NMSQT #2 - Module 1

Novelist Leon Forrest admired William Faulkner’s writing style. Forrest’s novel Divine Days contains a long passage in tribute to Faulkner that is a perfect ________ of Faulkner’s style: anyone familiar with Faulkner’s writing would see the resemblance.

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

• forgetting

• rejection

• imitation

• opinion

Shoppers can help keep money cycling within a community by making purchases at small local businesses instead of large retailers. Some cities are ________ programs to encourage this behavior, establishing reward points and other incentives for shopping at small businesses.

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

• instituting

• occupying

• underestimating

• encountering

Economists often assert that countries looking to increase their reliance on solar energy should expand their capacity for storage; having an ample reserve of stored energy can mitigate the effects of _____________ solar energy collection caused by unpredictable shifts in cloud cover and haze.

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

• developments of

• fluctuations in

• calibrations with

• incentives for

As discussed by scholar Anna Mladentseva, many artworks produced in the mid-1990s to the early 2000s exclusively for exhibition on the internet have become inaccessible because viewing them requires the use of ______ software (most notably Adobe Flash, discontinued in 2021).

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

• defunct

• arcane

• ubiquitous

• extraneous

The following text is from the 1989 novel The Ancient Child by Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday. The main character has achieved tremendous commercial success as a painter.

More and more often he was asked to compromise his art or himself in one way or another, and more often than not he did so, for he was inclined to be passive and naïve; it was difficult for him to say no. Those who exhibited his work, who praised and purchased it, and who demanded its proliferation began to determine it.

As used in the text, what does the word “determine” most nearly mean?

• Conclude

• Dictate

• Evaluate

• Select

Ordinary soap bubbles usually exist for a minute or less before popping g due to either a rupture forced by gravity-induced drainage or the evaporation of the liquid from which the bubble is composed. But physicist Aymeric Roux and colleagues discovered ways to mitigate these factors, resulting in bubbles that can last for a year or more. For example, glycerol tends to adhere to water molecules, so a bubble with a shell that contains both water and glycerol is able to draw additional water molecules from the surrounding air and thereby compensate for evaporation.

Which choice best states the purpose of the underlined portion in the text as a whole?

• It describes the effects of a process devised by researchers that increases the longevity of an object discussed in the text.

• It details the circumstances that prompted the research discussed in the text.

• It presents a reason why the phenomenon discussed in the text that the researchers wanted to avoid will inevitably occur.

• It mentions a method discussed in the text that researchers intend to test in future experiments.

Generally it takes Tule geese about four days to migrate south for the winter. From their summer breeding grounds in Cook Inlet, Alaska, the birds begin by flying over the Gulf of Alaska, keeping about 100 miles from the Canadian shore. They pause to rest on the Pacific Ocean, then fly toward Summer Lake, Oregon, before finally arriving at their winter destination of Sacramento Valley, California. In 2020, however, it took the geese over twice as long to make their way from Cook Inlet to Sacramento Valley. According to researchers, the reason was airborne pollutants.

Which choice best states the function of the underlined portion in the text as a whole?

• It illustrates a change in Tule geese’s usual flight behavior.

• It suggests an explanation for why Tule geese breed in Alaska.

• It describes part of the Tule geese’s typical winter migration journey.

• It compares Tule geese to other birds that migrate south for the winter.

In 1154, Muhammad al-Idrisi completed a collection of maps of the lands known to medieval Arabic and European scholars. This collection was titled Al-Kitāb al-Rujārī (The Book of Roger), after the Norman king Roger II who hired him to create it. To create the collection, al-Idrisi consulted Arabic and Greek maps and interviewed travelers about the lands they visited. He included these travelers’ stories alongside the map illustrations.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text about Muhammad al-Idrisi?

• To discuss the benefits of studying mapmaking

• To explain how travelers created maps

• To describe a collection of medieval maps and how it was created

• To compare medieval Arabic and Greek mapmaking techniques

A study by Dr. Paul Hanel and colleagues concluded that people are more likely to behave politely when listening to ideas they disagree with if they think about values before they engage in a discussion. Study participants were assigned to one of two groups. The experimental group spent a few minutes writing about one of their personal values before they had a group discussion on a controversial topic. And the control group spent a few minutes writing about a drink (tea, milk, etc.) before their group discussion on that topic. Hanel and colleagues found that the experimental group’s discussion was more civil than the control group’s discussion was.

Which choice best describes the main purpose of the text about Dr. Paul Hanel's study?

• To describe a widely held belief and how a study’s results support that belief

• To argue that researchers were surprised by the results of a certain study

• To suggest ways to improve a certain study’s experimental design

• To explain a study’s conclusion and how a research team arrived at that conclusion

In the 1960s, Chavela Vargas became an unlikely star in ranchera, a style of traditional Mexican music. Most ranchera singers had clear, polished voices and performed with a full band. But Vargas accompanied her raspy voice with just her guitar. Dressed in men’s trousers and a poncho, she would perform classic songs that had been written from a male point of view and were usually sung by men. She also altered those songs by performing them much more slowly than other ranchera singers did. The slower tempo allowed her to express the emotional quality of the lyrics more fully.

According to the text, what is one way that Vargas differed from other ranchera singers?

• She possessed a voice that was clear and polished.

• She avoided singing songs written from a male point of view.

• She disliked performing classic songs.

• She altered classic songs by slowing them down.