MAP Test Prep 2 - Reading (10th)

Which of the following words is an antonym of the word discord?

• agreement

• conflict

• excitement

• boredom

Read the paragraph. Then answer the question.

It can be hard to wrap your head around the huge size of the universe and the tiny size of an atom. You could read hundreds of science books and still not get a sense for it. A short video called Powers of Ten provides a tour of the universe in just eight minutes. The video begins with a couple having a picnic, and then zooms out ten times further every ten seconds until the whole Earth is visible, then the Solar System, then the Milky Way Galaxy, and finally reaching the edge of the known universe. Then, the video quickly zooms back in to the couple and every 10 seconds keeps moving 10 times closer to a human hand until cells are visible, then molecules, and finally atoms. At the end of the video the viewer feels like both an ant and a giant!

Which of the following sentences from the passage contains an idiom?

• It can be hard to wrap your head around the huge size of the universe and the tiny size of an atom.

• You could read thousands of science books and still not get a sense for it.

• A short video called Powers of Ten provides a guided tour of the universe in just eight minutes.

• At the end of the film the viewer feels like both an ant and a giant!

Read the passage.

Fleas are small flightless insects that live as parasites on animals' bodies. They typically live on fur or feathers, their strong claws preventing them from being dislodged. They feed on the blood of their host, which might be a dog, a cat, a bird, a reptile, or a human, but a flea can live more than a hundred days without eating. Imagine not eating for a hundred days! The female flea consumes 15 times her own body weight in blood every day; imagine eating 1300 pounds of pasta in one day! One final and amazing fact is that fleas can jump up to eight inches, which is approximately 200 times their own height. That is the same as you jumping to the top of the Empire State Building.

How does the author pull the reader into the text?

• by discussing a topic that everyone is familiar with

• by writing in second person

• by stating that fleas can live on human bodies

• by describing fleas

What is the meaning of the word bidirectional?

• in one direction

• in two directions

• in three directions

• in four directions

Read the following passage from Mark Twain’s  Tom Sawyer, and answer the relevant question on the right:

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at the gate with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing water from the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom’s eyes, before, but now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at the pump. […]

He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in sight presently—the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been dreading. Ben’s gait was the hop-skip-and-jump—proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. […]

[Ben said,] “Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?”

Tom wheeled suddenly and said:

“Why, it’s you, Ben! I warn’t noticing.”

“Say—I’m going in a-swimming, I am. Don’t you wish you could? But of course you’d druther work—wouldn’t you? Course you would!”

Which of the following is a plot point that is advanced by dialogue in the passage?

• Tom whitewashes part of the fence

• Ben taunts Tom

• Ben goes swimming

• Development of Tom’s character

Read the passage and answer the question:

How often do we see everyday objects around us and ask ourselves who invented them? One such invention is the flat-bottomed paper bag, which people nowadays take for granted, but in the 1860s it was completely unheard of.   Margaret Eloise Knight was born in Maine in 1838. Her family moved to New Hampshire after her father's death, and Margaret and her siblings had to leave school at a young age to work at a cotton mill. When she was twelve years old, Knight witnessed an accident at the mill in which a worker was injured by one of the machines. A few weeks later she had developed a safety device for those machines, which was adopted by mills around the city.   Knight moved to Massachusetts in 1867 and began to work for the Columbia Paper Bag Company. The following year she invented and built a machine that was able to fold and glue paper to make flat-bottomed paper bags. The design of the machine was stolen from her by a man who was present when her machine was being built, and he patented the device as his own. This meant that Knight would not receive royalties from her invention. She filed a lawsuit against him and won, making her the first woman to be awarded a U.S. patent. She later established the Eastern Paper Bag Co. and went on to hold 86 more patents, including lid removing pliers, a window frame and sash, and several devices related to rotary engines.   Knight never married, and died in 1914. She was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006, and several of her inventions, especially the paper bag, are still in wide use around the world today.

What type of text is this passage considered?

• memoir

• autobiography

• fiction

• biography

The Walt Disney Company is known for dominating the entertainment industry in the past and present from its classic hits to its modern expansions. It may therefore be hard to believe that the juggernaut of animation that we all know and love almost closed down its animation division entirely, not so long ago. Disney had become very unpopular in the 1980s and the company struggled to produce films that measured up to a fraction of the glory that their predecessors held. That is why the movies that it produced between 1989 and 1999 became known as the Disney Renaissance; as the word renaissance implies, these movies literally rebirthed Disney animation.

What is the connotation of the word “Juggernaut” as it is used in the opening paragraph of the passage?

• A massive force that crushes anything in its path.

• An enormous entity in size and influence that surpasses all competition.

• An unstoppable movement that smothers other movements financially.

• A very successful organization that always leaves its audiences satisfied.

Read the sentence.

The light that came out of the lamp was like sunshine.

What is the meaning of the simile in this sentence?

• The light of the lamp alternates between yellow and blue.

• The light of the lamp is very intense.

• The lamp does not work properly.

• The lamp is a source of heat

Read the passage.

Owning a bakery in France, or a boulangerie, to use the French word, is no piece of cake! There are very strict laws in France regarding boulangeries and what they are allowed or not allowed to do. And for a good reason: the average Frenchman eats half a baguette a day and buys at least one baguette every day; a baguette that is fresh and crisp today will be hard as nails tomorrow. Therefore, having a boulangerie nearby is of the essence to most Frenchmen. France has the highest density of bakeries in the world.

The profession of a boulanger is highly regulated. Not every bakery is a boulangerie; to be called a boulangerie, bread must be made on the premises. Selling bread that is made elsewhere makes the bakery a mere shop, rather than a real French boulangerie. The law also dictates the ingredients of French bread, which may only be flour, yeast, salt and water.

In the past, laws were passed to ensure that every neighborhood would have access to bread 365 days a year. A prefectural decree dating to 1790 stated that all boulangeries had to report to the authorities when they planned to take a vacation or else face a fine. The authorities allowed half of the boulangeries to close in July and half in August, thus ensuring access to bread throughout the year. The decree was scrapped in 2015. As August is the most popular month of the year to go on vacation, people in France fear they will not be able to get a good baguette in August nowadays, especially not a good one from a real boulangerie.

How does the word "fear" in the last paragraph help the reader understand the meaning of the passage?

• It conveys how difficult it is to own a boulangerie in France.

• It conveys how important it is to have boulangeries open in August.

• It conveys how the French take the business of boulangeries very seriously.

• It conveys how French people feel about the ingredients of French bread.