Reading Practice Test 2

1. 2

Read the following short biography below and identify the main idea.The 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, was known in his adult life as being a very strong, very outspoken man who intimidated many people. He was courageous and often spoke in a powerful tone. Yet when he was younger, Theodore Roosevelt was the complete opposite. In fact, as a child, he was extremely sick. He suffered from severe asthma, which made him sickly and caused his body to become weak. His father wanted his son to be a strong young man, and Theodore - who did not want to disappoint his father - decided to spend his time exercising, lifting weights, and boxing. All of the exercise and the fresh air did him good. Theodore eventually became very strong and got rid of his asthma through hard work and dedication.

What is the main idea of this biography?

2. Read the text and answer the question.In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than in mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.
Now the trumpet summons us again - not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are - but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation" - a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.
Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shank from this responsibility - I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it -- and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

Which phrase represents a metaphor to show the contagiousness of joining together to take action?

3. Teen pregnancy prevention programs have had a positive impact on teen pregnancy rates across the United States.                   that in 1990, one in every 100 teenage females experienced a teenage pregnancy. Since the increase of teen pregnancy prevention programs in the late 1990s, that number has dropped to one in every 300 teenage females.

Which transition best connects the evidence to the claim it supports?

4. Which word/phrase in the sentence below is redundant and can be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence?The restaurant's accountants determined that there might have possibly been a breach of security involving the restaurant's payment portal.

5. DIRECTIONS: Identify the structure of each passage. After laying only a single egg, the female penguin heads out to sea and stays there until it is almost time for the egg to hatch. The male penguin incubates the egg, carrying it between his legs and under his feathers to keep it warm. Just before it is time for the egg to hatch, the female returns to land.

6. Read the text and answer the question. The Dark Forest Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness - a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.
But there was life, abroad in the land and defiant. Down the frozen waterway toiled a string of wolfish dogs. Their bristly fur was rimed with frost. Their breath froze in the air as it left their mouths, spouting forth in spumes of vapor that settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed into crystals of frost. Leather harness was on the dogs, and leather traces attached them to a sled which dragged along behind. The sled was without runners. It was made of stout birch-bark, and its full surface rested on the snow. The front end of the sled was turned up, like a scroll, in order to force down and under the bore of soft snow that surged like a wave before it. On the sled, securely lashed, was a long and narrow oblong box. There were other things on the sled, blankets, an axe, and a coffee-pot and frying-pan; but prominent, occupying most of the space, was the long and narrow oblong box.
In advance of the dogs, on wide snowshoes, toiled a man. At the rear of the sled toiled a second man. On the sled, in the box, lay a third man whose toil was over, a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down until he would never move nor struggle again. It is not the way of the Wild to like movement. Life is an offence to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement. It freezes the water to prevent it running to the sea; it drives the sap out of the trees till they are frozen to their mighty hearts; and most ferociously and terribly of all does the Wild harry and crush into submission man - man who is the most restless of life, ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement.
But at front and rear, unawed and indomitable, toiled the two men who were not yet dead. Their bodies were covered with fur and soft-tanned leather. Eyelashes and cheeks and lips were so coated with the crystals from their frozen breath that their faces were not discernible. This gave them the seeming of ghostly masques, undertakers in a spectral world at the funeral of some ghost. But under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space.

In the paragraph that introduces the dogs and sleds, which element provides the most suspense?

7. Which word/phrase in the sentence below is redundant and can be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence?In 2014. researchers discovered and uncovered one of the biggest dinosaurs of all time, a new species of titanosaur, one of the largest species of dinosaurs to ever have walked on Earth.

8. A recent study produced groundbreaking results related to teens and social media use.                , teens spend less time using social media than previously thought.

Which transition word best connects the evidence with the analysis of the evidence?

9. DIRECTIONS: Identify the structure of each passage. Penguins often catch fish that are caught underneath the ice. They swim under the ice, catching the fish with their beaks and swallowing them whole. Though penguins don’t have teeth, they have stiff spines on their tongue that point backward, down towards the throat, so that when they are swallowing their prey, it can’t wriggle back out of their mouths.

10. Choose the main idea sentence in the paragraph below.Have you ever wondered about the bread on your sandwich? Chances are, it might be either whole wheat or white bread. But there are many different kinds of bread that are made throughout the world. One type of bread that you probably have never made a sandwich with is called Naan, a flatbread that is baked on the side of an oven. Another type you probably have not used for a sandwich is called Matza, which is more like a cracker than fluffy bread.