The origin of the twelve animals is mythological, with the story being passed down from generation to generation....Despite its complexity, the Calendar is followed to a certain degree, and the Chinese New Year is celebrated by many.

The passage primarily emphasizes the idea that:

Their images were awe-inspiring, unforgettable, but they also inspired in me a desperate need to get back down to ground level....I yearned for the city streets, the knife grinders, the water carriers, the pavement moneylenders, the peremptory soldiers, the railway hordes, the chess players in the Irani restaurants, the snake-buckled schoolchildren, the beggars, the fishermen, the moviemakers, the dockers, the book sewers, the loom operators, the priests. I yearned for life.

The narrator describes the photos by Bombay's first great photographers as primarily inspiring the narrator to:

In the ten years before my own coming into the world, the city had been a gigantic building site; as if it were in a hurry to become, as if it knew it had to provide itself in finished condition by the time I was able to start paying attention to it...No, no, i don't really think along such solipsistic lines. I'm not over-attached to history, or Bombay. Me, I'm the under-attached type.

In lines 25-31, the narrator muses over, then rejects, the notion that:

Funding for public schools need to be increased drastically. Because so many public schools are underfunded, dropout rates are significantly too high in some school districts. Additionally, college attendance rates are very low in these underfunded districts. Another benefit that increased funding would provide is that better funded schools would lead to more students pursuing higher education, and countries that have more educated populations tend to have more innovative and powerful economies.

On the basis of the information in the passage, public schools should receive more funding in order to:

Funding for public schools need to be increased drastically. Because so many public schools are underfunded, dropout rates are significantly too high in some school districts. Additionally, college attendance rates are very low in these underfunded districts. Another benefit that increased funding would provide is that better funded schools would lead to more students pursuing higher education, and countries that have more educated populations tend to have more innovative and powerful economies.

Based on the passage, what has been a cause of high dropout rates?

As a child, I remember the hot summer evenings spent outside with my parents, naming the birds we heard but could not see. In the dying light, our perception was limited to only one sense-our hearing. From tree to tree echoed a cacophony of calls: Was that a blue jay? A Baltimore oriole? Or that chameleon of birds, the mockingbird? As I tested my fledgling ear I turned to my father for reassurance. Behind his discerning eyes lay something that I wouldn't be able to identify until many decades later. Was it...."Dinner is ready!" Mother called. Our Audubon expedition would have to be continued another day.

The point of view from which this passage is told is best described as:

Most of the "alternative" theories of Shakespeare's authorship center on the Oxfordian theory, which suggests that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote all of the plays attributed to Shakespeare. While this theory has little evidence and has been widely rebuked, it still persists in today's day and age. The ironic aspect of the Oxfordian theory is that while most of its proponents focus on their doubtfulness that one person (Shakespeare) could produce such a large volume of work, they do not explain how Edward de Vere himself could have produced these works in his lifetime. This blindness to self-criticism disproves their original position.

The general perspective of the passage is that of:

Iguacu Falls, which sit on the border between Argentina and Brazil, are said to make Niagara look like a leaky faucet. The great cataracts stretch for two and a half miles across lushly foliaged rocky outcroppings before plunging a staggering two hundred and thirty feet into the river below. The falls region is densely forested, and is home to a wide variety of plants and animals, including a number of endangered ones. It is a paradise where parrots dive and swoop through the spray, butterflies cavort among the tropical plants and coatis, and giant otters and anteaters amble through the trees. The foliage itself varies between tropical and deciduous with orchids blushing in the shade of pines and ferns nodding gracefully in the shadow of fruit trees.

The author's attitude toward Iguacu Falls can best be described as which of the following?

But for a few lonely oceanic islands, the unperturbed surface offers no hint of the grand and sweeping energies hidden below.

The author's attitude toward the main subject of the passage can best be described as:

The woman never dreams and this makes her intensely miserable. She thinks that by not dreaming she is unaware of things about herself that dreams would surely give her. She doesn't have the door of dreams that opens every night to question the certain -ties of the day. She stays at the threshold, and the door is always closed, refusing her entrance.

It can reasonably be inferred from the passage that the woman most strongly desires to attain which of the following qualities from dreaming?

I would then take arms against the word, or for it, and bring on an assortment of characters to weigh the word and show me its meaning in my own life.

Bradbury's claim "I would then take arms against the word, or for it" (line 12) most strongly suggests that during his writing sessions, Bradbury would:

Here in this bleak and forbidding place, where the water is almost freezing, subterranean fires have lifted mounds of fresh lava onto the seafloor. Scientists visiting the rift valley for the first time named the volcanic hills in this otherworldly setting after distant, lifeless planets.

The main purpose of the information in lines 71-76 is to:

Yet, what had seemed so foreign to scientists is an integral part of earth's very being, for at the ridge our own planet gives birth. The floor of the rift valley is torn; from the gashes has sprung the seafloor underlying all of Atlantic. Here the youngest, newest pieces are made. Earth is still cooling from her tumultuous birth four and a half billion years ago. Heat, leaking from the molten core and from radioactive decay deep inside the planet, rises toward earth's surface, powering the volcanoes that deliver the ridge to the sea.

One of the main purposes of the last paragraph is to state that the:

We saw the mural the art class created on the side of the school. It was a wonderful painting that displayed the history of Kentucky. When we started to walk away, we noticed some kids opening their can of spray paint and pointing at the mural. We warned them to stay away from it and to not even think about defacing it.

In this sentence, defacing means

Find the meaning of the underlined word from the context.

Jerry and his family were in the mood for something different; they were eager to try the exotic dish from Thailand.

Read the passage and choose the word that is closest in meaning.

"They Need a Cow"

“These children don’t need a cup, they need a cow,” thought Dan West.

West was frustrated that his volunteer efforts during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s did not seem to be helping enough people. Day after day, hungry children begged for the food that he distributed, but the provisions that he gave to one, he had to deny to another.

[1] West decided that simply bestowing food would not improve lives. [2] People needed a way to refurbish their own food supplies. Thus, Operation Heifer, now Heifer International, was born.

Heifer International gives livestock-heifers (young cows), goats, and even bees-to people in need. These animals provide renewable sources of food, such as milk and honey. [3] However, giving one family a goat, while ignoring another family, would abet inequality. So any family that receives livestock is required to give the animal’s first born offspring to another needy family.

[4] Or the family can keep the offspring and offset the livestock gift by giving another family enough money to buy its own animal.

Early missions of Heifer International brought cowhands to war-torn Europe, in the 1940s. [5] In countries like Poland, the organization provided deliverance from poverty, as farmers once again were able to produce their own food. [6] At first, animals and volunteers traveled by ship, but the process was expedited when they began to travel by plane. In an account of his journey to Korea, cowboy Newton S. Goodridge paints a vivid picture of travelling on a plane with 100 goats, 600 rabbits, and an estimated 1,500,000 bees! Heifer International has helped more than 4.5 million farm families in over a hundred countries to become self-reliant.

A terrible civil war in Mozambique pushed hundreds of thousands of people from their lands. [7] These refugees were forced to seek sanctuary in neighboring countries. [8] Seventeen years after the war began, a treaty pacified the country. [9] When people returned from their havens, they had no livestock and found that years of violence had turned their once-fertile land to dust. [10] In 1995, Heifer International interceded by supplying goats to families. By 1999, more than 1600 baby goats had been given to others.

People needed a way _______ their own food supplies.

Read the passage and choose the word that is closest in meaning.

"They Need a Cow"

“These children don’t need a cup, they need a cow,” thought Dan West.

West was frustrated that his volunteer efforts during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s did not seem to be helping enough people. Day after day, hungry children begged for the food that he distributed, but the provisions that he gave to one, he had to deny to another.

[1] West decided that simply bestowing food would not improve lives. [2] People needed a way to refurbish their own food supplies. Thus, Operation Heifer, now Heifer International, was born.

Heifer International gives livestock-heifers (young cows), goats, and even bees-to people in need. These animals provide renewable sources of food, such as milk and honey. [3] However, giving one family a goat, while ignoring another family, would abet inequality. So any family that receives livestock is required to give the animal’s first born offspring to another needy family.

[4] Or the family can keep the offspring and offset the livestock gift by giving another family enough money to buy its own animal.

Early missions of Heifer International brought cowhands to war-torn Europe, in the 1940s. [5] In countries like Poland, the organization provided deliverance from poverty, as farmers once again were able to produce their own food. [6] At first, animals and volunteers traveled by ship, but the process was expedited when they began to travel by plane. In an account of his journey to Korea, cowboy Newton S. Goodridge paints a vivid picture of travelling on a plane with 100 goats, 600 rabbits, and an estimated 1,500,000 bees! Heifer International has helped more than 4.5 million farm families in over a hundred countries to become self-reliant.

A terrible civil war in Mozambique pushed hundreds of thousands of people from their lands. [7] These refugees were forced to seek sanctuary in neighboring countries. [8] Seventeen years after the war began, a treaty pacified the country. [9] When people returned from their havens, they had no livestock and found that years of violence had turned their once-fertile land to dust. [10] In 1995, Heifer International interceded by supplying goats to families. By 1999, more than 1600 baby goats had been given to others.

IN 1995, Heifer International __________ by supplying goats to families.

The most basic type if bow is a physical gesture that is used as a greeting in both meeting and parting. When two people within the Japanese tradition, greet each other in this way, they will bow towards each other, keeping their backs straight and looking down with their eyes. A deeper bow signifies a more formal greeting. Clothing choice in different cultures can signal degrees of formality. To show the lightest degree of respect, a person may bow up to 45-degrees, but a casual greeting with a friend or family member.

What change would you make to the underlined portion in the paragraph above?

Passage A

I learned to let my senses and my Past tell me all that was somehow true.

Passage B

The sound of a good friend whistling like an oriole, pegging the softball as you horse-danced, key-jingled the dusty paths;...

Both Passage A and Passage B highlight Bradbury's use of: