Command of textual evidence: foundations

In her 1921 poem “Spring,” Edna St. Vincent Millay subverts conventional depictions of springtime. Instead of celebrating growth and renewal, Millay disputes the merit of the season entirely: ______

Which quotation from “Spring” most effectively illustrates the claim?

• “To what purpose, April, do you return again? / Beauty is not enough.”

• The sun is hot on my neck as I observe / The spikes of the crocus.

• The smell of the earth is good. / It is apparent that there is no death.

• Life in itself / Is nothing, / An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

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Hip-hop pedagogy is a form of teaching that’s gaining popularity across school subjects. It involves incorporating hip-hop and rap music into lessons as well as using hip-hop elements when teaching other subject matters. For example, Quan Neloms’s students look for college-level vocabulary and historical events in rap songs. Researchers claim that in addition to developing students’ social justice awareness, hip-hop pedagogy encourages student success by raising students’ interest and engagement.

Which finding, if true, would most strongly support the underlined claim?

• Courses that incorporate hip-hop and rap music are among the courses with the highest enrollment and attendance rates.

• Educators report that they enjoy teaching courses that involve hip-hop and rap music more than teaching courses that don’t.

• Students tend to be more enthusiastic about rap music than they are about hip-hop music.

• Students who are highly interested in social justice issues typically don’t sign up for courses that incorporate hip-hop and rap music.

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Roasted green chiles are a popular ingredient in Southwestern cuisine, but the traditional roasting method of burning propane is not environmentally friendly. To see if solar power could provide a better alternative, engineer Kenneth Armijo and his team roasted batches of green chiles using between 38 and 42 heliostats, which are devices that concentrate sunlight. The team was successful in reaching the same roasting temperature used in traditional propane roasting, but they found that propane yielded faster results. While the fastest solar-roasted green chiles took six minutes, batches using propane took only four. Armijo hypothesizes that they can reduce the roasting time for solar-roasted green chiles by using more heliostats.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support Armijo’s hypothesis?

• Attempts to roast green chiles using 50 heliostats yields results in fewer than six minutes.

• Green chile connoisseurs prefer the flavor of solar-roasted green chiles over the flavor of propane roasted green chiles.

• The skins of solar-roasted green chiles are easier to peel than the skins of propane-roasted green chiles.

• The temperature inside the roasting drum is distributed more evenly when roasting green chiles with solar power than with propane.

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“The Rock and the Sea” is an 1893 poem by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In the poem, a rock is portrayed as intending to confront and restrain the sea: ______

Which quotation from “The Rock and the Sea” most effectively illustrates the claim?

• “I am the Rock. Black midnight falls; / The terrible breakers rise like walls; / With curling lips and gleaming teeth / They plunge and tear at my bones beneath.”

• “I am the Sea. The earth I sway; / Granite to me is potter’s clay; / Under the touch of my careless waves / It rises in turrets and sinks in caves.”

• “I am the Sea. I hold the land / As one holds an apple in his hand, / Hold it fast with sleepless eyes, / Watching the continents sink and rise.”

• “I am the Rock, presumptuous Sea! / I am set to encounter thee. / Angry and loud or gentle and still, / I am set here to limit thy power, and I will!”

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The Milky Way galaxy is composed of millions of stars in a relatively flat structure containing a thin disk and a thick disk. Based on computer simulations and analysis of data on the brightness, position, and chemical composition of about 250,000 stars in the thick disk (collected from two telescopes, one in China and one orbiting in space), astrophysicists Maosheng Xiang and Hans-Walter Rix claim that the thick disk of the Milky Way formed in two distinct phases rather than a single one.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the researchers’ claim?

• There’s an age difference of about 2 billion years between certain stars in the thick disk.

• The stars in the Milky Way tend to have very similar chemical compositions.

• The thin disk contains about twice as many stars that can be seen from Earth as the thick disk does.

• The telescopes used by the researchers have detected stars of similar ages in galaxies other than the Milky Way.

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A researcher conducted an experiment inspired by studies suggesting that people may benefit from feeling frightened in certain circumstances, such as when watching scary movies or visiting haunted attractions. The researcher recruited several participants and had them walk through a local haunted house attraction. Immediately after exiting the attraction, each participant completed a survey about their experience. Based on the survey responses, the researcher claims that feeling frightened in controlled situations can boost a person’s mood and confidence.

Which quotation from a participant would best illustrate the researcher’s claim?

• “My friends kept laughing as we were walking through the haunted house.”

• “The haunted house was scary at first, but I knew everyone was just acting, so I felt less scared after a few minutes.”

• “The sense of relief I felt at the end of the haunted house was similar to the feelings I have when I finish a scary movie.”

• “After I came out of the haunted house, I felt very accomplished and less stressed.”

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American fashion designer Patrick Kelly was known for his love of colorful buttons. Many of his signature dresses feature bold assortments of buttons throughout the garment. In a paper, a fashion design student claims that Kelly’s use of buttons as decoration was inspired by his childhood observations of the styles and actions of the women in his family. Which quotation from a work by a historian would be the most effective evidence for the student to include in support of this claim?

• “Kelly’s grandmother, who would repair clothing when he was a child, frequently added mismatched buttons to the clothes to draw attention away from any flaws in the garments.”

• “Kelly was destined to be a designer from a young age: he learned how to sew clothing from his aunt Bertha, and his love of drawing was developed by his mother.”

• “Although some of the assortments of buttons appear to be mismatched pieces scattered randomly throughout Kelly’s dresses, his most famous designs feature carefully crafted patterns of matching buttons.”

• “Many of Kelly’s contemporaries were inspired by his designs to incorporate buttons, as well as zippers and snaps, as decorative items in their work.

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As a monthly newsletter formed in 1969 by a group of Asian American students at the University of California, Los Angeles, Gidra helped raise awareness about social and political issues concerning the Asian American community on campus and at large. The newsletter had an expansive reach for a publication of its kind: around 4,000 copies were published each month. A student writing a history paper, however, hypothesizes that Gidra’s influence cannot be measured by the number of newsletters published monthly alone.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the student’s hypothesis?

• The students who initially formed Gidra each contributed financially to its creation.

• Gidra was initially based out of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA.

• People would often give their copies of Gidra to others once they had finished reading an issue.

• In addition to covering current events, Gidra also featured works of art and literature.

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Some residents in a neighborhood in Atlanta recently founded a community garden inside a local park. The residents agreed to volunteer to take care of the garden together. Students at a local high school surveyed some of the volunteers as part of a project to understand the impact of the new garden. The students concluded that the new garden benefited the community overall by fostering connections and relationships between the volunteers and other residents of the neighborhood who weren’t volunteering at the garden.

Which quotation from a survey respondent would best illustrate the students’ conclusion?

• “I love getting the opportunity to be outside and around nature, especially on days when the weather is nice.”

• “We’re lucky to have a few expert gardeners living in the neighborhood. Some volunteers and I have gone to them a few times with questions, and they’ve been eager to help us and to learn more about the project.”

• “My favorite thing about the garden is the feeling of pride I get when I walk by each day. As I see the plants growing, I feel good knowing I had a small part in creating this beautiful space in the neighborhood.”

• “Our first challenge was deciding what plants would be most suitable to the climate and soil here in Atlanta. We needed plants that could survive the hot and humid summers.”

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A 2019 study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution looked at data from more than 1,500 species of birds, mammals, and fish in order to determine whether their rate of evolutionary change was linked to species survival. The study found that while some species did evolve faster than others, there was no clear relationship between evolutionary rate and survival. Instead, the study suggests that previous species success predicts species survival much more accurately than speed of adaptation does.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the underlined claim?

• Endangered and extinct species displayed a significantly slower evolutionary rate than other species.

• Evolutionary rate only impacted species survival when adaptations were linked to environmental pressures.

• Successful species tended to remain more successful than more quickly-evolving competitors.

• Invasive species that overtook competitors tended to exhibit a higher evolutionary rate than other species.

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