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From J. Kim, "Notes from the Garden," 2022.
Last spring, our community garden asked residents to volunteer for two-hour watering shifts. The sign-up sheet sat mostly empty; even eager gardeners hesitated to block out large chunks of time. In June we tried something smaller: a task board listing five-minute jobs—refill the rain barrel, clip three tomato suckers, sweep the gate path. People started stopping by on their way home, checking off a square, and chatting before leaving. By July, every bed looked cared for, and we met more neighbors than we had during entire seasons. The change was not expensive or dramatic, but it lowered the barrier to participation. When we design projects as a series of small, visible wins, we make it easier for people to show up.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
To criticize residents for failing to commit to longer shifts
To show that breaking tasks into small steps increased community participation
To argue that gardens require professional management to thrive
To compare the effectiveness of different watering techniques
Explanation
The text emphasizes that smaller, simple tasks led to greater involvement. The other choices either misstate the tone, focus on an unrelated claim, or elevate a narrow detail beyond the passage's main point.
City planners long treated vacant lots as eyesores best fenced off. On my block, neighbors proposed something different: a community garden bordered by salvaged bricks, sown with tomatoes, herbs, and marigolds. The city supplied compost; a retired carpenter built raised beds from scrap. By midsummer, the lot that had collected wrappers and windblown weeds held picnic benches and a chalkboard where Saturday recipes were scrawled. Children learned which leaves smelled like lemons; teenagers swapped watering shifts. We still buy groceries, of course, but the harvest has changed the street. People who once hurried past now linger to trade seedlings and news. The garden is small, and it will not solve every problem, yet it has made a neglected space useful, inviting, and shared.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
Describe the steps needed to establish a citywide urban farming mandate.
Show how community gardens can transform neglected spaces into shared assets.
Argue that individual home gardens are superior to public plots.
Recount the history of farming practices in the region.
Explanation
The passage emphasizes how a community garden improved a vacant lot and strengthened neighborhood ties. The other choices either propose policies not discussed, make a comparison the text does not make, or broaden the scope to regional history.
Lina Ortiz, 2019, City Trees. In a city where summers are hotter each year, planting street trees is one of the simplest investments we can make. A single mature tree cools the block, catches stormwater before it floods basements, and filters air that triggers asthma. The price of a sapling and a watering bag is small compared with the cost of heat-related emergency visits. Some residents worry about leaves clogging gutters or roots lifting sidewalks; those concerns are real, but they are manageable through routine maintenance. What we cannot manage, once the asphalt has absorbed a day's heat, is the discomfort we all share. When public dollars are scarce, we should spend them where they do the most good for the most people. Plant the trees now; their shade will repay us for decades.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
To compare the costs of emergency medical care to home repairs
To advocate that the city prioritize planting street trees for broad public benefits
To propose a comprehensive solution to all urban environmental problems
To argue that trees are too burdensome to maintain in dense neighborhoods
Explanation
The text urges the city to plant more street trees because of multiple shared benefits. The other choices are too narrow, too broad, or misstate the author's position as anti-tree.
Last spring, our block converted a weed-choked strip beside the laundromat into a small garden of native flowers. The plot is hardly grand: a few square yards of coneflower, milkweed, and asters squeezed between a fence and the sidewalk. Yet by mid-summer, bees stitched the air from dawn to dusk, and we counted three species of butterflies we had never noticed before. Neighbors lingered to watch, swapping watering shifts and seed packets. When a child pointed out a monarch caterpillar fattening on milkweed, the group fell silent, delighted. The garden did not change the skyline or erase traffic, but it reminded us how even tiny, intentional patches can restore corridors for pollinators that the city has paved over.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
To argue that city budgets should prioritize parks over roads
To explain how even small urban gardens can support pollinators and community engagement
To recount the history of a single vacant lot on one block
To refute claims that native plants are unattractive in dense neighborhoods
Explanation
The text emphasizes that a modest native-plant garden meaningfully supports pollinators and neighbors. The other choices are too broad (A), too narrow (C), or miscast a rebuttal the text does not make (D).
Last winter the lot on Maple and Third was a tangle of chain-link fence and stubborn weeds. By May, neighbors had hauled away tires, layered compost, and marked out beds with twine. Children planted beans alongside retirees who remembered when the block had elm trees. Their Saturday harvest table is small, but it draws conversations that never happened at the old bus stop. City inspectors noticed a drop in litter along the block, and a nearby cafe now buys herbs grown here. The garden has not solved every problem; volunteers still patch leaky hoses and shoo off raccoons. Yet the street feels claimed rather than ignored, and passersby slow to look at the sunflowers.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
to instruct readers on how to start a community garden
to explain how a community garden revitalized a neglected space
to argue that city officials should increase fines for littering
to criticize volunteers for failing to fix all problems
Explanation
The passage describes how a community garden transformed a neglected lot and its surrounding block. The other choices either propose instructions or policies the passage does not offer or fixate on problems mentioned only briefly.
L. Park, 2018, "Paint Between Us." On our block, the vacant lot was a place people hurried past. One spring, a local art teacher proposed painting the back wall with a mural. At first, the plan sounded like decoration for decoration's sake. But on the first Saturday, neighbors who had never spoken stood holding rollers, trading stories about the building that burned down years ago. As flowers and birds bloomed on brick, someone set up a table with lemonade; someone else brought a speaker and a playlist everyone could agree on. When we finished, the wall was beautiful, yes, but the bigger change was how we started slowing down at the corner, greeting one another like co-owners of the block.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
To outline the grant application process used by the artists
To show how a neighborhood mural project strengthened community ties
To compare different painting techniques used on brick walls
To argue that public money should not fund street art
Explanation
The passage emphasizes how the mural brought neighbors together, shifting the block's social life. The other choices either focus on absent details (grants, techniques) or present a claim the passage does not make.
From a neighborhood newsletter (2022): When our block converted a vacant lot into a community garden, we expected tomatoes and zinnias. We did not predict the steady stream of conversations that would follow: advice exchanged over seed packets, tool-sharing agreements, and weekend potlucks among neighbors who had only nodded before. Children learned to recognize basil by scent, and older residents traded recipes that stretched a harvest. Yes, the garden produces baskets of food, enough to donate to the pantry each month. But the deeper harvest is social. People linger longer on the sidewalk now, and in that lingering we have become more attentive to one another. The lot was once a gap; now it is a gathering place, and the neighborhood feels stitched together.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
The garden boosted local property values, which was the project's primary goal.
Community gardens can grow food while also strengthening neighborhood connections.
Volunteer gardeners should carefully track their hours to ensure fair participation.
City funding for vacant-lot projects is often wasteful and misdirected.
Explanation
The passage emphasizes that the garden's most significant outcome is stronger social ties alongside produce. The other choices are either unsupported (property values, funding), or too narrow (tracking hours).
City gardeners often plant for color, not timing, but a recent survey of neighborhood plots suggests that staggering bloom times matters more for bees. In yards where early crocuses gave way to midseason herbs and fall asters, researchers recorded higher diversity of native bees throughout the year. The study did not measure honey yields or fruit harvests; instead, it tracked how long pollen and nectar were available. The result was clear: long, overlapping floral windows kept different bee species active and nesting nearby. The finding is practical. A gardener does not need rare plants or large space, only a plan that avoids a feast in May and a famine by July.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
To criticize gardeners who choose plants for appearance rather than ecology
To explain why staggering bloom times in urban gardens supports diverse bee populations
To describe research methods for measuring honey yields
To argue that rare native plants are necessary for pollinator recovery
Explanation
The text explains that overlapping bloom times sustain a variety of bees. It does not scold gardeners, discuss honey yields, or claim rare plants are required.
Last spring, the cracked lot at the corner of Maple and Third was mostly broken glass and weeds. Today, it is a thicket of staked tomatoes, lettuce rows, and a buzzing strip of marigolds that keeps pests at bay. On Saturday mornings, volunteers harvest boxes of greens for the food pantry, and neighbors linger to trade recipes and seedlings. The trash cans on the block fill less with fast-food wrappers and more with corn husks; even the graffiti has thinned. A few passersby joked early on that nothing would take root in this soil, but a compost workshop for kids now draws a crowd. The garden has done more than feed people; it has given the block a place to work side by side.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
The garden's success is due solely to the forty volunteers who built it in one weekend.
Urban agriculture always eliminates food insecurity in every neighborhood.
A community garden transformed a neglected space while deepening neighborhood connections and access to fresh food.
Some residents initially doubted the garden would grow anything.
Explanation
The passage emphasizes how the garden revitalizes the lot and strengthens community ties while providing produce. The other choices are either a narrow detail (A and D) or an overgeneralization beyond the text's scope (B).
In 2019, when our branch library's roof was under repair, we parked a retrofitted delivery van beside the weekly farmers market and called it the Book Bus. We stocked it with high-demand titles, a laptop for card sign-ups, and a bin of picture books that could be borrowed without a due date. By the second week, families who had never set foot in the brick building were returning the bus's dog-eared paperbacks and lingering to talk. Teen volunteers learned to run checkout, and the bakers slipped us day-old rolls. The bus was a stopgap, meant to bridge a closure. Instead, it introduced neighbors to one another and kept reading in the open air. Even after the roof was fixed, people asked when the bus would roll up again.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
To argue that volunteer labor should replace city services
To recount the steps needed to repair a library roof
To describe how a mobile library expanded access and strengthened community ties
To compare traditional books with e-readers
Explanation
The passage recounts how the Book Bus kept reading accessible and fostered connections. The other choices miscast the focus as roof repair, advocacy to replace services, or an unrelated print-versus-digital comparison.