Reading & writing

When a basketball player makes several consecutive shots, spectators often believe the player is more likely to make the next basket, based on a folk belief called the “hot hand” phenomenon. However, statistical analysis reveals that players ____ to become overconfident after making consecutive shots: a player’s shooting percentage actually drops if they have just made a basket.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

• tending

• tends

• tend

• had tended

In an elaborate experiment to determine whether bees can tell time, scientists flew a nest of bees across the Atlantic Ocean and then again across the US. Surprisingly, the bees suffered from jet ____ the scientists to conclude that bees can indeed perceive the passage of time.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

• lag. Leading

• lag: leading

• lag; leading

• lag, leading

Following the approval of the world’s first-ever malaria vaccine by the World Health Organization in 2021, researchers continued to progress, ____ a second malaria vaccine that has proven even more effective in clinical trials than the first. Considering that malaria is among the leading causes of death in many low-income African countries, this scientific breakthrough will likely save millions of lives.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

• envisioning

• developing

• emboldening

• conducting

The Inca left no written records, instead preserving information in the form of knotted textiles called khipu. Poorly understood by outsiders, the knots’ specific meanings were thought to be lost to time. ____ Harvard student Manny Medrano attempted to decipher khipu by comparing them with contemporaneous documents from Spanish conquistadores. In doing so, he discovered that the khipu knots contained accounts of Incan stories and histories.

Stem

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• Nevertheless,

• Hence,

• Furthermore,

• Thereafter,

For centuries, it was believed that Spanish colonists introduced the use of horses to Native Americans. However, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century horse remains show that certain Native American groups—for example, those in Kansas, New Mexico, and Wyoming—____ horses well before they encountered Europeans.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

• will have domesticated

• had domesticated

• have domesticated

• domesticated

For thousands of years, Tibetans have disposed of the bodies of the dead through sky burials—a tradition that involves transporting a body to a high altitude and allowing wild vultures to consume the corpse. Those who practice sky burials believe that the vultures carry the body to the heavens, where the deceased person’s soul ____ until it is ready for its next reincarnation.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

• resides 

• entrenches

• roosts

• dissipates

Spanish-born painter Remedios Varo received initial artistic training from her father, an engineer, who insisted she ____ the technical drawings of his work, which she did precisely. Eventually, however, Varo became involved with a branch of the Surrealist movement that sought to resist logic and reason in its art—a far cry from her initial realism.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

• reiterate 

• censure

• counterfeit

• duplicate

The native Taíno people lived in the Caribbean prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Historians theorize the Taíno did not have a written language, but their culture lives on through art: one only need view ____ on the cave walls of Mona Island in Puerto Rico to see an example of this.

Stem

Which choice completes the text with the most logical word or phrase?

• a manifesto

• an indication

• an etching

• a structure

A 2023 study identified a variation in the gene ABCC9 that may be responsible for differences in the human voice among individuals. This gene is responsible for the fluctuation of collagen and elastin, two proteins that help tissues stretch and, in the case of vocal cords, ____ to this gene would affect the sound of one’s voice.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

• vibrate and changes 

• vibrate. Changes

• vibrate so changes

Match the following

• an etching

• a public declaration of policy and aims

• manifesto

• 
• a structure

• 
• Indication

• a sign or piece of information that suggest something