Craft & Structure: Skill: Words in Context EASY

Artist Marilyn Dingle’s intricate, coiled baskets are ______ sweetgrass and palmetto palm. Following a Gullah technique that originated in West Africa, Dingle skillfully winds a thin palm frond around a bunch of sweetgrass with the help of a “sewing bone” to create the basket’s signature look that no factory can reproduce.

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

• indicated by

• handmade from

• represented by

• collected with

The invention in 1958 of the integrated circuit (or microchip) radically altered the semiconductor industry. In fact, some historians argue that it fundamentally ______ the industry by enabling it to take advantage of mass production methods for the first time.

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

• overwhelmed

• bypassed

• obstructed

• transformed

Botanist Al Kovaleski has pointed out that maple trees already thrive in a wide variety of climates and thus may ______ changes in climate better than some other tree species do. The alterations maples may undergo in response to a changing climate are likely to be relatively small and easily achieved.

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

• relocate from

• refer to

• originate from

• adapt to

The following text is from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. The narrator is being driven in a carriage through a remote

region at night.

The baying of the wolves sounded nearer and nearer, as though they were closing round on us from every side. I

grew dreadfully afraid, and the horses shared my fear. The driver, however, was not in the least disturbed; he kept

turning his head to left and right, but I could not see anything through the darkness.

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

• disorganized

• alarmed

• offended

• interrupted

Dance choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar aims to give people the opportunity to be ______ her creative process. For example, live performances of her dance HairStories, which debuted in 2001, featured videos of people across the United States talking about their hair and audience members sharing pictures of their interesting hairstyles.

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

• nervous about

• completed by

• delayed by

• involved in

The works of Chicana artist Ester Hernandez are now ______ in museums both in the United States and abroad, but the murals she contributed to as a member of Las Mujeres Muralistas early in her artistic career were displayed in outdoor public spaces across San Francisco.

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

• invented

• adjusted

• featured

• recommended

In the 1990s, conservationists began planting more than 500,000 native trees in the habitat of the Azores bullfinch to boost the bird’s numbers. This approach was apparently ______: the Azores bullfinch’s population size increased from as few as 100 birds at the end of the 1980s to around 1,300 in 2023. 

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

• amusing

• costly

• successful

• disastrous

Former astronaut Ellen Ochoa says that although she doesn’t have a definite idea of when it might happen, she ______ that humans will someday need to be able to live in other environments than those found on Earth. This conjecture informs her interest in future research missions to the moon.

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

• demands

• speculates

• doubts

• establishes

The following text is from Anita Desai’s 2011 novella Translator Translated. While working on her translation of a novel written in Odia (a language of India) into English, the narrator looks out her window at night to clear her mind.

I tried to distract myself with these sights of the ordinary world, but in my mind it was the lines I had been translating and the lines that I had been writing that remained in the forefront. I longed for sleep to obliterate them but it eluded me. Perhaps everything would be normal again once I had sent off the manuscript, I thought, and looked forward to completing the work.

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

• destroying

• finishing

• advertising

• rejecting

A musician and member of the Quechua of Peru, Renata Flores Rivera was eager to promote the Quechua language in her music, but she was ______ speaking it. She met this challenge by asking her grandmother, a native speaker of Quechua, to help her pronounce words in her song lyrics and also by taking classes in the language.

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

• prepared for

• inexperienced with

• skilled in

• excited about