Sporting Futures USA | SAT Prep | Critical Reading 1.3

The politician ________ every aspect of his opponent's life, searching for any hint of corruption or vice.

Select the word that best completes the sentence.

PASSAGE:

1 Introversion is a personality attitude identified by the
2 Swiss psychologist Carl G. Jung. For people with a
3 preference for introversion, internal processing of an
4 experience is more important than the experience
5 itself; hence, introverts seek a lot of time alone to do
6 that processing. They can process in the presence of
7 others, but they must be detached and quiet so their
8 attention can be turned inward. A crucial thing to
9 understand about a relationship with an introvert
10 is not to take his or her need for "cave time" personally.
11 It is like a need for food or sleep.

12 Extroversion is also a personality attitude identified
13 by Carl Jung. Extroverts are talkative, enthusiastic,
14 sociable, and confident; they often have many friends.
15 They are very interested in the external world and want
16 to spend lots of their energy exploring it. They tend
17 to act first and think later, unlike introverts, who usually
18 do the opposite. They recharge by getting out of the
19 house, going out and being active.

20 Since we all have both an introvert and an extrovert
21 inside of us, we may be presented with only the extro-
22 verted side of someone when we first meet him or
23 her. Once you get to know an introvert better, he or she
24 may seem like a different person. The primary way to
25 identify a preference for introversion is to look at where
26 the person goes to recharge. If the person seeks soli-
27 tude, he or she is probably an introvert. (Note that extro-
28 verts have an introverted side that needs some quiet
29 time too; it's just not their primary orientation.)

30 Probably seventy-five percent of Americans are
31 extroverts, as you might guess from even a cursory
32 inspection of our advertising, news, and other
33 aspects of our culture. Not all societies are so
34 biased toward extroversion. American children
35 with a propensity for introversion may not be allowed
36 to indulge their preference; instead, they may be
37 encouraged to put their books down and go outside,
38 told by their parents to "get out there," "get involved,"
39 and "just do it."

40 Different eras and occasions of our life require us
41 to be more extroverted than others. For example,
42 adolescents, who are preparing to leave home
43 and meet new people, tend to be extroverts. However,
44 if an adolescent extrovert has not yet discovered
45 his or her introverted self, he or she will probably
46 find a healthy need for more downtime as he or she
47 ages. Jung believed that the psyche seeks balance. A
48 Jungian scholar writes, "Until we become thoroughly
49 aware of the inadequacy of our extroverted state and of
50 its insufficiency in regard to our deeper spiritual needs,
51 we shall not achieve even a measure of individuation,
52 through which a wider and more mature personality
53 emerges."

QUESTION: According to the passage, all of the following statements are true of introversion and introverts except:

PASSAGE 1:

1 Even the most jaded observer of American corporate
2 culture had to blink when, earlier this month, Home
3 Depot's board of directors handed the company's
4 C.E.O., Bob Nardelli, more than two hundred million
5 dollars after pushing him out of his job. Nardelli had
6 not delivered for shareholders: Home Depot's stock
7 price went down about six percent during his tenure.
8 And, while his operating performance was actually
9 quite good, he would have made a lot of money even if
10 it hadn't been: most of his contract was guaranteed,
11 and, when he had a hard time meeting a particular tar-
12 get for his bonus, the board generously substituted an
13 easier one.

14 The size of Nardelli's severance was startling, but his
15 "heads I win, tails you lose" arrangement is far from
16 unusual in corporate America these days. For all the
17 talk of restraining C.E.O. pay, most compensation
18 committees remain what Warren Buffett once called
19 them--"tail-wagging puppy dogs." At some companies,
20 this is simply because the C.E.O. has packed the
21 board with cronies. But at Home Depot Nardelli did not
22 pick the board members, and most of them were what
23 are usually called independent directors--ones who
24 don't work for the company or do any business with it.
25 Even when an independent board negotiates a
26 C.E.O.'s contract, however, the directors are often, in a
27 sense, negotiating with themselves. Of the ten inde-
28 pendent members of Home Depot's board, for in-
29 stance, eight are or have been C.E.O.s. Since C.E.O.
30 pay is often driven by comparisons between compa-
31 nies, directors have a certain interest in keeping
32 executive pay high. Furthermore, the salaries keep
33 escalating because, board members argue, there just
34 aren't enough good C.E.O. candidates out there.
35 There's no evidence that this is actually the case, but
36 who is more likely to feel that good C.E.O.s are rare
37 other than C.E.O.s?

38 A more complex problem lies in the nature of the social
39 networks that bind directors and executives together.
40 Home Depot has an exceptionally well-connected
41 board. On average, its directors sit on two other out-
42 side boards, and the compensation-committee chair-
43 man sits on four. Connections are often beneficial--
44 they insure that people are well-informed, creating
45 opportunities for new business. Unfortunately, the
46 more connected board members are, the likelier they
47 are to overpay for executive talent. In some cases,
48 which economists call "interlocking" directorates, this
49 is straightforward: I sit on your board and you sit on
50 mine, and we both have an incentive to be generous.
51 Sure enough, several studies have found that compa-
52 nies with interlocking directors pay C.E.O.s significantly
53 more. Surprisingly, though, connectedness remains
54 important even when the links are not direct. A study of
55 S&P 500 companies, by Amir Barnea and Ilan Guedj,
56 finance professors at the University of Texas, found
57 that, even after other factors were accounted for,
58 C.E.O.s at companies whose directors sat on a num-
59 ber of other boards were paid thirteen per cent more
60 than C.E.O.s at companies whose directors were not.

61 Why? One reason is that the more connections board
62 members have, the more likely they are to end up with
63 what you could call "friend of a friend" links to the com-
64 pany's C.E.O. A recent study by a team of business-
65 school professors mapped the social networks of
66 twenty-two thousand directors at more than three
67 thousand companies, charting the degrees of separa-
68 tion between directors and C.E.O.s, and found that
69 at companies where there are what the study's authors
70 termed "short, friendly" links between directors and
71 executives, C.E.O.s are paid significantly more. But
72 even in the absence of this kind of explicit back-
73 scratching, the tight connections between board
74 members insure that, once an idea takes hold at a few
75 companies, it's easier for it to spread, in a viral fashion.

PASSAGE 2:

76 Unlike many Americans, whose salaries aren't keep-
77 ing up with inflation, chief executives are seeing their
78 compensation packages rise by 13 percent annually. A
79 tight market allows C.E.O.s to command top dollars,
80 since there are so few with the leadership skills
81 needed to run a public company, some experts say
82 Critics argue the system for setting C.E.O. pay is
83 flawed and does not give enough consideration to
84 performance. They worry that giving C.E.O.s large per-
85 centage increases year after year causes resent-
86 ment among many workers, who have endured
87 decreases in wages, increases in health care costs,
88 pension reductions, and the loss of jobs overseas
89 during a slumping economy.

90 "We believe all employees should be paid fairly and
91 that includes workers and the C.E.O.," said Brandon
92 Rees, a research analyst with the AFL-CIO, a national
93 association of labor unions. "The trend has been that
94 C.E.O.s take a disproportionate share of compen-
95 sation." In 2004, the average chief executive earned
96 $10 million in total compensation, a 13 percent
97 increase over 2003, according a survey by consulting
98 firm Pearl Meyer & Partners for The New York Times.
99 However, the average American worker in a non-
100 supervisory job earned a salary of $27,485 in 2004,
101 only a 2.2 percent increase over 2003, according to
102 the AFL-CIO.
103 Many experts insist that comparing an executive's job
104 to that of a front-line worker is unfair, since the
105 expectations are different. They add that many of
106 the increases in compensation are tied directly to
107 a company's performance in a given year. That's the
108 case with A.L. "Tom" Giannopoulos, head of informa-
109 tion systems company Micros Systems Inc., whose
110 total compensation grew 69 percent, to $3.5 million,
111 in 2004 from $2.08 million in 2003. The increase
112 reflected an 80 percent growth in the value of the com-
113 pany's stock during 2004, said Louise Casamento,
114 a company spokeswoman. Excluding stock options
115 and other perks, Giannopoulos' annual salary grew 19
116 percent to $820,000 in 2004, compared with average
117 workers, whose salaries increased by 5.5 percent to
118 6 percent each year, she said.

119 Defending CEOs, some argue: "Not everyone is
120 capable of running a truly global company. Companies
121 pay them for literally giving over their entire lives to
122 the company . . Yes, they make a lot of money, but
123 you have to compare what it takes to do it."

QUESTION: Passage 1 suggests that building "social networks" (line 65) is important for C.E.O.s because:

PASSAGE 1:

1 Even the most jaded observer of American corporate
2 culture had to blink when, earlier this month, Home
3 Depot's board of directors handed the company's
4 C.E.O., Bob Nardelli, more than two hundred million
5 dollars after pushing him out of his job. Nardelli had
6 not delivered for shareholders: Home Depot's stock
7 price went down about six percent during his tenure.
8 And, while his operating performance was actually
9 quite good, he would have made a lot of money even if
10 it hadn't been: most of his contract was guaranteed,
11 and, when he had a hard time meeting a particular tar-
12 get for his bonus, the board generously substituted an
13 easier one.

14 The size of Nardelli's severance was startling, but his
15 "heads I win, tails you lose" arrangement is far from
16 unusual in corporate America these days. For all the
17 talk of restraining C.E.O. pay, most compensation
18 committees remain what Warren Buffett once called
19 them--"tail-wagging puppy dogs." At some companies,
20 this is simply because the C.E.O. has packed the
21 board with cronies. But at Home Depot Nardelli did not
22 pick the board members, and most of them were what
23 are usually called independent directors--ones who
24 don't work for the company or do any business with it.
25 Even when an independent board negotiates a
26 C.E.O.'s contract, however, the directors are often, in a
27 sense, negotiating with themselves. Of the ten inde-
28 pendent members of Home Depot's board, for in-
29 stance, eight are or have been C.E.O.s. Since C.E.O.
30 pay is often driven by comparisons between compa-
31 nies, directors have a certain interest in keeping
32 executive pay high. Furthermore, the salaries keep
33 escalating because, board members argue, there just
34 aren't enough good C.E.O. candidates out there.
35 There's no evidence that this is actually the case, but
36 who is more likely to feel that good C.E.O.s are rare
37 other than C.E.O.s?

38 A more complex problem lies in the nature of the social
39 networks that bind directors and executives together.
40 Home Depot has an exceptionally well-connected
41 board. On average, its directors sit on two other out-
42 side boards, and the compensation-committee chair-
43 man sits on four. Connections are often beneficial--
44 they insure that people are well-informed, creating
45 opportunities for new business. Unfortunately, the
46 more connected board members are, the likelier they
47 are to overpay for executive talent. In some cases,
48 which economists call "interlocking" directorates, this
49 is straightforward: I sit on your board and you sit on
50 mine, and we both have an incentive to be generous.
51 Sure enough, several studies have found that compa-
52 nies with interlocking directors pay C.E.O.s significantly
53 more. Surprisingly, though, connectedness remains
54 important even when the links are not direct. A study of
55 S&P 500 companies, by Amir Barnea and Ilan Guedj,
56 finance professors at the University of Texas, found
57 that, even after other factors were accounted for,
58 C.E.O.s at companies whose directors sat on a num-
59 ber of other boards were paid thirteen per cent more
60 than C.E.O.s at companies whose directors were not.

61 Why? One reason is that the more connections board
62 members have, the more likely they are to end up with
63 what you could call "friend of a friend" links to the com-
64 pany's C.E.O. A recent study by a team of business-
65 school professors mapped the social networks of
66 twenty-two thousand directors at more than three
67 thousand companies, charting the degrees of separa-
68 tion between directors and C.E.O.s, and found that
69 at companies where there are what the study's authors
70 termed "short, friendly" links between directors and
71 executives, C.E.O.s are paid significantly more. But
72 even in the absence of this kind of explicit back-
73 scratching, the tight connections between board
74 members insure that, once an idea takes hold at a few
75 companies, it's easier for it to spread, in a viral fashion.

PASSAGE 2:

76 Unlike many Americans, whose salaries aren't keep-
77 ing up with inflation, chief executives are seeing their
78 compensation packages rise by 13 percent annually. A
79 tight market allows C.E.O.s to command top dollars,
80 since there are so few with the leadership skills
81 needed to run a public company, some experts say
82 Critics argue the system for setting C.E.O. pay is
83 flawed and does not give enough consideration to
84 performance. They worry that giving C.E.O.s large per-
85 centage increases year after year causes resent-
86 ment among many workers, who have endured
87 decreases in wages, increases in health care costs,
88 pension reductions, and the loss of jobs overseas
89 during a slumping economy.

90 "We believe all employees should be paid fairly and
91 that includes workers and the C.E.O.," said Brandon
92 Rees, a research analyst with the AFL-CIO, a national
93 association of labor unions. "The trend has been that
94 C.E.O.s take a disproportionate share of compen-
95 sation." In 2004, the average chief executive earned
96 $10 million in total compensation, a 13 percent
97 increase over 2003, according a survey by consulting
98 firm Pearl Meyer & Partners for The New York Times.
99 However, the average American worker in a non-
100 supervisory job earned a salary of $27,485 in 2004,
101 only a 2.2 percent increase over 2003, according to
102 the AFL-CIO.
103 Many experts insist that comparing an executive's job
104 to that of a front-line worker is unfair, since the
105 expectations are different. They add that many of
106 the increases in compensation are tied directly to
107 a company's performance in a given year. That's the
108 case with A.L. "Tom" Giannopoulos, head of informa-
109 tion systems company Micros Systems Inc., whose
110 total compensation grew 69 percent, to $3.5 million,
111 in 2004 from $2.08 million in 2003. The increase
112 reflected an 80 percent growth in the value of the com-
113 pany's stock during 2004, said Louise Casamento,
114 a company spokeswoman. Excluding stock options
115 and other perks, Giannopoulos' annual salary grew 19
116 percent to $820,000 in 2004, compared with average
117 workers, whose salaries increased by 5.5 percent to
118 6 percent each year, she said.

119 Defending CEOs, some argue: "Not everyone is
120 capable of running a truly global company. Companies
121 pay them for literally giving over their entire lives to
122 the company . . Yes, they make a lot of money, but
123 you have to compare what it takes to do it."

QUESTION: Compared to the tone of Passage 1, the tone of Passage 2 is more:

PASSAGE:

1 Talk to the handful of "doughboys" who are still alive
2 today--the youngest of which is 105 years old, having
3 lied about his age in order to enlist as an ambulance
4 corpsman in 1917 and they still cannot bring them-
5 selves to discuss the brutal horror that was trench
6 warfare. "I don't want to think about it," one veteran
7 said, though he added that he thinks about his fallen
8 comrades every day of his unnaturally-long life.
9 The experience of any warfare, from our American
10 Civil War to the present conflicts in Iraq and
11 Afghanistan, often leaves veterans dumb, but there
12 was something exponentially more terrible, indeed
13 unspeakable, about the mass slaughter that marked
14 "The War to End All Wars," so named because it was
15 (to that point) that bloodiest conflict known to man.
16 Nearly 10 million soldiers died, and more than 20
17 million were wounded in four years of fighting. It made
18 folks so sick of war that they hoped against hope no
19 new war would ever erupt again.

20 The lethal drones and computerized smart-bombs of
21 today, the napalm and jungle warfare of Vietnam, the
22 frozen tundra and stalemate of the Korean peninsula,
23 or the aerial fire-bombing of The Second World War--
24 for all their selective butchery, they are pale in com-
25 parison with the impassable mud, denuded land-
26 scapes, endless barbed wire and infected vermin, the
27 the mustard gas and killing field in between enemy
28 trenches forever known as "No-Man's Land" that
29 marked this particular conflict as the worst hardship
30 that soldiers ever had to endure. "All this madness,"
31 the British philosopher Bertrand Russell once said,
32 "all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization
33 and our hopes, has been brought about because a
34 set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly
35 stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have
36 chosen that it should occur rather than that any one
37 of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his
38 country's pride."

39 Of course World War I did not "end all wars," but it did
40 awaken nations to unite initially as the League of
41 Nations and later as the United Nations in order to
42 take steps to correct some of the worst outrages of that
43 barbaric conflict, such as trench warfare, and in that
44 sense endures as the crucible of man's inhumanity to
45 man.

QUESTION: In line 15, the phrase "to that point," implies that:

While I was ill, I experienced ________: I was dizzy and felt as if I would faint.

Select the word that best completes the sentence.

PASSAGE:

1 Don Hedger had lived for four years on the top floor of
2 an old house on the south side of Washington Square,
3 and nobody had ever disturbed him. He occupied
4 one big room with no outside exposure except on the
5 north. His room was very cheerless, since he never
6 got a ray of direct sunlight; the south corners were
7 always in shadow. In the front corner, the one farther
8 from the window, was a sink, and a table with two
9 gas burners where he sometimes cooked his food.
10 There, too, in the perpetual dusk, was the dog's bed,
11 and often a bone or two for his comfort.

12 The dog was a Boston bull terrier, and Hedger
13 explained his surly disposition by the fact that he had
14 been bred to the point where it told on his nerves. His
15 name was Caesar III, and he had taken prizes at very
16 exclusive dog shows. When he and his master went
17 out to prowl about University Place, or to promenade
18 along West Street, Caesar III was invariably fresh and
19 shining. His pink skin showed through his mottled
20 coat, which glistened as if it had just been rubbed with
21 olive oil, and he wore a brass-studded collar, bought
22 at the smartest saddler's. Hedger, as often as not, was
23 hunched up in an old striped blanket coat, with a
24 shapeless felt hat pulled over his bushy hair, wearing
25 black shoes that had become gray, or brown ones
26 that had become black, and he never put on gloves
27 unless the day was biting cold.

28 Early in May, Hedger learned that he was to have a
29 new neighbor in the rear apartment. His studio was
30 shut off from these rooms by double doors, which,
31 though they were fairly tight, left him a good deal
32 at the mercy of the occupant. The rooms had been
33 leased, long before he came there, by a trained nurse
34 who considered herself knowing in old furniture. She
35 went to auction sales and bought up mahogany and
36 dirty brass and stored it away here, where she meant
37 to live when she retired from nursing. Meanwhile,
38 she sub-let her rooms, with the precious furniture, to
39 young people who came to New York to "write" or
40 "paint"--who proposed to live by the sweat of the
41 brow rather than of the hand, and who desired artistic
42 surroundings. When Hedger first moved in, these
43 rooms were occupied by a young man who tried to
44 write plays,--and who kept on trying until a week ago,
45 when the nurse had put him out for unpaid rent.
46
A few days after the playwright left, Hedger heard
47 an ominous murmur of voices through the bolted
48 double doors: the lady-like intonation of the nurse--
49 doubtless exhibiting her treasures--and another voice,
50 also a woman's, but very different; young, fresh,
51 unguarded, confident. All the same, it would be very
52 annoying to have a woman in there. The only bath-
53 room on the floor was at the top of the stairs in the
54 front hall, and he would always be running into her
55 as he came or went from his bath. He would have to
56 be more careful to see that Caesar didn't leave bones
57 about the hall, too; and she might object when he
58 cooked steak and onions on his gas burner.

59 As soon as the talking ceased and the women left,
60 he forgot them. He was absorbed in a study of para-
61 dise fish at the Aquarium, staring out at people through
62 the glass and green water of their tank. It was a
63 highly gratifying idea; the incommunicability of one
64 stratum of animal life with another,--though Hedger
65 pretended it was only an experiment with unusual
66 lighting. When he heard trunks knocking against the
67 sides of the narrow hall, then he realized that she was
68 moving in at once. Toward noon, groans and deep
69 gasps and the creaking of ropes, made him aware
70 that a piano was arriving. After the tramp of the
71 movers died away down the stairs, somebody touched
72 off a few scales and chords on the instrument, and
73 then there was peace. Presently he heard her lock her
74 door and go down the hall humming something; going
75 out to lunch, probably. He stuck his brushes in a can
76 of turpentine and put on his hat, not stopping to wash
77 his hands. Caesar was smelling along the crack
78 under the bolted doors.

79 Hedger encouraged him. "Come along, Caesar.
80 You'll soon get used to a new smell."

81 In the hall stood an enormous trunk, behind the
82 ladder that led to the roof, just opposite Hedger's
83 door. The dog flew at it with a growl of hurt amaze-
84 ment. They went down three flights of stairs and out
85 into the brilliant May afternoon.

86 Hedger strolled about the Square for the dog's health.
87 The fountain had but lately begun operations for the
88 season and was throwing up a mist of rainbow water.
89 Plump robins were hopping about on the soil; the
90 grass was newly cut and blindingly green. Looking
91 up the Avenue through the Arch, one could see the
92 young poplars with their bright, sticky leaves, and
93 shining horses and carriages,--occasionally an auto-
94 mobile, mis-shapen and sullen, like an ugly threat in
95 a stream of things that were bright and beautiful and
96 alive.

97 While Caesar and his master were standing by the
98 fountain, a girl approached them, crossing the Square.
99 Hedger noticed her because she wore a lavender cloth
100 suit and carried in her arms a big bunch of fresh lilacs.
101 He saw that she was young and handsome,--beautiful,
102 in fact. She, too, paused by the fountain and looked
103 back through the Arch up the Avenue. She smiled
104 rather patronizingly as she looked, and at the same
105 time seemed delighted. Her slowly curving upper lip
106 and half-closed eyes seemed to say: "You're gay,
107 you're exciting, you are quite the right sort of thing;
108 but you're none too fine for me!"

109 In the moment she tarried, Caesar stealthily ap-
110 proached her and sniffed at the hem of her lavender
111 skirt, then he ran back to his master and lifted a face
112 full of emotion and alarm, his lower lip twitching under
113 his sharp white teeth and his hazel eyes pointed with
114 a very definite discovery. He stood thus, motionless,
115 while Hedger watched the lavender girl go up the
116 steps and through the door of the house in which he
117 lived.

118 "You're right, my boy, it's she!"

QUESTION: The passage mainly serves to:

In order to ________ the angry customers who waited an hour for their meals, the manager sent a ________ dessert to the table.

Select the words that best complete the sentence.

The teacher was so ________ by the disturbing images on the classroom projector that she called for an immediate ________ of the slideshow, ending the student's poorly thought-out presentation.

Select the words that best complete the sentence.

Mozart was a ________ composer who created hundreds of musical works, including symphonies, operas, and concertos.

Select the word that best completes the sentence.

PASSAGE 1:

1 Sarah Lam, an eighth-grader at Presidio Middle
2 School in San Francisco, has learned to manage her
3 time better since sixth grade, when she spent three to
4 four hours toiling over nightly assignments, she said.
5 But her schedule these days--which includes orches-
6 tra, working as a tutor, plus two to three hours of
7 homework--is packed. Her father has occasionally
8 had to use college texts to help her answer science
9 homework questions.

10 Yet there's no evidence that lobbing on the home-
11 work in elementary grades boosts test scores later,
12 according to Harris Cooper, a psychology professor
13 at University of Missouri, who reviewed dozens of
14 studies and concluded homework may begin to pay
15 off in junior high. Cooper said giving large amounts of
16 homework in elementary school may have "negative
17 benefits" such as frustration, negative self-image and
18 not enough time to do other important activities. The
19 National Parent Teacher Association has
20 recommended 10 minutes per grade level, but
21 acknowledges that some kids have less and some
22 have a lot more. So why are schools doing it?
23 "There seem to be two sources," said Cooper. "Some
24 of the pressure is coming from parents who are
25 highly achievement-oriented. The other source is new
26 state standards, which are requiring teachers to
27 teach more, while at the same time requiring more
28 non-academic activities. In my district, for example,
29 fourth-graders learn swimming." There are parents
30 who protest, but principals and teachers say just as
31 many ask for more homework. Many believe that
32 heavy homework, while stressful, is a necessary bur-
33 den in a world that's increasingly competitive. They
34 assist when they can. Some hire homework coaches
35 to help their kids keep up and relieve the stress that
36 arguing over doing it can cause. Others sign up their
37 kids for test-taking classes or enrichment courses.
38 Businesses like Kumon and Score--which give kids
39 test practice--and the Report Card in San Rafael,
40 which sells educational materials and offers both
41 regular tutoring and enrichment classes, have
42 sprouted around the Bay area.

43 "The amount of homework kids are getting is out-
44 rageous," said Donna Gray, a tutor who offers not
45 only remedial help to students, but also enrichment
46 work some parents feel is necessary for their kids to
47 stay competitive. "If you don't develop physically,
48 emotionally and socially as well, it's not good . . ."
49 said Gray, a retired teacher who has a waiting list of
50 clients in Tiburon. "It's society today. I believe that
51 teachers today wouldn't give homework like this if it
52 weren't for the parents. The young teachers here
53 worry about the parents. They're smart, high-
54 achieving. It's hard for them to live up to what the
55 parents expect."

56 Now that homework appears to be at a peak, the
57 pendulum is bound to swing in the other direction,
58 said Gill, who believes reasonable amounts of home-
59 work can be a useful learning tool and give parents
60 "a window into the classroom." There already may be
61 a modest backlash brewing. Take, for example, Gill's
62 research colleague Steven Schlossman, head of the
63 history department at Carnegie Mellon University. He
64 said he had pulled his ninth-grade son out of private
65 school near Pittsburgh because of the unwieldy
66 amount of homework. One week, as an experiment,
67 Schlossman did the homework himself. It took him 35
68 hours. "That's what stimulated my interest in the
69 subject of homework," he said. "This is one of the
70 dramas going on throughout middle class America
71 that very few people want to talk about. They fear if
72 their child can't do it, he's destined to failure. But the
73 amount of trauma, if anyone wants to measure it, I'll
74 venture is extraordinary."

PASSAGE 2:

75 A comprehensive review of academic performance
76 around the world gives bad marks to excessive
77 homework. Teachers in Japan, the Czech Republic
78 and Denmark assign relatively little homework, yet
79 students there score well, researchers said this week.
80 "At the other end of the spectrum, countries with very
81 low average scores--Thailand, Greece, Iran--have
82 teachers who assign a great deal of homework," says
83 Penn State researcher David Baker. "American stu-
84 dents appear to do as much homework as their peers
85 overseas--if not more--but still only score around the
86 international average," said co-researcher Gerald
87 LeTendre. Baker and LeTendre examined the Third
88 International Study of Mathematics and Sciences
89 (TIMSS), which in 1994 collected data from schools
90 in 41 nations on performance in grades 4, 8 and 12.
91 Additional similar data from 1999 was factored in.
92 The homework burden is especially problematic in
93 poorer households, where parents may not have the
94 time or inclination to provide an environment condu-
95 cive to good study habits, the researchers conclude.
96 In particular, drills designed to improve memorization
97 may not be suited to many homes.

98 "An unintended consequence may be that those chil-
99 dren who need extra work and drill the most are the
100 ones least likely to get it," Baker said. "Increasing
101 homework loads is likely to aggravate tensions within
102 the family, thereby generating more inequality and
103 eroding the quality of overall education."

104 In the early 1980s, U.S. teachers began assigning
105 more homework, the researchers say. The shift was
106 in response to mediocre performance in comparison
107 to Japanese students. At the same time, the trend
108 was going the other way in Japanese schools. The
109 new study found U.S. math teachers assigned more
110 than two hours of homework a week in 1994-95,
111 while in Japan the figure was about one hour per
112 week. "Undue focus on homework as a national
113 quick-fix, rather than a focus on issues of instruc-
114 tional quality and equity of access to opportunity to
115 learn, may lead a country into wasted expenditures of
116 time and energy," LeTendre says. The homework
117 burden might also affect performance among children
118 of higher-income parents. "Parents are extremely
119 busy with work and household chores, not to mention
120 chauffeuring young people to various extracurricular
121 activities, athletic and otherwise," LeTendre said.
122 "Parents might sometimes see exercises in drill and
123 memorization as intrusions into time."

QUESTION: The quotation in lines 50-55 of Passage 1 serves to reinforce the point that:

PASSAGE 1:

1 Sarah Lam, an eighth-grader at Presidio Middle
2 School in San Francisco, has learned to manage her
3 time better since sixth grade, when she spent three to
4 four hours toiling over nightly assignments, she said.
5 But her schedule these days--which includes orches-
6 tra, working as a tutor, plus two to three hours of
7 homework--is packed. Her father has occasionally
8 had to use college texts to help her answer science
9 homework questions.

10 Yet there's no evidence that lobbing on the home-
11 work in elementary grades boosts test scores later,
12 according to Harris Cooper, a psychology professor
13 at University of Missouri, who reviewed dozens of
14 studies and concluded homework may begin to pay
15 off in junior high. Cooper said giving large amounts of
16 homework in elementary school may have "negative
17 benefits" such as frustration, negative self-image and
18 not enough time to do other important activities. The
19 National Parent Teacher Association has
20 recommended 10 minutes per grade level, but
21 acknowledges that some kids have less and some
22 have a lot more. So why are schools doing it?
23 "There seem to be two sources," said Cooper. "Some
24 of the pressure is coming from parents who are
25 highly achievement-oriented. The other source is new
26 state standards, which are requiring teachers to
27 teach more, while at the same time requiring more
28 non-academic activities. In my district, for example,
29 fourth-graders learn swimming." There are parents
30 who protest, but principals and teachers say just as
31 many ask for more homework. Many believe that
32 heavy homework, while stressful, is a necessary bur-
33 den in a world that's increasingly competitive. They
34 assist when they can. Some hire homework coaches
35 to help their kids keep up and relieve the stress that
36 arguing over doing it can cause. Others sign up their
37 kids for test-taking classes or enrichment courses.
38 Businesses like Kumon and Score--which give kids
39 test practice--and the Report Card in San Rafael,
40 which sells educational materials and offers both
41 regular tutoring and enrichment classes, have
42 sprouted around the Bay area.

43 "The amount of homework kids are getting is out-
44 rageous," said Donna Gray, a tutor who offers not
45 only remedial help to students, but also enrichment
46 work some parents feel is necessary for their kids to
47 stay competitive. "If you don't develop physically,
48 emotionally and socially as well, it's not good . . ."
49 said Gray, a retired teacher who has a waiting list of
50 clients in Tiburon. "It's society today. I believe that
51 teachers today wouldn't give homework like this if it
52 weren't for the parents. The young teachers here
53 worry about the parents. They're smart, high-
54 achieving. It's hard for them to live up to what the
55 parents expect."

56 Now that homework appears to be at a peak, the
57 pendulum is bound to swing in the other direction,
58 said Gill, who believes reasonable amounts of home-
59 work can be a useful learning tool and give parents
60 "a window into the classroom." There already may be
61 a modest backlash brewing. Take, for example, Gill's
62 research colleague Steven Schlossman, head of the
63 history department at Carnegie Mellon University. He
64 said he had pulled his ninth-grade son out of private
65 school near Pittsburgh because of the unwieldy
66 amount of homework. One week, as an experiment,
67 Schlossman did the homework himself. It took him 35
68 hours. "That's what stimulated my interest in the
69 subject of homework," he said. "This is one of the
70 dramas going on throughout middle class America
71 that very few people want to talk about. They fear if
72 their child can't do it, he's destined to failure. But the
73 amount of trauma, if anyone wants to measure it, I'll
74 venture is extraordinary."

PASSAGE 2:

75 A comprehensive review of academic performance
76 around the world gives bad marks to excessive
77 homework. Teachers in Japan, the Czech Republic
78 and Denmark assign relatively little homework, yet
79 students there score well, researchers said this week.
80 "At the other end of the spectrum, countries with very
81 low average scores--Thailand, Greece, Iran--have
82 teachers who assign a great deal of homework," says
83 Penn State researcher David Baker. "American stu-
84 dents appear to do as much homework as their peers
85 overseas--if not more--but still only score around the
86 international average," said co-researcher Gerald
87 LeTendre. Baker and LeTendre examined the Third
88 International Study of Mathematics and Sciences
89 (TIMSS), which in 1994 collected data from schools
90 in 41 nations on performance in grades 4, 8 and 12.
91 Additional similar data from 1999 was factored in.
92 The homework burden is especially problematic in
93 poorer households, where parents may not have the
94 time or inclination to provide an environment condu-
95 cive to good study habits, the researchers conclude.
96 In particular, drills designed to improve memorization
97 may not be suited to many homes.

98 "An unintended consequence may be that those chil-
99 dren who need extra work and drill the most are the
100 ones least likely to get it," Baker said. "Increasing
101 homework loads is likely to aggravate tensions within
102 the family, thereby generating more inequality and
103 eroding the quality of overall education."

104 In the early 1980s, U.S. teachers began assigning
105 more homework, the researchers say. The shift was
106 in response to mediocre performance in comparison
107 to Japanese students. At the same time, the trend
108 was going the other way in Japanese schools. The
109 new study found U.S. math teachers assigned more
110 than two hours of homework a week in 1994-95,
111 while in Japan the figure was about one hour per
112 week. "Undue focus on homework as a national
113 quick-fix, rather than a focus on issues of instruc-
114 tional quality and equity of access to opportunity to
115 learn, may lead a country into wasted expenditures of
116 time and energy," LeTendre says. The homework
117 burden might also affect performance among children
118 of higher-income parents. "Parents are extremely
119 busy with work and household chores, not to mention
120 chauffeuring young people to various extracurricular
121 activities, athletic and otherwise," LeTendre said.
122 "Parents might sometimes see exercises in drill and
123 memorization as intrusions into time."

QUESTION: According to Passage 1, which of the following might reduce the size of homework assignments?

The following passage is excerpted from the speech of an American politician seeking to gain support for the Revolutionary War in America:

PASSAGE 1:

1 I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and
2 that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of
3 judging of the future but by the past. And judging by
4 the past, I wish to know what there has been in the
5 conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to
6 justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been
7 pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that
8 insidious smile with which our petition has been lately
9 received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your
10 feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss.
11 Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our
12 petition comports with those warlike preparations
13 which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets
14 and armies necessary to a work of love and
15 reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling
16 to be reconciled that force must be called in to win
17 back our love?

QUESTION: Which of the following statements, if true, would best support the main argument of the passage?

Although the professor was accomplished in the field of English literature, his classes were poorly attended because his ________ teaching style alienated his students.

Select the word that best completes the sentence.

PASSAGE:

1 It has long been known that dolphins are intelligent
2 creatures with complex brains; however, recent studies
3 have shown that dolphins may be able to recognize
4 themselves in a mirror.

5 Such a finding would have major implications in the
6 study of evolutionary development, since very few
7 animals have demonstrated this ability. Between the
8 ages of 18-24 months, humans develop a sense of
9 mirror-self recognition (MSR). Studies have shown
10 that some primates, such as the chimpanzee and the
11 great ape, share this ability; however, attempts to prove
12 that non-primates can recognize their own reflections
13 have been unconvincing until now.

14 In their experiment, scientists Diana Reiss and Lori
15 Marino placed mirrors inside a pool housing two
16 dolphins that had been raised in captivity. They then
17 conducted a three-stage experiment. In the first stage,
18 they used a black ink marker to draw a geometric
19 shape on the dolphins' bodies in a place that they
20 could not see without the aid of a mirror. In the second,
21 they pretended to mark the dolphins with a sham
22 marker--an inkless marker that emits water. In the
23 control stage, the dolphins were left unmarked.

24 When the dolphins were marked, they immediately
25 swam to the mirror and spent a long time investigating
26 the area that had been marked. Sometimes they even
27 twisted and turned as they attempted to make the
28 marking visible in the mirror. When the dolphins were
29 sham marked, they displayed the same MSR behav-
30 iors, but spent less time investigating the marking in
31 front of the mirror, suggesting that they came to under-
32 stand the mark was a sham. Most other animals
33 would not display such behavior. Most often,
34 animals presented with a mirror show aggressive
35 social behavior, suggesting they think the figure in the
36 reflection is another animal.
37 Reiss and Marino claim that their study offers definitive
38 evidence that dolphins are capable of MSR. Thus, they
39 conclude, dolphins apparently have a sense of self
40 and a sense of the other, pointing to a psychological
41 complexity that few animals share. They also note that
42 this discovery is especially provocative because,
43 while human and primate brains have much in
44 common, human and dolphin brains feature some
45 significant differences due to divergent evolutionary
46 patterns. Therefore, they recommend further study into
47 the mental abilities and psychological complexities of
48 dolphins.

QUESTION: The statement "They then conducted a three-stage experiment" (lines 16-17) suggests what pattern of development will follow?

Despite his efforts to hide the evidence from his mother, Casey was forced to admit the ________ truth once she found the stolen bicycle behind the garage.

Select the word that best completes the sentence

After their victory at one particularly difficult battle, the _______ soldiers celebrated their victory for many days and nights.

Select the word that best completes the sentence.

Despite her ________ public behavior, inside she was beleaguered with depression and ________.

Select the words that best complete the sentence.

Previously believed to be guilty for stealing the tests, Elizabeth was ________ by an article in the school newspaper.

Select the word that best completes the sentence.

The architectural team was ________ when they learned that their plans had been rejected by the zoning commission, since they had made painstaking efforts to adhere to every regulation.

Select the word that best completes the sentence.