Bundle Test 2

Maybe Your Inner Child Is Comfy in Middle Ages

by Burt Constable

What age are you?

No, that’s how old you are. What age are you?

_____________________________________________________________

Why does the author begin the selection with a question?

• He plans to conclude the selection with an answer.

• He believes his question is one that all people ask themselves.

• He is playing a trick with words to introduce his main point.

• He wants the reader to reflect on what it means to be old.

Tags

CCSS.RI.11-12.6

CCSS.RI. 9-10.6

CCSS.RL.11-12.6

CCSS.RL.9-10.6

CCSS.RI.8.6

Which of these lines best expresses the author’s main point?

• My wife’s ideal age is 30.

• Fifty fit him when he was 35, it fit him when he was 50, and it still fits him.

• That is the period of my life when I truly felt as if I had a grip on things.

• A 16-year-old Andy Rooney surely dreamed of reaching an age when his grumpiness would be considered endearing, almost expected, and not just a character flaw.

Tags

CCSS.RI.11-12.2

CCSS.RI. 9-10.2

CCSS.RL.11-12.2

CCSS.RL.9-10.2

CCSS.RL.8.2

Paragraph 8:

Other people are hopelessly trapped at age 16, no matter how many marriages, jobs, kids and responsibilities they gather. Then there is the

16-year-old who plays the high school clique game, buys the hippest CD and engages in sophomoric stunts merely to fit in—while in his soul, he longs to wear a cardigan sweater, listen to talk radio and gripe about teens.

______________________________________________________________

QUESTION 3

Read the following line from paragraph 8.

In his soul, he longs to wear a cardigan sweater, listen to talk radio and gripe about teens.

_____________________________________________________________

Which of the following best represents the type of person the author is describing?

• Someone who wants to act like a 16-year-old forever

• A person who has always felt out of step with others

• A person who doesn’t understand the concept of an ideal age

• Someone who wishes he could act older than he does

Tags

CCSS.RI.11-12.2

CCSS.RI. 9-10.2

CCSS.RL.11-12.2

CCSS.RL.9-10.2

CCSS.RL.8.2

Which of the following lines would the author most likely have difficulty supporting with solid evidence?

• Every class has a girl who emerges as the “mom” of the group…

• I know lots of middle-aged men.

• Many a night my wife has humored me as I, in the guise of picking up the kids’ toys, will spend 15 minutes trying to lob a Beanie Baby into the toy box from the other side of the room.

• Then there is the 16-year-old who plays the high school clique game, buys the hippest CD and engages in sophomoric stunts merely to fit in.

Tags

CCSS.RI.8.1

CCSS.RI.8.8

CCSS.RL.11-12.1

CCSS.RL.8.1

CCSS.RL.9-10.1

Paragraph 11:

Me? My age is 12. That is the period of my life when I truly felt as if I had a grip on things. (Blissfully ignorant, as opposed to painfully aware ignorant.) That doesn’t mean I was happier then. I’m darn happy today, but back when I was 12, l couldn’t even fathom these higher levels of happiness.

______________________________________________________________

Read this line from paragraph 11.

(Blissfully ignorant, as opposed to painfully aware ignorant.)

Question:

This line suggests that at age 12 the author was —

• A. unaware of how much happiness he was missing

• aware of how difficult being an adult can be

• too young to be aware of his lack of knowledge

• happy not to know too much

Tags

CCSS.RI.11-12.2

CCSS.RI. 9-10.2

CCSS.RL.11-12.2

CCSS.RL.9-10.2

CCSS.RL.8.2

The primary support for the author’s argument comes from —

• academic research

• other journalists

• statistical data

• personal observation

Tags

CCSS.RI.11-12.1

CCSS.RI.11-12.5

Why does the author use parenthetical asides in this selection?

*a PARENTHETICAL ASIDE is added information to to the text that is not needed to give purpose to the main idea. If it is taken out of the passage completely, that passage will lose no meaning.

• To support his arguments with evidence

• To elaborate on the origins of his theory

• To organize his ideas effectively

• To lend a playful tone to his writing

Tags

CCSS.RI.11-12.6

CCSS.RI. 9-10.6

CCSS.RL.11-12.6

CCSS.RL.9-10.6

CCSS.RL.8.6

If you could live forever at one particular age, what age would you choose? When the Harris Poll asked this question of a cross-section of 2,306 adults nationwide, the average age chosen was 41.

But that number is deceiving. There was absolutely no consensus of one ideal age with responses ranging from younger than 21 to older than 90. “Forty-one” is just an average of the answers. When broken down by gender, women chose 43 as the ideal age, while men chose 39.

There was a distinct pattern, though. Most people chose an ideal age that was fairly close to their current age. The exception is that once folks hit 50, the age they chose was younger. A small, but not insignificant, number of people choose remarkably old ages as the ideal. Fully one in 12, or 8 percent of the total sample, see 90 or older as the ideal age if you are healthy.

If you could stop time and live forever in good health at

a particular age, at what age would you like to live? The median ages they

chose:

● People 18 to 24 years chose 27

● People 25 to 29 years chose 31

● People 30 to 39 years chose 37

● People 40 to 49 years chose 40

● People 50 to 64 years chose 44

● People over 65 years chose 59

The age people chose as the ideal only seemed to be influenced by their current age and not whether they were rich or poor, African American, white, Hispanic, Republican, Democrat or independent, highly educated or not.

______________________________________________________________

Question:

What is the primary purpose of the boxed information titled “What Is the Ideal Age to Be?”

• To show the variety of answers to the question about ideal age

• To indicate that people constantly want to change their ideal age

• To illustrate widespread agreement about ideal age

• To disprove the author’s main argument about ideal age

Tags

CCSS.RI.1.5

CCSS.RI.2.5

CCSS.RI.K.5

The author most nearly characterizes the role of climate change in the course of history as one that:

• is neither all important nor safely disregarded.

• is rightly ignored by archaeologists and scientists.

• was greater in medieval Europe than it is today.

• will eventually be seen as direct and causative.

Tags

CCSS.RI.11-12.6

CCSS.RI. 9-10.6

CCSS.RL.11-12.6

CCSS.RL.9-10.6

CCSS.RL.8.6

Speak the words “ice age,” and the mind turns to Cro-Magnon mammoth hunters on windswept European plains devoid of trees. But the Little Ice Age (approximately A.D. 1300–1850) was far from a deep freeze.

______________________________________________________________

Question:

The main idea of the first paragraph is that the Little Ice Age:

• was a period defined by prolonged global cooling.

• occurred during the era of Cro-Magnon mammoth hunters.

• was marked by frequent and short-term climate shifts.

• resulted from interactions between the atmosphere and ocean.

Tags

CCSS.RI.11-12.2

CCSS.RI. 9-10.2

CCSS.RL.11-12.2

CCSS.RL.9-10.2

CCSS.RI.8.2