In the following five passages, certain words and phrases are underlined and numbered. In the right-hand column are alternatives for each underlined portion. Select the one that best conveys the idea, creates the most grammatically correct sentence, or is most consistent with the style and tone of the passage. If you decide that the original version is best, select NO CHANGE. You may also find questions that ask about the entire passage or a section of the passage. These questions will correspond to small, numbered boxes in the test. For these questions, decide which choice best accomplishes the purpose set out in the question stem. After you’ve selected the best choice, fill in the corresponding oval on your Answer Grid. For some questions, you’ll need to read the context in order to answer correctly. Be sure to read until you have enough information to determine the correct answer choice.
My father, though he is only in his early 50s, is stuck in his old-fashioned ways. He has a general mistrust of any innovation or technology that he can’t immediately grasp and he always tells us, that if something isn’t broken, then you shouldn’t fix it.
He has run a small grocery store in town, and if you were to look at a snapshot of his back office taken when he opened the store in 1975, you would see that not much has changed since. He is the most disorganized person I know and still uses a pencil and paper to keep track of his inventory. His small office is about to burst with all the various documents, notes, and receipts he has accumulated over the years, his filing cabinets have long since been filled up. The centerpiece of all the clutter is his ancient typewriter, which isn’t even electric. In the past few years, Father’s search for replacement typewriter ribbons has become an increasingly difficult task, because they are no longer being produced. He is perpetually tracking down the few remaining places that still have these antiquated ribbons in their dusty inventories. When people ask him why he doesn’t get upgrade his equipment, he tells them, “Electric typewriters won’t work in a blackout. All I need is a candle and some paper, and I’m fine.” Little does Father know, however, is that the “upgrade” people are speaking of is not to an electric typewriter but to a computer.
[1] Hoping to bring Father out of the dark ages, my sister, and I bought him a brand new computer for his fiftieth birthday. [2] We offered to help him to transfer all of his records onto it and to teach him how to use it. [3] Eagerly, we told him about all the new spreadsheet programs that would help simplify his recordkeeping and organize his accounts; and emphasized the advantage of not having to completely retype any document when he found a typo. [4] Rather than offering us a look of joy for the life-changing gift we had presented him, however, he again brought up the blackout scenario. [5] To Father, this is a concrete argument, never mind the fact that our town hasn’t had a blackout in five years, and that one only lasted an hour or two.
My father’s state-of-the-art computer now serves as a very expensive bulletin board for the hundreds of adhesive notes he uses to keep himself organized. Sooner than later, we fully expect it will completely disappear under the mounting files and papers in the back office. In the depths of that disorganized office, the computer will join the cell phone my mom gave him a few years ago. Interestingly enough, every once in a while, that completely forgotten cell phone will ring from under the heavy clutter of the past.
Assuming that all are true, which of the following replacements for “inventory” would be most appropriate in context?
The author wants to include the following statement in this paragraph:
We expected it to save him a lot of time and effort.
The most logical placement for this sentence would be:
Which of the following would provide the most appropriate conclusion for the passage?
A quick perusal of any modern major league baseball team will reveal a roster of players of multiple ethnicities from the farthest reaches of the globe. Second only to soccer, baseball has evolved into a global sport and a symbol for equality among races.
It’s diversity today presents a stark contrast to the state of the sport just sixty years ago. As late as the 1940s, there existed an unwritten rule in baseball that prevented all but white players to participate in the major leagues. This rule was known as the “color barrier” or “color line.” The color line in baseball actually predated the birth of the major leagues. Prior to the official formation of any league of professional baseball teams, there existed an organization of amateur baseball clubs known as the National Association of Baseball Players, which was the precursor to today’s National League. On December 11, 1868, the governing body of this association had unanimously adopted a rule that effectively barred any team that had, any “colored persons” on its roster. However, when baseball started to organize into leagues of professional teams in the early 1880s; the National Association of Baseball Players’ decree no longer had any weight, especially in the newly formed American Association. For a brief period in those early years, a few African Americans played side by side with white players on major league diamonds.
[1] Most baseball historians believe that the first African American to play in the major leagues was Moses “Fleet” Walker. [2] Walker was a catcher for the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association between 1884 and 1889. [3] During that time, a few other African Americans, including Walker’s brother Weldy, would be joining him on the Blue Stockings. [4] Unfortunately, this respite from segregation did not last for very long; as Jim Crow laws took their hold on the nation, many of the most popular white ballplayers started to refuse to take the field with their African-American teammates. [5] By the 1890s, the color barrier had fully returned to baseball, where it would endure for more than half a century.
Jackie Robinson would become the first African American to cross the color line at the time when he debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. For Robinson’s landmark achievements on and off the diamond, he will forever be recognized as a hero of the civil rights movement and a sports icon. The path that he blazed through the prejudices of American society during the 1940s and 1950s opened the door for the multi-racial and multi-national face of modern baseball, and fans of the sport worldwide will be in his debt for all time to come.
Is the underlined portion relevant here?
The writer is considering deleting the underlined portion. Should the writer make this deletion?
Upon reviewing this paragraph, the author discovers that he has neglected to include the following information:
A handful of African Americans played for other teams as well.
This sentence would be most logically placed after:
Question 30 asks about the essay as a whole.
Suppose the writer had been assigned to develop a brief essay on the history of baseball. Would this essay successfully fulfill that goal?
When the gleaming Bear Mountain Bridge officially opened to traffic on Thanksgiving Day in 1924, it was known as the Harriman Bridge, after Edward H. Harriman, wealthy philanthropist and patriarch of the family most influential in the bridges construction. Before the Harriman Bridge was constructed, there were no bridges spanning the Hudson River south of Albany. By the early 1920s, the ferry services used to transport people back and forth across the river had become woefully inadequate. In February of 1922, in an effort to alleviate some of the burden on the ferries and create a permanent link across the Hudson, the New York State Legislature had authorized a group of private investors, led by Mary Harriman, to build a bridge. The group, known as the Bear Mountain Hudson Bridge Company (BMHBC), was allotted thirty years to build, construct, and maintain the structure, at which time the span would be handed over to New York State.
The BMHBC invested almost $4,500,000 into the suspension bridge and hired the world-renowned design team of Howard Baird and George Hodge as architects. Baird and Hodge enlisted the help of John A. Roebling and Sons, who were instrumental in the steel work of the Brooklyn Bridge and would later work on the Golden Gate and George Washington Bridges.
Amazingly, the bridge took only twenty months and eleven days to complete, and not one life was lost. It was a technological marvel and would stand as a model for the suspension bridges of the future. At the time of the Harriman Bridge’s completion, it was, at 2,257 feet, the longest single-span steel suspension bridge in the world. Therefore, the two main cables used in the suspension were 18 inches in diameter, and each contained 7,752 individual steel wires wrapped in 37 thick strands. If completely unraveled, the single wires in both cables would be 7,377 miles longer. The bridge links Bear Mountain on the western bank of the Hudson to Anthony’s Nose on the eastern side, and it lies so precisely on an east-west plane that one can check a compass by it. It carries Routes 6 and 202 across the Hudson, as well as being the point of river crossing for the Appalachian Trail.
In an attempt to recoup some of its investment after the bridge opened, the BMHBC charged an exorbitant toll of eighty cents per crossing. Even with the high toll, however, it operated at a loss for thirteen of its first sixteen years. Finally it was acquired, more than ten years—a full decade—earlier than planned, by the New York State Bridge Authority. The bridge was renamed the Bear Mountain Bridge. Today, the Bear Mountain Bridge sees more than six million vehicles cross its concrete decks each year.
The author wants to remove the following from the preceding sentence:
invested almost $4,500,00 into the suspension bridge
If this language were deleted, the essay would primarily lose:
If the writer were to delete the preceding sentence, the essay would lose primarily:
Question 45 asks about the essay as a whole.
Suppose the author had been assigned to write a brief history of bridge building in the United States. Would this essay successfully fulfill that requirement?
As the sun was slowly rising over the Atlantic Ocean and painted New York harbor a spectacular fiery orange, I started my old Toyota’s engine. At this early hour, there was still some semblance of the night’s tranquility left on the city sidewalks, but I knew that, as the minutes ticked by, the streets would flood with humanity. I smiled with the thought that soon all the wonderful chaos of New York City would be disappearing behind me as I embarked on my trip to the other side of the country.
As the morning sun climbed into the sky, I shuddered with excitement to think that my final stop would be in California, where the sun itself ends its journey across America. Like the sun, however, I still had quite a journey before me.
I had been planning this road trip across the United States for as long as I could remember. In my life, I had been fortunate enough to see some of the most beautiful countries in the world. However, it had always bothered me that although I’d stood in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, marveled in the desert heat at the Pyramids of Giza, I’d never seen any of the wonders of my own country, except those found in my hometown of New York City. All of that was about to change.
As I left the city, the tall buildings began to give way to smaller ones, then to transform into the quaint rows of houses that clustered the crowded suburbs. Trees and grass, then the yellow-green of cornfields and the golden wash of wheat were rapidly replacing the familiar mazes of cement and steel. My world no longer stretched vertically toward the sky, it now spread horizontally towards eternity. For two days I pushed through the wind-whipped farmlands of Mid-America, hypnotized by the beauty of the undulating yet unbroken lines. At night, the breeze from my car would stir the wheat fields to dance beneath the moon, and the silos hid in the shadows, quietly imposing their simple serenity upon everything.
Then, as the night’s shadows gave way to light, there seemed to be a great force rising to meet the sun as it made its reappearance.Still, I had no idea what I was looking at. Then, there was no mistaking it. The unbroken lines of Mid-America had given way to the jagged and majestic heights of the Rockies and the gateway to the American west.
The author wants to contrast the statement about the quiet of the night streets with a related detail about the daytime activity. Assuming that all of the choices are true, which of the following best accomplishes that goal?
Which of the following alternatives to the underlined portion would NOT be acceptable?
The writer is considering revising this sentence by deleting the underlined portion. If she did so, the paragraph would primarily lose:
Given that all are true, which of the following provides the most effective transition between the third paragraph and the description of the Midwest in the fourth paragraph?
Assuming that all are true, which of the following provides information most relevant to the main focus of the paragraph?
The term “supersonic” refers to anything that travels faster than the speed of sound. When the last of the supersonic Concorde passenger planes made its final trip across the Atlantic in November of 2003, an interesting chapter in history was finally closed. The fleet of supersonic Concorde SSTs, or “Supersonic Transports,” which were jointly operated by Air France and British Airways, had been making the intercontinental trip across the Atlantic for almost thirty years. These amazing machines cruised at Mach 2 which is more than twice the speed of sound. They flew to a height almost twice that of standard passenger airplanes. The Concorde routinely made the trip from New York to London in less than three hours and was much more expensive than normal transatlantic flights. Though the majority of the passengers who traveled on the Concorde were celebrities or the extremely wealthy, it also attracted ordinary people who simply wanted to know how it felt to travel faster than the speed of sound. Some of these, would save money for years just to gain that knowledge.
What is the speed of sound? Many people are surprised to learn that there is no fixed answer to this question. The speed that sound travels through a given medium depends on a number of factors. So that we may better begin to understand the speed of sound, we must first understand what a “sound” really is.
The standard dictionary definition of sound is “a vibration or disturbance transmitted, like waves through water, through a material medium such as a gas.” Our ears are able to pick up those sound waves and convert them into what we hear. This means that the speed at which sound travels through gas directly depends on what gas it is traveling through, and the temperature and pressure of the gas. When discussing aircraft breaking the speed of sound, that gas medium, of course, is air. As air temperature and pressure decrease with altitude, so does the speed of sound. An airplane flying at the speed of sound at sea level is traveling roughly at 761 mph; however when that same plane climbs to 20,000 feet, the speed of sound is only about 707 mph. This is why the Concorde’s cruising attitude was so much higher than that of a regular passenger aircraft; planes can reach supersonic speeds more easily at higher altitudes.
In the years since the Concorde has been decommissioned, only fighter pilots and astronauts have been able to experience the sensation of breaking “the sound barrier.” But that is all about to change very soon. Newer and faster supersonic passenger planes are being developed that will be technologically superior to the Concorde and much cheaper to operate. That means we can expect that in the very near future, supersonic passenger travel will be available not only to the rich and famous, but also be for the masses, so they, too, can experience life at faster than the speed of sound.
Which of the following alternatives to the underlined portion would be the LEAST acceptable?
Given that all are true, which of the following provides the most logical conclusion for this sentence?