You have seen the ways in which the SATtests you on Citing Textual Evidence and Global questions in Reading passages and the way an SAT expert approaches these types of questions.
You will use the Kaplan Method for Reading Comprehension to complete this section. Part of the test-like passage has been mapped already. Your first step is to complete the Passage Map. Then, you will continue to use the Kaplan Method for Reading Comprehension and the strategies discussed in this chapter to answer the questions. Strategic thinking questions have been included to guide you—some of the answers have been filled in, but you will have to fill in the answers to others.
Use your answers to the strategic thinking questions to select the correct answer, just as you will on Test Day.
| Strategic Thinking |
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| Step 1: Read actively |
| The passage below is partially mapped. Read the passage and the first part of the Passage Map. Then, complete the Passage Map on your own. Remember to focus on the central ideas of each paragraph as well as the central idea of the overall passage. Use your Passage Map as a reference when you’re answering questions. |
Questions 4-6 are based on the following passage.
The following passage explains the challenges facing a population of trees and possible solutions.
| Today, oaks are plagued with problems. There is lack of regeneration in populations of certain species. Pests such as the acorn weevil and the | |
| filbert worm eat away at acorns and prevent germination. By undermining the root systems of seedlings and saplings, ground squirrels, gophers, and other small mammals often prevent these young plants from reaching tree size. Severe diseases, such as sudden oak death, kill many adult oaks. Many mature oaks are having a tough time with fire suppression. In the past, with light surface fires, the oaks had been able to maintain a stronghold where other plants were not able to compete and died out. Now oaks are being toppled by trees that have a higher tolerance for shade and are not fire-resistant; earlier such trees would have been killed when Native Americans set fires. Given all of these challenges, the “old-growth” oaks—the large old valley oaks, Garry oaks, coast live oaks, and canyon live oaks that have huge girth and large canopies—may become a thing of the past. These oaks in particular are important because there are often more terrestrial vertebrates | ¶1: oak problems: pests & disease, other trees |
| living in mature oak stands than in seedling and sapling areas. This prevalence of animals occurs because the large crowns of such oaks provide cover and feeding sites for a large variety of wildlife. The University of California has embarked | ¶2: oaks in danger |
| on an ambitious and necessary research program called the Integrated Hardwood Range Management Program to explore the significant causes of oak decline and offer varied solutions. These include investigating the use of grassing regimes that are compatible with oak seedling establishment, revegetating sites with native grasses to facilitate better germination of oak seedlings, documenting insects and pathogens that attack oaks, and exploring the ways that native people managed oaks in the past. Scientists at the Pacific Northwest Research Station in Olympia, Washington, and at Redwood National Park in northern California are reintroducing the burning practices of Native Americans. When used in | ¶3: research into problems & solutions |
| Garry oak ecosystems, fires keep Douglas firs from encroaching on the oaks and promote the growth of wildflowers that are important food plants. Further investigations about these fire practices may be essential in figuring out how to maintain oaks in the western landscape today, given that the fires address many of the factors that are now causing oak decline, from how to eliminate insect pests of acorns to how to maintain an open structure in oak groves. Ecological restoration, the traditional approach to woodland maintenance, refers to humans intervening on a very limited time scale to bring back plants and animals known to have historically existed in an area. The decline of oaks, one of the most significant plants to Native Americans, shows us that humans may play an integral part in the restoration of oak areas. While animals such as jays have been recognized as crucial partners in oak well-being, human actions through the eons may also have been key to the oaks’ flourishing. Sudden oak death, for example, although of exotic origin, may be curtailed locally by thinning around coastal oaks and tan oaks and setting light surface fires, simulating ancient fire management practices of Native Americans. Indigenous shrubs and trees that grow in association with oaks are hosts to the sudden oak death pathogen. By limiting the growth of these shrubs, burning that mimics earlier Native American ways may reduce opportunities for disease agents to jump from other plants to oak trees. With a more open environment, it may be harder for sudden oak death to spread. The oak landscapes that we inherited, which still bear the marks of former Native American interactions, demand a new kind of restoration that complements other forms of ecological restoration. This new kind of restoration could be called ethnobotanical restoration, defined as reestablishing the historic plant communities of a given area and restoring indigenous harvesting, vegetation management, and cultivation practices (seedbearing, burning, pruning, sowing, tilling, and weeding) necessary to maintain these communities in the long term. Thus, this kind of restoration is not only about restoring plants but also about restoring the human place within nature. Ethnobotanical restoration is viewed not as a process that can be completed but rather as a continuous interaction between people and plants, as both of their fates are intertwined in a region. Using oaks (through harvesting acorns and making products from all parts of the tree) and human intervention (by thinning tree populations and lighting light fires) may offer us ways to beneficially coexist while improving the long-term health and well-being of the remarkable oak. | ¶3: various solutions include Native American approach of using fire |
| Questions | Strategic Thinking |
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Step 2: Examine the question stem What are the keywords in the question stem? The keywords in this question stem are “throughout the passage” and “a key element in the restoration of the oak tree.” What parts of your Passage Map are relevant? The author begins to focus on the restoration of the oak tree in line 55. Look at your Passage Map notes from this point through the end of the passage to determine what the “key element” is. Step 3: Predict and answer What can you predict? The Passage Map notes from this point on focus on how humans can affect ecological restoration. Which answer choice matches this prediction?
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Step 2: Examine the question stem What are the keywords in the question stem? The keywords in this question stem are “according to the passage,” which implies the answer will be directly stated in the text, as well as the two quoted phrases and the lines in which they appear. What parts of your Passage Map are relevant? Use your Passage Map near these lines to compare the two types of restoration. Step 3: Predict and answer What is the primary difference between ecological restoration and ethnobotanical restoration?
Which answer choice matches this prediction?
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Step 2: Examine the question stem What are the keywords in the question stem?
What parts of your Passage Map are relevant?
Step 3: Predict and answer What part of the passage supports your answer to the previous question?
Which answer choice matches this prediction?
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