Unit Test Answers

Read this prompt.Create a presentation to convince school board members that district 16 should add a week-long October break to next year’s school calendar, like other districts in the state.Which reason best supports the claim in this prompt?

Examine the excerpt from a public service campaign website. Which words from this campaign best indicate the target audience?

Which quotations from the excerpt provide evidence to support the claim that governments have responded to criticism delivered through social media? Select three options.

Examine the public service ads. This first ad is from 1985.This second ad is from 2015.

What reasons does the author give to support the claim that it is difficult for a message to move people to take action? Select two options.

Which image is the best choice for convincing high school students to plant a tree on Earth Day?

How does the writer best use evidence to support the claim? Select three options.

Read the passage from a debate speech.The current trade situation in this nation is unacceptable. We continue to lose money to other nations, while those nations prosper. I have a detailed plan to get our country—and its people—back on the right track. My opponent, who uses her time to spread lies and rumors while eating nice dinners bought by you taxpayers, does not even have a plan. I question her priorities.

Read the two passages.Passage 1Violence in video games is unavoidable. More than half of the top video games contain some element of violence. Does this lead to violence in the real world? Logical people know the answer, and the facts prove it. Between 1994 and 2004, video game sales increased by 204 percent. During that same time period, the arrest rate for juveniles committing violent crimes decreased by 63 percent. These facts make it obvious that video games are not a problem.Passage 2The majority of video games contain violence. Children playing these games leads directly to acts of violence. Several studies, including a 2014 study by the Journal of the American Medical Association, have shown a correlation between persistent video game use and aggressive behavior. While my own children play video games, they do not play games labeled "Mature.” Simply avoiding these games and allowing children to play the thousands of other available games is a logical way to avoid a potential problem.

Read the excerpt from "Social Media Made the Arab Spring, But Couldn't Save It" by Jessi Hempel.Five years ago this week, massive protests toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, marking the height of the Arab Spring. Empowered by access to social media sites like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, protesters organized across the Middle East, starting in December 2010 in Tunisia, and gathered together to speak out against oppression, inspiring hope for a better, more democratic future. Commentators, comparing these activists to the US peace protesters of 1968, praised the effort as a democratic dawn for an area that had long been populated by autocracies. In a photo collection published by the New York Times a few months later, Irish writer Colum McCann wrote: "The light from the Arab Spring rose from the ground up; the hope is now that the darkness doesn’t fall.”The darkness has fallen. Half a decade later, the Middle East is roiling in violence and repression. Activists are being intimidated into restraint by governments that are, with the exception of Tunisia, more totalitarian than those they replaced, if any government as such really exists at all. Meanwhile, militants have harnessed the same technology to organize attacks and recruit converts, catapulting the world into instability. Instead of new robust democracies, we have a global challenge with no obvious solution. The Arab Spring carried the promise that social media and the Internet were going to unleash a new wave of positive social change. But the past five years have shown that liberty isn't the only end toward which these tools can be turned.Activists were able to organize and mobilize in 2011 partly because authoritarian governments didn’t yet understand very much about how to use social media. They didn’t see the potential, says NYU professor of politics Joshua Tucker, a [principal] investigator at the Social Media and Political Participation Lab at New York University. "There are a lot of reasons the people in power were slow to pick up on this,” he adds. "One of the things about not have a free press is it is harder to learn what was going on in the world.”

Which source would be most appropriate for researching the question "How does social media affect personal relationships?”

Read this prompt.Create a multimedia presentation about clothing and waste. Use research and evidence to support your opinion. Use persuasive techniques and a variety of visual aids in your presentation.Which is the most effective combination of visual aids for this prompt?

Read the excerpt from "The Role of Social Media in the Arab Uprisings" by Heather Brown, Emily Guskin, and Amy Mitchell.Twitter, Facebook and other new media offer ways for the Arab-American news media to reach audiences, but also pose a threat to smaller outlets. In addition to keeping up with the online presence of larger news organizations, Arab-American media are forced to compete with user-generated content that is rapidly available to audiences. The utility of social media in accessing information became clear during the Arab uprisings and events such as Egypt’s parliamentary and presidential elections. However, [Suzanne] Manneh of New America Media points out that the credibility of this information is difficult to verify "depending on where it’s from, to whom it’s attributed, [and] especially when various events are happening very quickly."Arab-American news outlets find they must compete with this abundance of online content in order to evolve alongside readers who are increasingly turning to the internet for information. Newspapers have made the greatest inroads here so far, with most offering at least some form of digital content, while still maintaining print versions for older generations and those who prefer a physical newspaper. Radio programs, in light of the continuing challenge to find advertising sponsorship, are beginning to shift online. Arab-American television, on the other hand, has yet to even really find a place amid the satellite programming available from Arab countries.

Read the passage.The cost of health care is rising in America. The amount that an average family must pay for insurance is simply unaffordable. I know this because my family is an average American family—and we are worried. The people who make decisions about health care do not seem to think about the effect of the rising costs on hardworking people like my husband and me.

Which image is the best choice for convincing an audience of kindergarten students to take action against bullying?

Which statements use the rhetorical device of parallelism? Select two options.“To be or not to be, that is the question.”We came, we saw, we conquered."We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."“Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.”This backpack weighs a ton.

What type of appeal depends on the perceived credibility or authority of the source?

Read the passage.(1) Ask young people today if they know of anyone who has had smallpox, and they might ask, "What’s smallpox?” (2) That is because this disease was eradicated from the planet decades ago, thanks to vaccinations. (3) Despite the obvious effectiveness of vaccination, opponents of this procedure argue that humans are better off fighting diseases on their own without adding anything potentially harmful to their bodies. (4) Still, the American Academy of Pediatrics says that vaccines can be 99 percent effective, and the Centers for Disease Control claims that, over a 10-year period, vaccines allowed 322 million children to avoid illnesses. (5) So the next time someone tells you that vaccines are poisoned apples that will lead to a fate like Snow White’s, counter their argument with the facts. (6) The bottom line is that vaccines are safe to use and save lives.

Read this prompt.Create a multimedia presentation for the claim that virtual reality technology is a useful tool in the study of medicine. Use research and evidence to support your opinion. Use persuasive techniques and a variety of visual aids in your presentation.

Read the excerpt from "The Role of Social Media in the Arab Uprisings" by Heather Brown, Emily Guskin, and Amy Mitchell.Now, research is emerging that reexamines in a more detailed way the role that social media played in the Arab uprisings.In July 2012 a report was published by the United States Institute of Peace. . . . The authors came to some conclusions that countered the initial assumption that social media was a causal mechanism in the uprisings.Instead, the study suggests that the importance of social media was in communicating to the rest of the world what was happening on the ground during the uprisings. . . .Data from the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project at least somewhat supports this conclusion with its findings that the majority of Egyptians are not online. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of the total population do not use the internet. When looking specifically at those with a college education, use of social media for obtaining political information is more prevalent than in other segments of the population. Though most of the country is disconnected from the internet, 84% of those who are online say they visit social networking sites for news about Egypt’s political situation. These findings point to social media’s important role in spreading information, but do not necessarily indicate that social media was a mobilizing force in the uprisings.Read the excerpt from "The Truth about Twitter, Facebook and the Uprisings in the Arab World" by Peter Beaumont.As commentators have tried to imagine the nature of the uprisings, they have attempted to cast them as many things: as an Arab version of the eastern European revolutions of 1989 or something akin to the Iranian revolution that toppled the Shah in 1979. Most often, though, they have tried to conceive them through the media that informed them—as the result of WikiLeaks, as "Twitter revolutions" or inspired by Facebook.All of which, as American media commentator Jay Rosen has written, has generated an equally controversialist class of article in reply, most often written far from the revolutions. These stories are not simply sceptical about the contribution of social media, but determined to deny it has played any part.Those at the vanguard of this argument include Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker (Does Egypt Need Twitter?), the New Statesman's Laurie Penny (Revolts Don't Have to be Tweeted) and even David Kravets of Wired.co.uk (What's Fuelling Mideast protests? It's More Than Twitter). All have argued one way or another that since there were revolutions before social media, and it is people who make revolutions, how could it be important?Except social media has played a role. For those of us who have covered these events, it has been unavoidable.Precisely how we communicate in these moments of historic crisis and transformation is important. The medium that carries the message shapes and defines as well as the message itself. The instantaneous nature of how social media communicate self-broadcast ideas, unlimited by publication deadlines and broadcast news slots, explains in part the speed at which these revolutions have unravelled, their almost viral spread across a region. It explains, too, the often loose and non-hierarchical organisation of the protest movements unconsciously modelled on the networks of the web.

Kaveh is preparing a presentation about the positive effects of community gardening on neighborhood residents. How can Kaveh most effectively organize and present this topic? Select two options.He can read directly from note cards to follow the exact wording of a script.He can make sure he stands still and motionless to emphasize his main point.He can refer to specific sources he used when conducting his research.He can speak quickly to ensure that he fits in as many statistics as possible.He can ask rhetorical questions to create a dramatic and engaging effect.

Read the excerpt from "The Role of Social Media in the Arab Uprisings" by Heather Brown, Emily Guskin, and Amy Mitchell.Twitter, Facebook and other new media offer ways for the Arab-American news media to reach audiences, but also pose a threat to smaller outlets. In addition to keeping up with the online presence of larger news organizations, Arab-American media are forced to compete with user-generated content that is rapidly available to audiences. The utility of social media in accessing information became clear during the Arab uprisings and events such as Egypt’s parliamentary and presidential elections. However, [Suzanne] Manneh of New America Media points out that the credibility of this information is difficult to verify "depending on where it’s from, to whom it’s attributed, [and] especially when various events are happening very quickly."Arab-American news outlets find they must compete with this abundance of online content in order to evolve alongside readers who are increasingly turning to the internet for information.

Which quotations give specific evidence in support of the claim? Select three options.

Which type of evidence is an example of testimony?

Examine the public service ads. This first ad is from 1944. This second ad is from 2013.