you do the thing."Then the genius began to change himself into smoke, which, as before, spread over the sea and the shore, and which, then collecting itself together, began to go back into the vase slowly and evenly till there was nothing left outside. Then a voice came from the vase which said to the fisherman, "Well, unbelieving fisherman, here I am in the vase; do you believe me now?"
Read the example.A phone rang in the concert hall the orchestra stopped playing.What common sentence-construction error does this show?
Read the passage from chapter 1 of Animal Farm."Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it, our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength; and the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.”
Read Ahmad's argument in favor of changing the minimum driving age from 16 to 15.Every year, millions of teenagers look forward to the freedom of earning their driver's license. It has been proven over time that teenagers are fully responsible by the time they are 15, and making teens wait until they are 16 to obtain a driver's license is wrong. Many teenagers play sports, work jobs, and have an active social life when they are 15. It would be beneficial to the functioning of society if these people were able to independently drive themselves around. Parents agree, too. Most people believe that the streets would be safer if the minimum driving age were reduced to 15.
Which key details does Orwell include to support the central idea that Snowball is ruthless? Select two options.
Read the excerpt from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!O anything, of nothing first create!O heavy lightness! serious vanity!Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!Still-waking sleep, that is not what it isThis love feel I, that feel no love in this.
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