Read the passage.The city commission’s rejection of building permits along our waterways is based on our review of the environmental impact statement prepared by the university on the construction of homes and businesses along the Dog River Watershed in southern Alabama. The removal of vegetation in the construction process has resulted in excessive erosion along the streams and rivers in that area.
Read the passage.If you want to help animals in need, consider volunteering at an animal shelter. First, contact your local shelter to find out if it needs volunteers. Some shelters may have a waiting list, so have a few shelters in mind. Once you have found a shelter where you would like to volunteer, you may be asked only to sign a form and show identification before you can begin working with the animals. Other shelters may require you to complete an application and a training program. At first, you will spend most of your time playing with the dogs and cats. Later, you may be asked to help in other ways, like walking the dogs or showing the animals to families who want to adopt a pet. You might even be asked to foster a pet of your own!
Read the following excerpt from E. O. Wilson’s “The Environmental Ethic.”It is also easy to overlook the services that ecosystems provide humanity. They enrich the soil and create the very air we breathe. Without these amenities, the remaining tenure of the human race would be nasty and brief. The life-sustaining matrix is built of green plants with legions of microorganisms and mostly small, obscure animals—in other words, weeds and bugs. Such organisms support the world with efficiency because they are so diverse, allowing them to divide labor and swarm over every square meter of the earth’s surface. They run the world precisely as we would wish it to be run, because humanity evolved within living communities and our bodily functions are finely adjusted to the idiosyncratic environment already created. The author tries to persuade the reader to agree with his claim about the importance of ecosystems by
Read the passage.When King Kamehameha II sat down to eat at the women’s table at a feast in 1819, he ended kapu, the system of taboos that dominated Hawaiian religion and culture. He did this at the behest of Queen Ka’ahumanu and his mother, who knew that this action would lead to the end of the strict rules. As a result, Queen Ka’ahumanu gained greater political power, which she used to make changes on behalf of the people of the kingdom.Read Khonnor’s paraphrase of the passage.In 1819, King Kamehameha II ended kapu, the system of taboos that was important to Hawaiian religion and culture. Incredibly, he did this by eating at the women’s table at a feast. Queen Ka’ahumanu and his mother, two wise and amazing women, asked him to do this. They understood that this action would end the strict rules. Afterward, Queen Ka’ahumanu gained greater political power and used it to help the people of the kingdom.
Read the excerpt from Hidden Figures.Katherine sat down with the engineers to review the requirements for the space technology lectures and the research reports that were starting to come out of the process. She listened closely to their instructions and, as was her habit, she asked questions. Not just questions designed to clarify the marching orders she had been given, but the kind of queries she had fired at her parents and teachers as a child, meant to broaden and deepen her understanding of how things work so she could create a more refined model of the world. Why did the trajectory equation need to account for the oblateness of Earth? Why was it necessary to calculate an error ellipsoid to accurately predict the satellite’s return to the planet’s surface?
Read the passage.When King Kamehameha II sat down to eat at the women’s table at a feast in 1819, he ended kapu, the system of taboos that dominated Hawaiian religion and culture. He did this at the behest of Queen Ka’ahumanu and his mother, who knew that this action would lead to the end of the strict rules. As a result, Queen Ka’ahumanu gained greater political power, which she used to make changes on behalf of the people of the kingdom.Read Khonnor’s paraphrase of the passage.In 1819, King Kamehameha II ended kapu, the system of taboos that was important to Hawaiian religion and culture. Incredibly, he did this by eating at the women’s table at a feast. Queen Ka’ahumanu and his mother, two wise and amazing women, asked him to do this. They understood that this action would end the strict rules. Afterward, Queen Ka’ahumanu gained greater political power and used it to help the people of the kingdom.
Read the excerpt from Freakonomics. Now let’s look at the win-loss percentage between the 7–7 wrestlers and the 8–6 wrestlers the next time they meet, when neither one is on the bubble. In this case, there is no great pressure on the individual match. So you might expect the wrestlers who won their 7–7 matches in the previous tournament to do about as well as they had in earlier matches against these same opponents—that is, winning roughly 50 percent of the time. You certainly wouldn’t expect them to uphold their 80 percent clip. As it turns out, the data show that the 7–7 wrestlers win only 40 percent of the rematches. Eighty percent in one match and 40 percent in the next? How do you make sense of that?Which type of evidence does the authors use in this excerpt to support the claim that some sumo wrestlers will intentionally lose a match?
Read the excerpt from "Shout: A Poetry Memoir.”Back to the intersection, worried, then down the third street, the wrong third way. Stopped. Back to the intersection the fourth spoke of the wheel another mistake. Last kid in sight, country mouse, five years old, spinning at the center of a compass that had lost her true northearthbound, "directionally challenged," "practice," "cemetary girl," and "driven" from SHOUT by Laurie Halse Anderson, copyright © 2019 by Laurie Halse Anderson. Used by permission of Viking Children's Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Read the excerpt from E.O. Wilson’s “The Environmental Ethic.”Species are disappearing at an accelerating rate through human action, primarily habitat destruction but also pollution and the introduction of exotic species into residual natural environments. I have said that a fifth or more of the species of plants and animals could vanish or be doomed to early extinction by the year 2020 unless better efforts are made to save them. . . . As the last forests are felled in forest strongholds like the Philippines and Ecuador, the decline of species will accelerate even more. In the world as a whole, extinction rates are already hundreds or thousands of times higher than before the coming of man. They cannot be balanced by new evolution in any period of time that has meaning for the human race.What message does the author convey in this excerpt?
Read the excerpt from Hidden Figures.As the work intensified, something that had been hibernating in her mind awakened, and once roused it would not go away. She considered the issue and checked its logic, just as she did with her analytical work. At first she asked it only of herself, but eventually she came to the engineers with the question."Why can’t I go to the editorial meetings?" she asked the engineers. A postgame recap of the analysis wasn’t nearly as thrilling as being there for the main event. How could she not want to be a part of the discussion? They were her numbers, after all."Girls don't go to the meetings," Katherine’s male colleagues told her.
Read the passage.In 1870, Clara Barton was in Europe on vacation when the Franco-Prussian War began. Unable to resist the opportunity to aid soldiers in need, she sprang into action and became involved with the International Red Cross.Read Cyrus’s paraphrase of the passage.Clara Barton was on vacation in Europe when the Franco-Prussian War began in 1870. She was unable to resist helping soldiers in need, so she sprang into action and got involved with the International Red Cross.
Read this excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics. The incentive scheme that rules sumo is intricate and extraordinarily powerful. Each wrestler maintains a ranking that affects every slice of life; how much money he makes, how large an entourage he carries, how much he gets to eat, sleep, and otherwise take advantage of his success. The sixty-six highest-ranked wrestlers in Japan, comprising the makuuchi and juryo divisions, make up the sumo elite. A wrestler near the top of this elite pyramid may earn millions and is treated like royalty. Any wrestler in the top forty earns at least $170,000 a year. The seventieth-ranked wrestler in Japan, meanwhile, earns only $15,000 a year. Life isn’t very sweet outside the elite. Low-ranked wrestlers must tend to their superiors, preparing their meals and cleaning their quarters and even soaping up their hardest-to-reach body parts. So ranking is everything.A wrestler’s ranking is based on his performance in the elite tournaments that are held six times a year. Each wrestler has fifteen bouts per tournament, one per day over fifteen consecutive days. If he finishes the tournament with a winning record (eight victories or better), his ranking will rise. If he has a losing record, his ranking falls. If it falls far enough, he is booted from the elite rank entirely. The eighth victory in any tournament is therefore critical, the difference between promotion and demotion; it is roughly four times as valuable in the rankings as the typical victory.Based on the excerpt, which statement provides the best example of incentive for a sumo wrestler to cheat?
Read the following excerpt from E. O. Wilson’s “The Environmental Ethic.”Species are disappearing at an accelerating rate through human action, primarily habitat destruction but also pollution and the introduction of exotic species into residual natural environments. I have said that a fifth or more of the species of plants and animals could vanish or be doomed to early extinction by the year 2020 unless better efforts are made to save them. . . . As the last forests are felled [destroyed] in forest strongholds like the Philippines and Ecuador, the decline of species will accelerate even more. In the world as a whole, extinction rates are already hundreds or thousands of times higher than before the coming of man. They cannot be balanced by new evolution in any period of time that has meaning for the human race.Why should we care? What difference does it make if some species are extinguished, if even half of all the species on earth disappear? Let me count the ways. New sources of scientific information will be lost. Vast potential biological wealth will be destroyed. Still undeveloped medicines, crops, pharmaceuticals, timber, fibers, pulp, soil-restoring vegetation, petroleum substitutes, and other products and amenities will never come to light. Based on the excerpt, which statement best summarizes the author’s beliefs about the disappearing species?
Read the passage.When the US Constitution was written, voting rights were extended only to White men 21 and older who owned property. The 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, granted suffrage to Black men. The 19th Amendment granted White women 21 and older the right to vote in 1920. It was not until 1971, in the middle of the Vietnam War when men 18 and older were being drafted to fight, that the voting age was lowered to 18 with the ratification of the 26th Amendment. Still today, however, millions of citizens of the United States are denied the right to vote because they have been convicted of felonies. This disenfranchisement of these citizens who have paid their debt to society must end.
Did you find these answers helpful?