Reading for Meaning: Practice

Poets who compose in sign languages work with tools that spoken-language poets do not have. Deaf poet Rowan Adeyemi, for example, uses the space around her body as part of her poems: a sign placed high and far away can suggest a distant memory, while one made close to her chest can suggest something private. She also repeats hand shapes across several signs, creating a visual pattern that works much like rhyme does in spoken verse.

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Embroidered samplers, pieces of cloth on which young people practiced stitching, were often signed but rarely dated. One sampler in a small Welsh museum shows a verse and a picture of a ship labeled with the name Morwennol. Curator Rhys Pritchard found shipyard records showing that the Morwennol was first launched in 1831 and that no earlier ship carried that name. It can therefore be concluded that the sampler ______

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Salt marshes are coastal wetlands covered with grasses and flooded by the tide twice a day. As the tide rises, the water carries fine particles of mud and sand. When the water flows through the dense grass stems, it slows down and drops these particles, which build up on the marsh surface. Ecologist Darnell Whitfield has measured this buildup and found that, in healthy marshes, it can raise the ground level fast enough to keep the marsh from being drowned as sea levels slowly rise.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

Researcher Hana Kobayashi observed visitors in an art museum where some paintings had benches placed in front of them and others did not. Visitors spent an average of 50 seconds in front of paintings with benches but only about 20 seconds in front of similar paintings without benches. When the museum moved the benches to different paintings, the longer viewing times moved with them. These findings suggest that ______

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Most public libraries lend books, but some have expanded what they offer. The public library in the town of Wrenfield now lends power drills, sewing machines, telescopes, and even cake pans. Librarian Oksana Delacroix-Mwangi explains that many residents need such items only once or twice a year and would rather not buy them. Since the collection opened, she reports, the tools have been borrowed thousands of times, and many borrowers are people who had rarely visited the library before.

Which choice best summarizes the text?

Limpets are small, cone-shelled animals that cling to rocks along the seashore. Marine biologist Chidi Okafor measured how much force was needed to pull limpets off rocks and found that the force was much greater on days with strong waves than on calm days. He concludes that limpets grip the rock more tightly when waves are rough. Based on Okafor's conclusion, a limpet on a rock during a storm with strong waves would most likely ______

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Psychologist Ines Kowalczyk-Adebayo asked two groups of volunteers to memorize the same list of twenty grocery items. The first group simply studied the list as written. The second group was told to sort the items into categories, such as fruits, dairy, and cleaning supplies, before studying them. When tested an hour later, the second group recalled far more items, which led Kowalczyk-Adebayo to conclude that organizing information into categories makes it easier to remember.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

Many potters use glazes that contain copper. Ceramic chemist Adebayo Ogun explains that when a copper glaze is fired in a kiln with plenty of oxygen, it turns green, but when the kiln's oxygen supply is limited, the same glaze turns deep red. A potter opened a kiln and found that a bowl coated in a copper glaze had come out bright green. This result indicates that the bowl was most likely fired ______

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In the early days of cinema, films had no recorded sound, so many theaters hired pianists to play during screenings. These musicians rarely received printed scores. Instead, pianist Mabel Okafor, who played in a Chicago theater in the 1910s, described watching each new film once in the morning and then improvising music that matched its scenes during the evening shows. She noted that a chase scene called for fast, rising passages, while a farewell called for slow, quiet chords.

According to the text, how did Mabel Okafor prepare to play for a new film?

Until 1870, the town council of a small farming community in the American Midwest kept its meeting records only in English. That year, after dozens of German-speaking families settled in the town, the council began recording each meeting in both English and German. Historian Grace Oyelaran notes that at the same time, the council also began posting notices of upcoming meetings in both languages. These changes suggest that the council ______

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For centuries, wool dyers relied on plants such as madder and indigo for color. Textile artist Siobhan Nakashima has been experimenting with a different source: wild mushrooms. She simmers dried mushrooms in water to make a dye bath, then soaks wool in it for several hours. According to Nakashima, some species that look plain brown on the forest floor produce surprisingly bright colors, including rose, gold, and even blue-green.

According to the text, what has Nakashima found about some mushroom species?

Linguist Salote Havili compared the vocabularies of two neighboring Pacific island communities whose languages are only distantly related. She found that the communities use nearly identical words for fishing nets, hooks, and canoe parts but very different words for farming tools and crops. Historical accounts show that fishers from both islands often worked the same waters and traded equipment, while farmers rarely traveled between the islands. This evidence suggests that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?