Contested Usage — Unit test Answers

Read the excerpt from Early Victorian Tea Set.In the eighteenth century Josiah Wedgwood had made some of the most expensive stoneware ceramics – in jasper and basalt – in Britain, but this tea set shows that by the 1840s, when Wedgwood produced it, the company was aiming at a much wider market. This is quite clearly mid-range pottery, simple earthenware of a sort that many quite modest British households were then able to afford. But the owners of this particular set must have had serious social aspirations, because all three pieces have been decorated with a drape of lacy hallmarked silver.

Read this excerpt from "How the Internet and Other Technologies Came About."The Pentagon wanted to ensure that their pilots would be able to fly their jets and bombers in the most unpredictable, hostile environments, including the presence of huge winds whipped up by nuclear fireballs. To accomplish this, the Pentagon developed flight simulators, in what was the birth of virtual reality. The pilots would sit in chairs with goggles placed over their eyes and use joysticks to control the simulated computer image in their headset. Select the most accurate summary of Kaku’s argument.

Read this excerpt from "Like Mexicans.". . . I ignored them and climbed the back fence to see my best friend, Scott, a second-generation Okie.What is the meaning of the underlined term in this context?

Read the excerpt from Early Victorian Tea Set.Among the upper classes, tea had been popular since before 1700. It received celebrity endorsement from Charles II’s queen, Catherine of Braganza, and from Queen Anne. It came from China, it was expensive, refreshingly bitter and drunk in tiny cups without milk or sugar. People kept their tea in locked tea caddies, as if it were a drug; for those who could afford it, it often was. In the 1750s Samuel Johnson confessed himself a happy addict:A hardened and shameless tea drinker, who has for twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant, whose kettle scarcely has time to cool, who with Tea amuses the evening, with Tea solaces the midnights, and with Tea welcomes the morning.

Look at the picture of John Harrison painted by artist Philippe Joseph Tassaert.

How does Michio Kaku establish the sense of urgency that compelled the development of the Internet in "How the Internet and Other Technologies Came About"?

Read the sentence.A tray of fresh watermelon slices was provided by the booster club.How should the writer revise the sentence to use active voice?

Which quotation from A History of the World in 100 Objects best reveals the historical significance of the chronometer?

Read the excerpt from"Early Victorian Tea Set.”What could be more domestic, more unremarkable, more British, than a nice cup of tea? You could of course put the question the other way round and ask what could be less British than a cup of tea, given that tea is made from plants grown in India or China and often sweetened by sugar from the Caribbean. It is one of the ironies of British national identity – or perhaps it says everything about our national identity – that the drink which has become

Read the excerpt from Midsummer by Derek Walcott.the child’s fairy tale of an antic England—fairy rings,thatched cottages fenced with dog roses,a green gale lifting the hair of Warwickshire.

Read the sentence.When she arrived at the concert hall, the singer walked through a crowd of cheering fans.Which word is a preposition?

Which sentence contains an infinitive?

Read the claim.Claim: The suffragette-defaced penny is the most historically significant object because it represents the true beginnings of women’s fight for the vote.

Read the excerpt from "Early Victorian Tea Set.”But a loving, tranquil cup of tea has a violent hinterland. When all tea came into Europe from China, the British East India Company traded opium for silver and used that silver to buy tea. The trade was so important that it brought the two countries to war. The first of the conflicts, which we still refer to as the Opium Wars – they were in fact just as much about tea – broke out more or less as our teapot was leaving the Wedgwood factory. Partly because of these difficulties with China, in the 1830s the British set up plantations in the area around Calcutta and Indian tea was exempted from import duty to encourage demand.

Read the excerpt from "Hokusai's The Great Wave” by Neil MacGregor.In the early nineteenth century Japan had been effectively closed off from the world for 200 years. It had simply opted out of the community of nations.Kings are burning somewhere,Wheels are turning somewhere,Trains are being run,Wars are being won,Things are being doneSomewhere out there, not here.Here we paint screens.Yes . . . the arrangement of the screens.This is Stephen Sondheim’s musical tableau of the secluded and calmly self-contained country in 1853, just before American gunships forced its harbours to open to the world. It is a witty caricature of the dreamy and aesthetic Japanese, serenely painting screens while across the seas Europe and America industrialize and political turmoil rages.

Read the excerpt from A History of the World in 100 Objects.Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, was one of the media stars of the First World War. The famous recruitment poster has him pointing straight at us in full uniform, finger in the foreground, handlebar moustache not far behind, with the words 'Your country needs YOU'.

drink increasedeighteenth centurygovernment taxestrade developed

Which excerpt from Early Victorian Tea Set best expresses MacGregor’s viewpoint about tea?

Which line from "Ghost House" summarizes the speaker’s overall perspective?

Read the passage from "Song of Myself."You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.