Diagnostic PostTest Answers

Read this excerpt from chapter 1 of The Scarlet Letter.Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison.Which best describes the effect of the words “ugly,” “overgrown,” “pig-weed,” and “unsightly vegetation”?

It’s not surprising that Jeremy is so obstinate. His sisters are equally as stubborn about getting what they want, no matter how impossible or challenging it may seem.

Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.As it happens, Feldman’s accidental study provides a window onto a form of cheating that has long stymied academics: white-collar crime. (Yes, shorting the bagel man is white-collar crime, writ however small.) It might seem ludicrous to address as large and intractable a problem as white-collar crime through the life of a bagel man. But often a small and simple question can help chisel away at the biggest problems.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.What purpose does the “bagel man” serve in this argument?

Read the following sentences.The teacher’s jovial manner instantly put the fearful new students at ease. Before long, many of them were actively participating and answering discussion questions.

Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England.Describing a landscape is thus a matter of perspective: your priorities affect what you see. Asked to describe their county, most Devonians will mention the great city of Exeter, the ports of Dartmouth, Plymouth, and Barnstaple, and the dozens of market towns. They will generally neglect to mention that the region is dominated by a great moor, Dartmoor, two thousand feet high in places and over two hundred square miles in expanse. There are no roads across this wasteland, only track ways. Elizabethans see it as good for nothing but pasture, tin mining, and the steady water supply it provides by way of the rivers that rise there.

Read the excerpt from "Edward Jenner and the History of Smallpox and Vaccination.”Smallpox was introduced to Europe sometime between the fifth and seventh centuries and was frequently epidemic during the Middle Ages. The disease greatly affected the development of Western civilization. The first stages of the decline of the Roman Empire (AD 108) coincided with a large-scale epidemic: the plague of Antonine, which accounted for the deaths of almost 7 million people. The Arab expansion, the Crusades, and the discovery of the West Indies all contributed to the spread of the disease.

Read the excerpt from The Code Book.Just as Whit Diffie predicted in the early 1970s, we are now entering the Information Age, a postindustrial era in which information is the most valuable commodity. The exchange of digital information has become an integral part of our society. Already, tens of millions of e-mails are sent each day, and electronic mail will soon become more popular than conventional mail. The Internet, still in its infancy, has provided the infrastructure for the digital marketplace, and e-commerce is thriving. Money is flowing through cyberspace, and it is estimated that every day half the world's Gross Domestic Product travels through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications network. In the future, democracies that favor referenda will begin to have on-line voting, and governments will use the Internet to help administer their countries, offering facilities such as on-line tax declarations.

Look at the timeline excerpt from Chapter Four of Windows to the Universe: Revolutions in Astronomy.1989: The first conference to discuss a space-based infrared telescope is held.1996: A committee of 18 members is selected to review designs.1997: Funding is allocated for additional studies.2002: Teams are selected to build components, and the telescope is named after former NASA administrator James Webb.What is the purpose of the first four entries of the timeline?

Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England.The theory of the humors is just the basic framework into which physicians fit a number of other ideas. Galen teaches that every living thing is composed of the four elements: fire, earth, air, and water. Each of these corresponds with one of the four humors. Fire, which is said to be hot and dry, corresponds with choler; water (cold and wet) with phlegm; earth (dry and cold) with black bile; and air (hot and wet) with blood. These properties are all associated with parts of the body, so the brain is cold and moist, the kidneys hot and moist, and so on. If an imbalance in the humors clashes with the properties of an organ, the patient will be ill.

Consider these text features from Wheels of Change by Sue Macy.Dressing the Part – Frances Benjamin Johnston, above, might have raised a few eyebrows when she donned a man’s suit and a fake mustache for this self-portrait in the late 1800s. But the groundbreaking photographer was used to operating in a man’s world.

Read the excerpt from Roosevelt’s State of the Union address.We must appraise the events of 1942 according to their relative importance; we must exercise a sense of proportion.

Read the excerpt from "Elevator Systems of the Eiffel Tower, 1889" by Robert M. Vogel.The first complete elevator machine in the United States, constructed in 1855, was a complex and inefficient contrivance built around an oscillating-cylinder steam engine. The advantages of an elevator system independent of the mill drive quickly became apparent, and by 1860 improved steam elevator machines were being produced in some quantity, but almost exclusively for freight service. It is not clear when the first elevator was installed explicitly for passenger service, but it was probably in 1857, when Otis placed one in a store on Broadway at Broome Street in New York.In the decade following the Civil War, tall buildings had just begun to emerge; and, although the skylines of the world’s great cities were still dominated by church spires, there was increasing activity in the development of elevator apparatus adapted to the transportation of people as well as of merchandise. Operators of hotels and stores gradually became aware of the commercial advantages to be gained by elevating their patrons even one or two floors above the ground, by machinery. The steam engine formed the foundation of the early elevator industry, but as building heights increased it was gradually replaced by hydraulic, and ultimately by electrical, systems.

Read the excerpts from Roosevelt’s "Four Freedoms" speech and Lincoln’s "Gettysburg Address.”Roosevelt:This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save victory.Lincoln:To be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Read the excerpt from The Dark Game.As a result of the cut cables, Germany lost its most secure long-distance communications system. The Germans now had to rely on radio transmissions from their powerful wireless station at Nauen, a few miles from Berlin. Which was exactly what the British military knew they would have to do. And once the Germans began sending wireless messages, MI8, the British code breakers, began plucking them from the air. Of course, all German correspondence was sent in a complicated cipher system, so that was when the hard work began for the code breakers of MI8.

What are the connotative meanings of sighing, as used in the poem? Choose two answers.