Diagnostic PreTest Answers

Read the excerpt from Utopia.In their great council at Amaurot, to which there are three sent from every town once a year, they examine what towns abound in provisions and what are under any scarcity, that so the one may be furnished from the other; and this is done freely, without any sort of exchange; for, according to their plenty or scarcity, they supply or are supplied from one another, so that indeed the whole island is, as it were, one family.

Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England.Elizabethans do not understand infection and contagion as we do. It is not that they are completely ignorant as to how illnesses spread—physicians believe they know perfectly well—it is rather that their understanding is very different from ours. The principal ideas underpinning most Elizabethan medical thinking come from Galen, who lived in the second century A.D. Physicians will cite him as an unquestionable authority when they explain to you that your health depends on a balance of the four humors: yellow bile or choler, black bile, phlegm, and blood. If there is too much choler in your body, you will grow choleric; too much blood and you will be sanguine; too much phlegm and you will be phlegmatic; and too much black bile makes you melancholic. It is from these imbalances that sickness arises.

Read the excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.If morality represents the way we would like the world to work and economics represents how it actually does work, then the story of Feldman’s bagel business lies at the very intersection of morality and economics. Yes, a lot of people steal from him, but the vast majority, even though no is watching over them, do not. This outcome may surprise some people—including Feldman’s economist friends, who counseled him twenty years ago that his honor-system scheme would never work. But it would not have surprised Adam Smith. In fact, theme of Smith’s first book, the Theory of Moral Sentiments, was the innate honesty of mankind. “How selfish soever man may be supposed,” Smith wrote, “there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.”Which best describes the authors’ purpose in using a quotation from Adam Smith’s book The Theory of Moral Sentiments?

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 passage from Animal Farm.All the men were gone except one. Back in the yard Boxer was pawing with his hoof at the stable-lad who lay face down in the mud, trying to turn him over. The boy did not stir."He is dead,” said Boxer sorrowfully. "I had no intention of doing that. I forgot that I was wearing iron shoes. Who will believe that I did not do this on purpose?”"No sentimentality, comrade!” cried Snowball from whose wounds the blood was still dripping. "War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.”"I have no wish to take life, not even human life,” repeated Boxer, and his eyes were full of tears.

Read the excerpt from The Time Traveler’s Guide to Elizabethan England.The underlying reasons for such differences are not hard to find. In a society in which people still starve to death, an orchard is not a beautiful thing in itself: its beauty lies in the fact that it produces apples and cider. A wide flat field is "finer” than rugged terrain for it can be tilled easily to produce wheat and so represents good white bread. A small thatched cottage, which a modern viewer might consider pretty, will be considered unattractive by an Elizabethan traveler, for cottagers are generally poor and able to offer little in the way of hospitality. Ranges of hills and mountains are obstacles to Elizabethan travelers and very far from picturesque features you go out of your way to see. Hills might feature in an Elizabethan writer’s description of a county because of their potential for sheep grazing, but on the whole he will be more concerned with listing all the houses of the gentry, their seats and parks.

Read the excerpt from Utopia.But after the ambassadors had stayed a day among them, and saw so vast a quantity of gold in their houses (which was as much despised by them as it was esteemed in other nations), and beheld more gold and silver in the chains and fetters of one slave than all their ornaments amounted to, their plumes fell, and they were ashamed of all that glory for which they had formed valued themselves, and accordingly laid it aside . . .

Read the chart from "Career Planning for High Schoolers."

Based on the conclusion of "The Raven and the First Men: The Beginnings of the Haida,” the reader can infer that the Haida

Read the passage from Beowulf.Wealhtheow came in,Hrothgar’s queen, observing the courtesies.Adorned in her gold, she graciously salutedthe men in hall, then handed the cupfirst to Hrothgar, their homeland’s guardian,urging him to drink deep and enjoy itbecause he was dear to them. And he drank it downlike the warlord he was, with festive cheer.So the Helming woman went on her rounds, queenly and dignified, decked out in rings,offering the goblet to all ranks,treating the household and the assembled troopuntil it was Beowulf’s turn to take it from her hand.With measured words she welcomed the Geatand thanked God for granting her wishthat a deliverer she could believe in would arriveto ease their afflictions.

Look at the procedural text.

Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.When he started his business, he expected a 95 percent payment rate, based on the experience at his own office. But just as crime tends to be low on a street where a police car is parked, the 95 percent rate was artificially high: Feldman’s presence had deterred theft. Not only that, but those bagel eaters knew the provider and had feelings (presumably good ones) about him. A broad swath of psychological and economic research has shown that people will pay different amounts for the same item depending on who is providing it. . . .In the real world, Feldman learned to settle for less than 95 percent. He came to consider a company “honest” if its payment rate was above 90 percent. He considered a rate between 80 and 90 percent “annoying but tolerable.” The excerpt helps the authors arrive at their conclusion by

Read the paragraph from "Wilson's War Message to Congress."Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances.Which statement best describes the main idea of the paragraph?

Read the excerpt The Time Traveler's Guide to Elizabethan England from by Ian Mortimer.Elizabethans do not understand infection and contagion as we do. It is not that they are completely ignorant as to how illnesses spread—physicians believe they know perfectly well—it is rather that their understanding is very different from ours. The principal ideas underpinning most Elizabethan medical thinking come from Galen, who lived in the second century A.D. Physicians will cite him as an unquestionable authority when they explain to you that your health depends on a balance of the four humors: yellow bile or choler, black bile, phlegm, and blood. If there is too much choler in your body, you will grow choleric; too much blood and you will be sanguine; too much phlegm and you will be phlegmatic; and too much black bile makes you melancholic. It is from these imbalances that sickness arises.

Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World.One of these early Hindu writings, the Atharva Veda, speaks of an archer's bow made of sugar cane. It tells of growing a circle of sugar cane as a kind of sweet protection for a lover, and it includes specific instructions on how to use sugar cane.

Read this excerpt from "The World on Turtle's Back."The right-handed twin accused his brother of murdering their mother and their quarrels continued until it was time to bury their mother. With the help of their grandmother, they made her a grave. From her head grew the three sister plants, corn, beans, and squash. From her heart grew tobacco, which people still use to give thanks in ceremony. She is called “our mother” and the people dance and sing to her to make the plants grow.The excerpt suggests that the Iroquois believed that

Which sentence uses capitalization correctly?

How should the sentence be revised to replace the infinitives with gerunds? Check all that apply.

Read the sentence.Then, like fluffy bits of cotton candy, the pink clouds floated away until they disappeared from view when they passed the horizon.

Which are examples of complex sentences? Select three answers.