Explain How Comparisons Affect Meaning Practice Test

Read the following excerpt from a nonfiction argument:

At my city’s high school, we still start class at 7:20 a.m., even though the district’s own attendance reports show first-period absences are highest on Mondays and standardized-test scores dip most in the first hour. Defenders of the schedule say “teenagers just need discipline,” but discipline is not the same thing as biology. For most adolescents, asking them to solve algebra at dawn is like asking a runner to sprint before their lungs have opened: the body can be forced forward, but performance is predictably uneven. A later start time wouldn’t eliminate responsibility; it would simply move responsibility to a moment when students can actually meet it. If we want the first period to be instruction rather than triage, we should align the bell with the brain.

By comparing early school start times to asking a runner to sprint before their lungs have opened, the author primarily serves to…

Read the following excerpt from a nonfiction argument:

Every election cycle, candidates promise to “fix misinformation” by deleting posts and suspending accounts. Some removal is necessary—fraud and harassment are not speech worth preserving—but a strategy built only on takedowns misunderstands how falsehood travels. Misinformation is less like a single weed you can yank and more like dandelion seeds in the wind: if you ignore the soil, the seeds land again, and the field looks the same by next week. The long-term solution is slower and less dramatic: media literacy in schools, transparent corrections, and platform designs that reduce virality for unverified claims. If we treat the problem as ecological rather than criminal, we can respond without pretending we can erase human error.

The comparison to dandelion seeds in the wind helps the author…