Reading Practice Test 1

1. Which word/phrase in the sentence below is redundant and can be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence?The couple's abrupt decision to elope was sudden and surprised their families.

2. Read the text and answer the question. Goodbye Pencil, Hello KeyboardLook around a modern-day classroom today and you will certainly note many changes from the classrooms of the past. Overhead projectors and chalkboards have been replaced; desks rarely feature a piece of paper, but rather sport a computer monitor. In addition, the days of taking notes, filling out tests, and writing reports with a pen or pencil in hand is utterly obsolete, exchanged for keyboards.

In more than 40 states throughout the country, cursive writing and penmanship are no longer considered an essential part of the curriculum, and none of the major standardized tests require any type of handwriting. Instead, keyboarding skills have taken precedence. The ability to form clear curves and loops on the paper is now outdated; the ability to avoid the painfully slow “hunting and pecking” and type at least 50 words per minute has taken precedence.

The age-old tradition of handwriting is not going quietly in some parts of the nation as at least four states have gone to their legislatures with bills mandating instruction in cursive writing in public schools. Advocates of keeping penmanship skills as part of a curriculum point to a plethora of evidence to support their stance. According to their studies, handwriting training helps young students develop hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills, and even improve overall memory retention. Additional studies have indicated that students who wrote by hand not only wrote faster than on a standard keyboard, but also wrote higher quality sentences.

Opponents to cursive in the classroom, however, point out that today’s generations of students have been keyboarding since before they attended kindergarten. This form of communication is part of how their brains operate, and many find the feel of a pen or pencil in their hands uncomfortable, unwieldy, and generally unpleasant. Keyboarding is quicker, freeing up precious time to work on other projects, and is, inarguably, the preferred communication method of the modern student.

Less than half of the states in the U.S have stopped teaching cursive as part of their curriculum.

3. Read about the artist. Then answer the question below.

Vincent Van Gogh was born in 1853. He is a very famous artist now. But during his lifetime, hardly anyone knew about him or his work. Today his paintings are among the most expensive artworks in the world. But Vincent only sold one painting while he was alive. Vincent was born in Holland, where the weather is usually dark and rainy. When he grew up, he moved to the south of France, where the sun shines more brightly and colors are more vivid. Vincent loved bright colors, and he used them boldly in all of his paintings. He used a lot of paint, and applied it in very thick strokes so that his paintings actually have texture. Vincent painted a lot of pictures of flowers in vases, and a lot of landscapes. He also painted still lifes, buildings and people. Two of his most famous paintings are called Starry Night, and Sunflowers. Most artists sign their name on their painting when they have finished it. But in 1888, Vincent painted four pictures of sunflowers. He only signed two of the paintings. Art experts believe that this is because he wasn’t happy with the other two. Today you can see his paintings in museums all around the world.

How many paintings did Vincent sell in his lifetime?

4. The albatross is a big bird that spends most of its time flying over oceans. It is about three feet tall when it is standing, and its wingspan can get up to eight feet, which is quite a bit longer than an average‐sized man.
The albatross returns to land to breed and mates for life. The female lays only one egg, and both parents care for the baby. Most albatrosses live for around 30 years, but they can live to
be as old as 70! Albatrosses eat crabs, fish, squid, and sometimes dead penguins. They either snatch food from the water’s surface or dive for it. They have to be careful of tiger sharks, who will make a meal out of an albatross if they can catch one. The albatross is an endangered species. They often die when diving into the ocean for food because they get tangled in fishing lines and drown. Being followed by an albatross while at sea is supposed to be good luck.

What does it mean if an albatross follows you?

5. DIRECTIONS: Read each passage and identify how the information is being organized.It is possible to change how you feel about certain foods. If you want to learn to like a food that is good for you, take the following steps. First, imagine all the good things that it is doing in your body. It is making your organs healthy. It is giving you energy. It is making your muscles grow. Next, think about something that you want to be able to do. If you are an athlete, imagine scoring the winning point. If you are an artist or a poet, imagine having the concentration to do the work you want to do. Finally, keep these positive thoughts in mind the next time you try the unfamiliar food. You may not love it at first, but as you continue to tell yourself that eating this food is going to help you be what you want to be, the food will start to taste better to you.

6. DIRECTIONS: Read each passage and identify how the information is being organized.It is better to eat a variety of fresh fruit than it is to drink fruit juice from a bottle. Fresh fruit contains fiber, which makes your body absorb sugar more slowly so that it is easier to digest your food. Fruit juices, on the other hand, are not only a concentrated source of natural sugars, but many store‐bought juices contain a lot of added sugar, too.

 

7. Choose the main idea sentence in the paragraph below.Last summer, I went to Disney World with my family. I was so excited to meet all of the characters that I purchased an autograph book, and when the day was over, I had around 50 signatures! But then a terrible thing happened - I lost the book. My parents told me to be calm, that someone probably found it and brought it to the lost and found. My mom called and told the lost and found office my name. Turns out, they had the book! I almost had a horrible vacation, but thanks to the lost and found office, I did not.

8. Read the following short biography below and identify the main idea.Even though George Washington Carver is very well known for the agricultural work that he did with the peanut plant, he also did a lot of work with research and education about other types of crops. In his adult life, George Washington Carver did research into soybean and sweet potato plants, and taught many farming families proper nutrition so that they could feed themselves well and live a healthy lifestyle. He also created around 100 products that could be made directly from peanuts, such as various types of makeup, gasoline, and plastics.

What is the main idea of this biography?

9. It is true that the powers of Europe may carry on maritime wars with the Union, but there is always greater facility and less danger in supporting a maritime than a continental war. Maritime warfare only requires one species of effort. A commercial people who consent to furnish its government with the necessary funds are sure to possess a fleet.

And it is far easier to induce a nation to part with its money, almost unconsciously, than to reconcile it to sacrifices of men and personal efforts. Moreover, defeat by sea rarely compromises the existence or independence of the people which endures it. As for continental wars, it is evident that the nations of Europe cannot be formidable in this way to the American Union.

It would be very difficult to transport and maintain in America more than 25,000 soldiers; an army which may be considered to represent a nation of about 2,000,000 men. The most populous nation of Europe contending in this way against the Union is in the position of a nation of 2,000,000 of inhabitants at war with one of 12,000,000.

Add to this, that America has all its resources within reach, whilst the European is at 4,000 miles distance from his; and that the immensity of the American continent would of itself present an insurmountable obstacle to its conquest.

Briefly summarize the main idea of the text.

10. 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.

What was the oblong box?