Vocabulary Quiz

Read the passage and then answer the question.

It's a summer night in New Mexico. A great deluge has just swept over the desert landscape, creating ponds out of roadside ditches, once-empty watering holes, and playas. The conditions are now right for spadefoot toads to gather in these ponds and lay their eggs, all in a single night. As hundreds of male toads call for a mate, the normal stillness and silence of the desert is broken by the cacophony of their quack-like calls. By morning, up to 2,500 eggs may have been laid by each female.

What is the meaning of deluge as used in the passage?

• flood

• strong gust of wind

• heat wave

• sand storm

Tags

CCSS.RI.9-10.4

CCSS.RI.9-10.4

CCSS.RI.6.4

CCSS.RI.7.4

CCSS.RI.8.4

Read the passage and then answer the question.

It's a summer night in New Mexico. A great deluge has just swept over the desert landscape, creating ponds out of roadside ditches, once-empty watering holes, and playas. The conditions are now right for spadefoot toads to gather in these ponds and lay their eggs, all in a single night. As hundreds of male toads call for a mate, the normal stillness and silence of the desert is broken by the cacophony of their quack-like calls. By morning, up to 2,500 eggs may have been laid by each female.

What is the meaning of the word cacophony?

• chaotic noise

• melody

• restlessness

• peacefullness

Tags

CCSS.L.3.2F

In the summer of 1978, a group of geologists stumbled upon a tiny, dilapidated homestead in a remote and otherwise unoccupied corner of Siberia. Upon further investigation, the researchers discovered that the crumbling cabin and overgrown garden were home to a family of five. Karp Lykov, his wife Akulina, and their children had fled to this desolate region in 1936 in order to escape religious persecution.

In the intervening decades, the Lykovs had eked out a meager existence for themselves. They subsisted on their crops and on hunted game whenever possible, but they were often forced to forage for berries and pine nuts to stay alive. This uncertain lifestyle eventually took its toll: in 1961, after a summer snowstorm destroyed the year's harvest, Akulina died of starvation.

What is the meaning of subsisted as used in the passage?

• thrived

• survived

• worked

• feasted

Tags

CCSS.L.11-12.4C

CCSS.L.6.4C

CCSS.L.7.4C

CCSS.L.8.4C

CCSS.L.9-10.4C

Wanting to help the family, the geologists made numerous gifts of seeds, clothing, utensils, and other goods. This largess was lost on Karp Lykov and his older children, who maintained a deep distrust of all things modern and were very timid around outsiders. His younger son and daughter, Dmitry and Agafia, were not nearly so diffident. They were fascinated and delighted by the technologies—like flashlights and television—that had been invented during their forty years of isolation. Ultimately, however, the Lykovs chose to pass up the comforts of modernity and live out the rest of their natural lives in the Siberian wilderness.

What is the meaning of the word largess as used in the passage?

• luck

• sophistication

• wealth

• generosity

Tags

CCSS.L.11-12.4C

CCSS.L.6.4C

CCSS.L.7.4C

CCSS.L.8.4C

CCSS.L.9-10.4C

The 1993 movie Jurassic Park explores dangers that can arise from using technology to resurrect extinct species. In the film, scientists extract dinosaur DNA from prehistoric mosquitoes preserved in amber and use it to create living dinosaurs for an island theme park. However, the dinosaurs prove to be less tractable than predicted. They escape from their enclosures and begin attacking the humans, creating chaos on the island. The movie serves as a warning about the revival of extinct species—a process known as de-extinction.

What is the meaning of the word tractable as used in the passage?

• easy to maintain

• easy to breed

• easy to control

• easy to train

Tags

CCSS.RI.9-10.4

CCSS.RI.9-10.4

CCSS.RI.6.4

CCSS.RI.7.4

CCSS.RI.8.4