Reading & Writing

Like the 1945 play it reimagines—Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba—Marcus Gardley’s 2014 play The House That Will Not Stand prominently features women. In both plays, the all-female cast ______ an array of female characters, including a strong mother and several daughters dealing with individual struggles.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. engulfs

B. encourages

C. comprises

D. provokes

During a 2014 archaeological dig in Spain, Vicente Lull and his team uncovered the skeleton of a woman from El Algar, an Early Bronze Age society, buried with valuable objects signaling a high position of power. This finding may persuade researchers who have argued that Bronze Age societies were ruled by men to ______ that women may have also held leadership roles.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. waive

B. concede

C. refute

D. require

The following text is from the 1924 poem “Cycle” by D’Arcy McNickle, who was a citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

There shall be new roads wending,
A new beating of the drum—
Men’s eyes shall have fresh seeing,
Grey lives reprise their span—
But under the new sun’s being,
Completing what night began,
There’ll be the same backs bending,
The same sad feet shall drum—
When this night finds its ending
And day shall have come.....

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
A. To consider how the repetitiveness inherent in human life can be both rewarding and challenging

B. To question whether activities completed at one time of day are more memorable than those completed at another time of day

C. To refute the idea that joy is a more commonly experienced emotion than sadness is

D. To demonstrate how the experiences of individuals relate to the experiences of their communities

“To You” is an 1856 poem by Walt Whitman. In the poem, Whitman suggests that he deeply understands the reader, whom he addresses directly, writing, ______

Which quotation from “To You” most effectively illustrates the claim?
A. “Your true soul and body appear before me.”

B. “Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem.”

C. “I should have made my way straight to you long ago.”

D. “Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams.”

To investigate the effect of lizard predation on spider populations, a student in a biology class placed spiders in two enclosures, one with lizards and one without, and tracked the number of spiders in the enclosures for 30 days. The student concluded that the reduction in the spider population count in the enclosure with lizards by day 30 was entirely attributable to the presence of the lizards.

Which choice best describes data from the graph that weaken the student’s conclusion?
A. The spider population count was the same in both enclosures on day 1.

B. The spider population count also substantially declined by day 30 in the enclosure without lizards.

C. The largest decline in spider population count in the enclosure with lizards occurred from day 1 to day 10.

D. The spider population count on day 30 was lower in the enclosure with lizards than in the enclosure without lizards.

Although military veterans make up a small proportion of the total population of the United States, they occupy a significantly higher proportion of the jobs in the civilian government. One possible explanation for this disproportionate representation is that military service familiarizes people with certain organizational structures that are also reflected in the civilian government bureaucracy, and this familiarity thus ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?
A. makes civilian government jobs especially appealing to military veterans.

B. alters the typical relationship between military service and subsequent career preferences.

C. encourages nonveterans applying for civilian government jobs to consider military service instead.

D. increases the number of civilian government jobs that require some amount of military experience to perform.

In assessing the films of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, ______ have missed his equally deep engagement with Japanese artistic traditions such as Noh theater.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. many critics have focused on Kurosawa’s use of Western literary sources but 

B. Kurosawa’s use of Western literary sources has been the focus of many critics, who

C. there are many critics who have focused on Kurosawa’s use of Western literary sources, but they

D. the focus of many critics has been on Kurosawa’s use of Western literary sources; they

When, in the 1800s, geologists first realized that much of Earth had once been covered by great sheets of ice, some theorized that the phenomenon was cyclical, occurring at regular intervals. Each Ice Age is so destructive, though, that it largely erases the geological evidence of its predecessor. ______ geologists were unable to confirm the theory of cyclical Ice Ages until the 1960s.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
A. Hence,

B. Moreover,

C. Nevertheless,

D. Next,

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Gaspar Enriquez is an artist.

• He specializes in portraits of Mexican Americans.

• A portrait is an artistic representation of a person.

• Enriquez completed a painting of the sculptor Luis Jimenez in 2003.

• He completed a drawing of the writer Rudolfo Anaya in 2016.

The student wants to emphasize a difference between the two portraits. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

A. The portraits, or artistic representations, of Luis Jimenez and Rudolfo Anaya were both completed by Enriquez in the early 2000s.

B. Enriquez has completed portraits of numerous Mexican Americans, including sculptor Luis Jimenez and writer Rudolfo Anaya.

C. While both are by Enriquez, the 2003 portrait of Luis Jimenez is a painting, and the 2016 portrait of Rudolfo Anaya is a drawing.

D. Luis Jimenez was a Mexican American sculptor, and Rudolfo Anaya was a Mexican American writer.

In addition to being an accomplished psychologist himself, Francis Cecil Sumner was a ______ increasing the opportunity for Black students to study psychology, helping to found the psychology department at Howard University, a historically Black university, in 1930.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

A. proponent of

B. supplement to

C. beneficiary of

D. distraction for

Text 1

Conventional wisdom long held that human social systems evolved in stages, beginning with hunter-gatherers forming small bands of members with roughly equal status. The shift to agriculture about 12,000 years ago sparked population growth that led to the emergence of groups with hierarchical structures: associations of clans first, then chiefdoms, and finally, bureaucratic states.

Text 2

In a 2021 book, anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow maintain that humans have always been socially flexible, alternately forming systems based on hierarchy and collective ones with decentralized leadership. The authors point to evidence that as far back as 50,000 years ago some hunter-gatherers adjusted their social structures seasonally, at times dispersing in small groups but also assembling into communities that included esteemed individuals.

Based on the texts, how would Graeber and Wengrow (Text 2) most likely respond to the “conventional wisdom” presented in Text 1?

A. By conceding the importance of hierarchical systems but asserting the greater significance of decentralized collective societies

B. By disputing the idea that developments in social structures have followed a linear progression through distinct stages

C. By acknowledging that hierarchical roles likely weren’t a part of social systems before the rise of agriculture

D. By challenging the assumption that groupings of hunter-gatherers were among the earliest forms of social structure

In 1934 physicist Eugene Wigner posited the existence of a crystal consisting entirely of electrons in a honeycomb-like structure. The so-called Wigner crystal remained largely conjecture, however, until Feng Wang and colleagues announced in 2021 that they had captured an image of one. The researchers trapped electrons between two semiconductors and then cooled the apparatus, causing the electrons to settle into a crystalline structure. By inserting an ultrathin sheet of graphene above the crystal, the researchers obtained an impression—the first visual confirmation of the Wigner crystal.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

A. Researchers have obtained the most definitive evidence to date of the existence of the Wigner crystal.

B. Researchers have identified an innovative new method for working with unusual crystalline structures.

C. Graphene is the most important of the components required to capture an image of a Wigner crystal.

D. It’s difficult to acquire an image of a Wigner crystal because of the crystal’s honeycomb structure.

For many years, the only existing fossil evidence of mixopterid eurypterids—an extinct family of large aquatic arthropods known as sea scorpions and related to modern arachnids and horseshoe crabs—came from four species living on the paleocontinent of Laurussia. In a discovery that expands our understanding of the geographical distribution of mixopterids, paleontologist Bo Wang and others have identified fossilized remains of a new mixopterid species, Terropterus xiushanensis, that lived over 400 million years ago on the paleocontinent of Gondwana.

According to the text, why was Wang and his team’s discovery of the Terropterus xiushanensis fossil significant?

A. The fossil constitutes the first evidence found by scientists that mixopterids lived more than 400 million years ago.

B. The fossil helps establish that mixopterids are more closely related to modern arachnids and horseshoe crabs than previously thought.

C. The fossil helps establish a more accurate timeline of the evolution of mixopterids on the paleocontinents of Laurussia and Gondwana.

D. The fossil constitutes the first evidence found by scientists that mixopterids existed outside the paleocontinent of Laurussia.

In eighteenth-century Britain, the aesthetic concept of the picturesque set a new standard for the appreciation of nature: in contrast with formal gardens, which were explicitly artificial, picturesque scenery—whose hallmarks were rugged terrains and medieval ruins—was prized for its appearance of untamed wilderness. Yet the experience of the picturesque was highly mediated: landscapes were admirable insofar as they adhered to depictions of nature in art and poetry, and tourists seeking the picturesque used optical devices, such as tinted mirrors, to transform views into painterly images.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

A. Although the picturesque gained currency as an aesthetic ideal in eighteenth-century Britain, the self-evident contradictions inherent in the concept drew much contemporary criticism.

B. Admirers of picturesque scenery in the eighteenth century were often unmindful of the extent to which their appreciation of nature was shaped by rapidly developing optical technologies.

C. The defining features of the picturesque landscape, including rugged terrains and medieval ruins, were highly valued by tourists primarily because of their relative prevalence in Britain.

D. Although the idea of the picturesque in nature was premised on the rejection of overt artifice, judgments about the picturesque were nevertheless deeply informed by principles derived from art.

“The Young Girl” is a 1920 short story by Katherine Mansfield. In the story, the narrator takes an unnamed seventeen-year-old girl and her younger brother out for a meal. In describing the teenager, Mansfield frequently contrasts the character’s pleasant appearance with her unpleasant attitude, as when Mansfield writes of the teenager, ______

Which quotation from “The Young Girl” most effectively illustrates the claim?

A. “I heard her murmur, ‘I can’t bear flowers on a table.’ They had evidently been giving her intense pain, for she positively closed her eyes as I moved them away.”

B. “While we waited she took out a little, gold powder-box with a mirror in the lid, shook the poor little puff as though she loathed it, and dabbed her lovely nose.”

C. “I saw, after that, she couldn’t stand this place a moment longer, and, indeed, she jumped up and turned away while I went through the vulgar act of paying for the tea.”

D. “She didn’t even take her gloves off. She lowered her eyes and drummed on the table. When a faint violin sounded she winced and bit her lip again. Silence.”

The largest tyrannosaurids—the family of carnivorous dinosaurs that includes Tarbosaurus, Albertosaurus, and, most famously, Tyrannosaurus rex—are thought to have had the strongest bites of any land animals in Earth’s history. Determining the bite force of extinct animals can be difficult, however, and paleontologists Paul Barrett and Emily Rayfield have suggested that an estimate of dinosaur bite force may be significantly influenced by the methodology used in generating that estimate.

Which choice best describes data from the table that support Barrett and Rayfield’s suggestion?

A. The study by Meers used body-mass scaling and produced the lowest estimated maximum bite force, while the study by Cost et al. used muscular and skeletal modeling and produced the highest estimated maximum.

B. In their study, Gignac and Erickson used tooth-bone interaction analysis to produce an estimated bite force range with a minimum of 8,000 newtons and a maximum of 34,000 newtons.

C. The bite force estimates produced by Bates and Falkingham and by Cost et al. were similar to each other, while the estimates produced by Meers and by Gignac and Erickson each differed substantially from any other estimate.

D. The estimated maximum bite force produced by Cost et al. exceeded the estimated maximum produced by Bates and Falkingham, even though both groups of researchers used the same method to generate their estimates.

When digging for clams, their primary food, sea otters damage the roots of eelgrass plants growing on the seafloor. Near Vancouver Island in Canada, the otter population is large and well established, yet the eelgrass meadows are healthier than those found elsewhere off Canada’s coast. To explain this, conservation scientist Erin Foster and colleagues compared the Vancouver Island meadows to meadows where otters are absent or were reintroduced only recently. Finding that the Vancouver Island meadows have a more diverse gene pool than the others do, Foster hypothesized that damage to eelgrass roots increases the plant’s rate of sexual reproduction; this, in turn, boosts genetic diversity, which benefits the meadow’s health overall.

Which finding, if true, would most directly undermine Foster’s hypothesis?

A. At some sites in the study, eelgrass meadows are found near otter populations that are small and have only recently been reintroduced.

B. At several sites not included in the study, there are large, well-established sea otter populations but no eelgrass meadows.

C. At several sites not included in the study, eelgrass meadows’ health correlates negatively with the length of residence and size of otter populations.

D. At some sites in the study, the health of plants unrelated to eelgrass correlates negatively with the length of residence and size of otter populations.

The domestic sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) descends from a wild plant native to South America. It also populates the Polynesian Islands, where evidence confirms that Native Hawaiians and other Indigenous peoples were cultivating the plant centuries before seafaring first occurred over the thousands of miles of ocean separating them from South America. To explain how the sweet potato was first introduced in Polynesia, botanist Pablo Muñoz-Rodríguez and colleagues analyzed the DNA of numerous varieties of the plant, concluding that Polynesian varieties diverged from South American ones over 100,000 years ago. Given that Polynesia was peopled only in the last three thousand years, the team concluded that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A. the cultivation of the sweet potato in Polynesia likely predates its cultivation in South America.

B. Polynesian peoples likely acquired the sweet potato from South American peoples only within the last three thousand years.

C. human activity likely played no role in the introduction of the sweet potato in Polynesia.

D. Polynesian sweet potato varieties likely descend from a single South American variety that was domesticated, not wild.

From afar, African American fiber artist Bisa Butler’s portraits look like paintings, their depictions of human faces, bodies, and clothing so intricate that it seems only a fine brush could have rendered them. When viewed up close, however, the portraits reveal themselves to be ______ stitching barely visible among the thousands of pieces of printed, microcut fabric.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. quilts, and the

B. quilts, the

C. quilts; the

D. quilts. The

Compared to that of alumina glass, ______ silica glass atoms are so far apart that they are unable to re-form bonds after being separated.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. silica glass is at a significant disadvantage due to its more dispersed atomic arrangement:

B. silica glass has a more dispersed atomic arrangement, resulting in a significant disadvantage:

C. a significant disadvantage of silica glass is that its atomic arrangement is more dispersed:

D. silica glass’s atomic arrangement is more dispersed, resulting in a significant disadvantage:

Sociologist Alton Okinaka sits on the review board tasked with adding new sites to the Hawai‘i Register of Historic Places, which includes Pi‘ilanihale Heiau and the ‘Ōpaeka‘a Road Bridge. Okinaka doesn’t make such decisions ______ all historical designations must be approved by a group of nine other experts from the fields of architecture, archaeology, history, and Hawaiian culture.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. single-handedly, however;

B. single-handedly; however,

C. single-handedly, however,

D. single-handedly however

Researchers Helena Mihaljević-Brandt, Lucía Santamaría, and Marco Tullney report that while mathematicians may have traditionally worked alone, evidence points to a shift in the opposite direction. ______ mathematicians are choosing to collaborate with their peers—a trend illustrated by a rise in the number of mathematics publications credited to multiple authors.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

A. Similarly,

B. For this reason,

C. Furthermore,

D. Increasingly,

When soil becomes contaminated by toxic metals, it can be removed from the ground and disposed of in a landfill. ______ contaminated soil can be detoxified via phytoremediation: plants that can withstand high concentrations of metals absorb the pollutants and store them in their shoots, which are then cut off and safely disposed of, preserving the health of the plants.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

A. Alternatively,

B. Specifically,

C. For example,

D. As a result,

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• The Atlantic Monthly magazine was first published in 1857.

• The magazine focused on politics, art, and literature.

• In 2019, historian Cathryn Halverson published the book Faraway Women and the “Atlantic Monthly.”

• Its subject is female authors whose autobiographies appeared in the magazine in the early 1900s.

• One of the authors discussed is Juanita Harrison.

The student wants to introduce Cathryn Halverson’s book to an audience already familiar with the Atlantic Monthly. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

A. Cathryn Halverson’s Faraway Women and the “Atlantic Monthly” discusses female authors whose autobiographies appeared in the magazine in the early 1900s.

B. A magazine called the Atlantic Monthly, referred to in Cathryn Halverson’s book title, was first published in 1857.

C. Faraway Women and the “Atlantic Monthly” features contributors to the Atlantic Monthly, first published in 1857 as a magazine focusing on politics, art, and literature.

D. An author discussed by Cathryn Halverson is Juanita Harrison, whose autobiography appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in the early 1900s.

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Puntius javanicus is a species of commercially raised fish.

• Researchers in Indonesia recently found that adding pineapple extract to fish food increased both the feed utilization efficiency and the growth rate of P. javanicus.

• Adding the pineapple extract did not affect total food consumption.

• The researchers thus determined that the increased growth rate resulted from the increased feed utilization efficiency.

• The enzyme bromelain in pineapple extract enhances the hydrolysis of ingested proteins.

• This allows the fish to more readily absorb them. 

The student wants to explain how pineapple extract increased the growth rate of P. javanicus. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

A. Researchers in Indonesia recently found that adding pineapple extract to fish food increased the growth rate of P. javanicus.

B. An enzyme in pineapple extract, bromelain increased the growth rate of P. javanicus by enhancing the hydrolysis of ingested proteins, in turn affecting the fish’s total food consumption.

C. According to the researchers, the growth rate of P. javanicus was affected not by food consumption but by feed utilization efficiency.

D. The enzyme bromelain enhanced P. javanicus’s absorption of ingested proteins, increasing the growth rate of fish fed pineapple extract.