- Which of the following best expresses the central idea of the passage?
Answer: Even when a town's employment and tax base recover after a major economic loss, its residents may still lack the shared identity and sense of collective purpose the lost institution once provided.
The passage concludes that Hallworth's economy recovered yet residents described their town "in far more divided terms," arguing recovery "measured only in jobs and tax revenue" misses what the mill actually supplied. Choice B states a true but narrow supporting statistic, not the passage's point. Choice C overstates a claim the author only partly endorses, since the author stresses these tools' limits. Choice D is wrong because the tax base was already counted in line 4, not omitted.
- Which of the following statements best summarizes the central idea of the passage?
Answer: Gothic buttresses were designed to serve structural and symbolic purposes at once, functions the builders themselves never treated as distinct.
The passage states that "carrying thrust, and carrying meaning" were "two jobs" performed as "a single task," concluding that structure and statement "were never two different things needing reconciliation." Choice A describes only the nineteenth-century restoration detail, a true but narrow supporting point. Choice C misreads the Romanesque comparison, which is used only to show buttresses weren't structurally necessary in that form. Choice D overstates the case; the passage affirms real structural work ("pressing the arch downward into compression"), not mere display.
- In "Coach's praise was spare, so the team hoarded each word like a rare coin," what central idea does the word "spare" support?
Answer: Praise meant more because it was given rarely
Here 'spare' means scant, and the team's hoarding of each word like a rare coin shows that scarcity made the praise precious. Reading 'spare' as extra or unnecessary is tempting but contradicts how much the team treasured it.
- Which best describes the narrator's view in "We called it progress when the orchard became a parking lot, and I suppose, in a way, it was"?
Answer: Reluctant acceptance mixed with quiet regret
'We called it progress' hints at doubt, while 'I suppose, in a way, it was' grudgingly concedes the point, which signals reluctant acceptance tinged with regret. Total rejection is tempting but ignores that concession.
- The main point of the paragraph in lines 17-28 is that:
Answer: demonstrating that carbon moves between trees does not, by itself, prove that trees intentionally share resources or that the tree supplying the carbon benefits from doing so.
The paragraph states the studies "demonstrate transfer; they do not, on their own, demonstrate intention, reciprocity, or even net benefit," comparing it to a river distributing silt "without intending to favor one bank." Choice B asserts a guaranteed benefit-at-expense relationship the paragraph never claims. Choice C reverses the paragraph's point by treating transfer as proof of deliberate reciprocity. Choice D is a true detail, but it belongs to the following paragraph about artificial plots, not this one.
- Which of the following statements most accurately captures the main idea of the passage?
Answer: The Antikythera mechanism forced historians to revise their assumptions about ancient Hellenistic craftsmanship, not merely to redate a single artifact.
The passage states the discovery forced "a revision not of one artifact's date but of an entire assumption about what ancient workshops were capable of producing." Choice A names only the imaging technique, a true but narrow supporting detail. Choice C is directly contradicted, since the passage says this explanation was dismantled by the imaging. Choice D overreaches, since the passage suggests the mechanism "may be the only surviving member" of its class, not evidence of widespread use.
- Which of the following statements best summarizes the central idea developed across the passage?
Answer: Lichens' extremely slow growth rate, often mistaken for a biological shortcoming, is precisely what allows them to function both as monitors of present-day air pollution and as long-term calendars of past environmental events.
The final paragraph states the passage's unifying claim: lichen value comes 'not [from] any single chemical sensitivity or any single dating trick, but the more general fact that its slowness converts the passage of time itself into evidence' (lines 45-47), explicitly tying together the pollution-monitoring use (paragraph 2) and the lichenometry use (paragraph 3). Choice B restates only the pollution detail from paragraph 2 and ignores the dating use, making it too narrow. Choice C restates only the lichenometry detail from paragraph 3 and ignores the pollution use, also too narrow. Choice D describes background biology from paragraph 1 that sets up the discussion but is never framed as the passage's point.
- The passage as a whole is best summarized by which of the following statements?
Answer: Bioluminescence in deep-sea animals is more often a defensive camouflage strategy than the predatory lure long emphasized in popular accounts.
The passage states counter-illumination "reframes bioluminescence as, in many species, a form of camouflage rather than a form of display," and notes defensive readings have replaced hunting explanations "in a number of documented cases." Choice A describes only one supporting detail about glow adjustment, too narrow to be the main idea. Choice C invents a mating function never mentioned. Choice D reverses the text, which says counter-illumination demands "more of an animal" than pigment camouflage, not less.
- The main point of the final paragraph (lines 46-57) is that:
Answer: their father's true legacy lies in a private ritual and recipe rather than in the diner as a business.
The paragraph concludes that "the museum was smaller than that, contained in a coffee can, in a recipe, in a single dish" -- locating the father's legacy in the ritual, not the building. Choice A reverses the shift shown: Tomas stops discussing selling once they cook together. Choice B is unstated; nothing suggests the diner will reopen. Choice D describes a minor detail ("guessing at measurements") that is not the paragraph's point.
- The main point of the passage is that:
Answer: Brutalist buildings have often been blamed for isolating planning decisions that had little to do with the concrete style itself.
The passage argues residents objected "not the concrete but the isolation," a "failure of the surrounding masterplan, not of the material or the style." Choice A cites only the survey finding on specific features, a true but narrow detail. Choice C reverses the passage's claim that new developments repeat "the very same isolating planning logic." Choice D isolates the maintenance point as the whole story, when the passage explicitly treats it as only part of a more complicated picture.
- Which of the following statements best expresses the author's main point about parking minimums?
Answer: zoning rules requiring a fixed amount of parking for every development, though meant to prevent overflow parking, impose hidden costs that raise rents and discourage the dense development that would reduce car trips.
The passage's argument is that the requirement "amounts to a hidden subsidy for driving" and "discourages exactly the kind of dense, mixed-use development" that would cut car trips, which is what A captures. B is the opening anecdote, a supporting detail rather than the main point. C overreaches with "all" and "entirely," while the text says only "a growing number of cities" have begun repealing minimums. D inverts the planners' motive: they aimed to absorb car trips and prevent spillover, not to encourage density.
- One of the passage's central ideas is that:
Answer: real skill in a craft comes from continuing to work despite fear, and losing that fear entirely can become its own danger.
Marguerite tells Devon "you get good by working scared" and explains she is leaving because "I stopped being afraid a long time ago... It's a warning about complacency," tying skill and safety to sustained fear rather than its absence. Choice B narrows the theme to Devon's first attempt alone. Choice C is unstated; Marguerite never compares their skill levels. Choice D describes a true but minor detail about the furnace, not the passage's central point about fear and mastery.
- One of the passage's central ideas is that:
Answer: shell mounds long labeled as refuse heaps may instead represent deliberately constructed, monumental landscapes built with intention.
The passage argues that mounds with "deliberate rings enclosing open plazas" and regular internal layering suggest "intentional construction episodes," and warns against "flattening a built landscape into a rubbish pile." Choice A restates only the dietary-evidence point, explicitly framed as a secondary detail ("does not erase the mounds' usefulness for dietary reconstruction"). Choice C invents a storage function never mentioned. Choice D overstates the claim, since the passage says mounds are only "comparable" and describes this as something "researchers now argue," not a proven fact.
- Which of the following best captures the central idea of the passage?
Answer: Öz's translation practice suggests that fidelity in poetry translation can mean staying true to a poem's felt experience rather than its literal wording, complicating the assumption that only literal accuracy counts as faithful.
The final paragraph explains that "fidelity" was "never a single, stable target," since critics wanted fidelity to words while Öz wanted fidelity to "the experience the words were built to produce"—both reasonably called faithful. Choice B is a true but narrow supporting example. Choice C overstates a ranking of translation methods the passage never asserts. Choice D wrongly declares the critics simply correct, which the passage's balanced conclusion contradicts.
- Based on the passage, which choice best states its central theme?
Answer: Passing down hard-won wisdom to a new generation matters more than preserving the exact circumstances in which it was first learned.
The closing image describes the lesson passing "the way heat moves through a chain of hands, none of them the original source and none of them required to be," showing the theme is about transmission of wisdom across generations. Choice B is a true but narrow detail about Leela's progress. Choice C reverses the shift: Priya expected grief but instead focused on teaching. Choice D exaggerates a minor opening detail (the renaming) into the passage's emotional center, which it is not.
- One of the central ideas conveyed by the passage is that:
Answer: the Michelson-Morley experiment did not itself disprove the ether; it was abandoned only once a simpler framework explained the same evidence more efficiently.
The passage explains that ether theories "matched the data about as well" as Einstein's account, whose "virtue was economy," and states the ether was abandoned "not that it was refuted outright, but that a simpler framework came along." Choice A cites only one patched modification, a true but narrow detail. Choice C mistakes a theoretical postulate for new experimental disproof. Choice D reverses the actual finding, which was that light speed showed no directional difference at all.
- Which choice best expresses the passage's central idea about Otis's yearly trips to fix the clock?
Answer: Otis's real motivation for the yearly trip was not the mechanical repair itself but a ritual connection to his father's memory and to the town.
Otis realizes he "had spent nine years mistaking a ritual of memory for a mechanical necessity," confirming the trips were really about connection to his father and the town, not the repair itself. Choice B is unstated and reverses cause; Delphine's speed shows the fix was simple, not that the father exaggerated. Choice C contradicts the text, which says "no one could explain why" and that Otis "stopped trying to find the single loose part." Choice D states a plausible but unsupported reason for hiring Delphine, not the passage's central idea.
- One of the passage's central ideas is that:
Answer: employees tend to treat the default contribution rate set by a retirement plan's designers as an implicit recommendation rather than a neutral starting point, which explains both higher enrollment and reluctance to adjust it.
The passage argues employees treat the default as "a quiet piece of advice, and most of them take it," which accounts for both enrollment and stagnant contribution rates — the point A makes. B is the true but narrow statistic that opens the argument. C mistakes the "easy explanation" of inertia, which the passage explicitly moves past in favor of the default-as-advice theory, for the passage's actual conclusion. D reverses the outcome; participation rose, not fell.
- "Every ribbon on Maya's wall was blue, yet she stared longest at the lone red one from her first race." What does this most suggest?
Answer: Her first race still means the most to her
She looks longest at the ribbon from her first race, showing that beginning means most to her. Shame is tempting, but nothing in the sentence signals embarrassment; lingering on it suggests attachment.
- In "Grandma called her garden a ledger; each row recorded a year she chose to stay," what central idea does the word "ledger" point to?
Answer: The garden is a record of her lasting commitment
A ledger keeps a record, and each row stands for a year she chose to stay, so the garden records her commitment. The income reading is tempting but takes 'ledger' too literally; the rows count years, not money.
