4- ] SAT .The Critical Reading Question

4 - ] Critical Reading Question

 

The Critical Reading Question

Exercise D

This exercise provides you with a mixture of reading passages similar in variety to what you will encounter on the SAT . Answer all questions on the basis of what is [ stated ] or [ implied ] in the passages .

The following passage analyzes the contributions of the Mexican cowboy to American culture and to the English language .

            The near-legendary history of the American West might have been quite different had the Mexican not brought cattle-raising to New Mexico and Texas . The Spanish style of herding cattle on open ranges was different from the style of other Europeans , particularly the English . The American rancho was possible because of the lack of enough water for normal agricultural practices , and because of the easy availability of large amounts of land. This land-extensive form of cattle-raising required different techniques and brought forth the vaquero , the cowboy ( from the Spanish vaca , cow ) who tended the widely-scattered herds of Spanish longhorn cattle . Because of the American penchant to be considered the inventors of nearly everything , the wide-open style of cattle-ranching was appropriated from the Mexican originators . As popular a folk-hero as the American cowboy is , he owes his development to the Spanish and the Mexicans , not the English . It is quite probable , as McWilliams asserts , that “with the exception of the capital required to expand the industry , there seems to have been nothing the American rancher or cowboy contributed to the development of cattle-raising in the Southwest .”

            Other contributions of the Mexican cowboy were : the western-style saddle with a large , ornate horn : chaparejos , or chaps ; lazo ,lasso ; la reata ,  lariat ; the cinch ; the halter ; the mecate , or horse-hair rope ; chin strap for the hat ; feed bag for the horse ; ten-gallon hat ( which comes from a mistranslation of a Spanish phrase “su sombrero galoneado” that really meant a “festooned” or “alooned” hat ) .Cowboy slang came from such words as : juzgado , hoosegow ; ranchero , rancher ; estampida , stampede ; calabozo , calaboose ; and pinto for a painted horse .

            Just as the Mexican association for the protection of the rights of sheepherders gave rise to the American Sheepman’s Association , the Spanish system of branding range animals and registering these brands became standard practice among Anglo stockmen . The idea of brands originated in North Africa and was brought to Spain by the Moors , along with their stocky ponies . The Mexican brands are of great antiquity , having been copied from earlier Indian signs which include symbols of the sky-- sun , moon , and stars . Hernando Cortez is said to have been the first to use a brand on the continent .

1 . Which of the following would be the best title for this passage ?   

(A) How to Herd Cattle

(B) The American Cowboy : A Romantic Figure

(C) Farming Practices in Europe and America

(D) Hispanic Contributions to Western Ranching

(E) Spanish Influence on American Culture

2 . It can be inferred from the underlined lines in paragraph one that American ranches developed in the West rather than the East because

(A) more Spanish-speaking people lived in the West

(B)there was more money available in the West

(C) people in the East were more bound by tradition

(D) many jobless men in the East wanted to become cowboys

(E) there was more unsettled land available in the West

3 . The author gives examples of cowboy slang in the underlined lines in paragraph two in order to

(A) arouse the reader’s interest

(B) show that he is familiar with the subject

(C) prove that many cowboys lacked education

(D) point out the differences between America’s Eat and West

(E) demonstrate how these terms originated

4 . According to the author , which of the following did Mexicans contribute to ranching ?

I . Money to buy ranches

II . Methods of handling animals

III . Items of riding equipment

(A) I only (B) II only (C) III only (D) I and II only (E) II and III only

5. Which of the following best describes the development of this passage ?

(A) Major points , minor points

(B) Statement of problem , examples , proposed solution

(C) Introduction , positive factors , negative factors

(D) Cause , effects

(E) Comparison , contrast

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In this introduction to a pictorial survey of African art , the author describes the impact of African sculpture .

            When you first saw a piece of African art , it impressed you as a unit ; you did not see it as a collection of shapes or forms . This , of course , means that the shapes and volumes within ths sculpture itself were coordinated so successfully that the viewer was affected emotionally .

            It is entirely valid to ask how , from a purely artistic point of view , this unity was achieved . And we must also inquire whether there is a recurrent pattern of rules or a plastic language and vocabulary which is responsible for the powerful communication of emotion which the best African sculpture achieves . If thee is such a pattern or rules , ae these rules applied consciously or instinctively to obtain so many woks of such high artistic quality ?

            It is obvious from the study of art history that an intense and unified emotional experience , such as the Christian credo of the Byzantine or 12^th or 13^th century Europe , when expressed in art forms , gave great unity ,coherence , and power to art . But such an integrated feeling was only the inspirational element for the artist , only the starting point of the creative art . The expression of this emotion and its realization in the work could be done only with discipline and thorough knowledge of the craft . And the African sculptor was a highly trained workman . He started his apprenticeship with a master when a child , and he learned the tribal styles and the use of the tools and the nature of woods so mthoroughly that his carving became what Boas calls “motor action.” He carved automatically and instinctively .

            The African carver followe his rules without thinking of them ; indee , they never seem to have been formulated in words . But such rules existed , for accident and coincidence cannot explain the common plastic language of African sculpture . There is too great a consistency from one work to another . Yet , although the African , with amazing unsight into art , used these rules , I am certain that he was not conscious of them . This is the great mystery of such a traditional art : talent , or the ability certain people have , without conscious efforts , to follow the rules which later the analyst can discover only from the work of art which has already been created .   

6 . The author is primarily concerned  with

(A) discussing how African sculptors achieved their effects

(B) listing the rules followed in African art

(C) relating African art to the art of 12^th or 13^th century Europe

(D) integrating emotion and realization

(E) expressing the beauty of African art

7 . According to the passage , one of the outstanding features of African sculpture is

(A) its subject matter

(B) the feeling it arouses

(C) the training of the artists

(D) its strangeness

(E) its emphasis on movement

8 . The underlined word “plastic” means

(A) synthetic (B) linguistic (C) consistent (D) sculptural(E) repetitive

9.According to the information in the passage , an African carver can be best compared to a

(A) chef following a recipe

(B) fluent speaker of English who is just beginning to study French

(C) batter who hits a homerun in his or her first baseball game

(D) concert pianist performing a well-rehearsed concert

(E) writer who is grammatically expert but stylistically uncreative

10 . Which of the following titles best summarizes the content of the passage ?

(A) The Apprenticeship of the African Sculptor

(B) The History of African Sculpture

(C) How African Art Achieves Unity

(D) Analyzing African Art

(E) The Unconscious Rules of African Art

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            The following passages present two portraits of grandmothers . In Passage 1 Mary McCarthy shares her memories of her Catholic grandmother , who raised McCarthy and her brother after their parents’ death . In Passage 2 Caroline Heibrun tells of her Jewish grandmother , who died when Heibrun was 10 .

Passage 1

            Luckily , I am writing a memoir and not a work of fiction , and therefore I do not have to account for my grandmother’s unpleasing character and look for the Oedipal fixation or the traumatic experience which would give her that clinical authenticity that is nowadays so desirable in portraiture . I do not know how my grandmother got the way she was ; I assume , from family photographs and from the inflexibility of her habits , that she was always the same , and it seems as idle to inquire into her childhood as to ask what was ailing Iago or look for the error in toilet-training that was responsible for Lady Macbeth . My grandmother’s sexual history , bristling with infant morality in the usual style of her period , was robust and decisive : three tall , handsome sons grew up , and one attentive daughter . Her husband treated her kindly . She had money , many grandchildren , and religion to sustain her . White hair , glasses , soft skin , wrinkles , needlework - all the paraphernalia of motherliness were hers ; yet it was a cold , grudging , disputatious old woman who sat all day in her sunroom making tapestries from a pattern , scanning religious periodicals , and setting her iron jaw against any infraction of her ways .   

            Combativeness was , I suppose , the dominant trait in my grandmother’s nature . An aggressive churchgoer , she was quite without Christian feeling ; the mercy of the Lord Jesus had never entered her heart . Her piety was an act of war against the Protestant ascendancy . The religious magazines on her table furnished her not with food for meditation but with fresh pretexts for anger ; articles attacking birth control , divorce , mixed marriages , Darwin , and secular education were her favorite reading . The teachings of the Church did not interest her , except as they were a rebuke to others ; “Honor thy father and thy mother” , a commandment she was no longer called upon to practice , was the one most frequently on her lips . The extermination of Protestantism , rather than spiritual perfection , was the boon she prayed for . Her mind was preoccupied with conversion ; the capture of a soul for God much diverted her fancy -- it made one less Protestant in the world . Foreign missions , with their overtones of good will and social service , appealed to her less strongly ; it was not a harvest of souls that my grandmother had in mind .

            This pugnacity of my grandmother’s did not confine itself to sectarian enthusiasm . There was the defense of her furniture and her house against the imagined encroachments of visitors .With her , this was not the gentle and tremulous protectiveness endemic in old ladies , who fear for the safety of their possessions with a truly touching anxiety , inferring the fragility of all things from the brittleness of their old bones and hearing the crash of mortality in the perilous tinkling of a tea-cup . My grandmother’s sentiment was more autocratic : she hated having her chairs sat in or her lawns stepped on or the water turned on in her basins , for no reason at all except pure officiousness ; she even grudged the mailman his daily promenade up her sidewalk . Her home was a center for power , and she would not allow it to be derogated by easy or democratic usage . Under her jealous eye , its social properties had atrophied , and it functioned in the family structure simply as a political headquarters . The family had no friends , and entertaining was held to be a foolish and unnecessary courtesy as between blood relations . Holiday dinners fell , as a duty , on the lesser members of the organization : the daughters and daughters-in-law ( converts from the false religion ) offered up Baked Alaska on a platter like the head of John the Baptist , while the old people sat enthroned at the table , and only their digestive processes acknowledged , with rumbling , enigmatic salvos , the fatal day .

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Passage 2

            My grandmother , one of Howe’s sustaining women , not only ruled the household with an arm of iron , but kept a store to support them all , her blond , blue-eyed husband enjoying life rather than struggling through it . My grandmother was one of this powerful women who know that they stand between their families and an outside world filled with temptations to failure and shame . I remember her as thoroughly loving . But there can be no question that she impaired her six daughters for autonomy as thoroughly as if she had crippled them -- more so . The way to security was marriage ; the dread that stood in the way of this was sexual dalliance , above all pregnancy . The horror of pregnancy in an unmarried girl is difficult , perhaps , to recapture now . Foe a Jewish girl not to be a virgin on marriage was failure . The male’s rights were embodied in her lack of sexual experience , in the knowledge that he was the first , the owner .

            All attempts at autonomy had to be frustrated . And of course , my grandmother’s greatest weapon was her own vulnerability . She had worked hard , only her daughters knew how hard . She could not be comforted or repaid - as my mother would feel repaid -- by a daughter’s accomplishments , only by her marriage .

11 . McCarthy’s attitude toward her grandmother is best described as   

(A) tolerant (B) appreciative (C) indifferent (D) nostalgic (E) sardonic

12 . The underlined word in Passage 1”idle” means

(A) slothful (B) passive (C) fallow (D) useless (E) unoccupied

13 . According to McCarthy , a portrait of a character in a work of odern fiction must have

(A) photographic realism

(B) psychological validity

(C) sympathetic attitudes

(D) religious qualities

(E) historical accuracy

14 . McCarthy’s primary point in describing her grandmother’s physical appearance in the underlined lines Passage 1 is best summarized by which of the following axioms ?

(A) Familiarity breeds contempt .

(B) You can’t judge a book by its cover .

(C) One picture is worth more than ten thousand words .

(D) There’s no smoke without fire .

(E) Blood is thicker than water .

15 . By describing ( Passage 1 , paragraph three - With her ,…..of a tea-cup ) the typical old woman’s fear for the safety of her possessions , McCarthy emphasizes that

(A) her grandmother feared the approach of death

(B) old women have dangerously brittle bones

(C) her grandmother possessed considerable wealth

(D) her grandmother had different reasons for her actions

(E) visitors were unwelcome in her grandmother’s home

16 .The underlined word “properties” in Passage 1 means

(A) belongings (B) aspects (C) holdings (D) titles (E) acreage

17. Heilbrun in Passage 2 is critical of her grandmother primarily because

(A) she would not allow her husband to enjoy himself

(B) she could not accept her own vulnerability

(C) she fostered a sense of sexual inadequacy

(D) she discouraged her daughters’ independence

(E) she physically injured her children

18. By describing the extent of the feeling against pregnancy in unmarried girls in Passage 2 - paragraph 1- The horror of pregnancy … the owner ) , Heilbrun helps the reader understand

(A) her fear of being scorned as an unwed mother

(B) why her grandmother strove to limit her daughters’ autonomy

(C) her disapproval of contemporary sexual practices

(D) her awareness of her mother’s desire for happiness

(E) how unforgiving her grandmother was

19 . In stating that her grandmother’s greatest weapon was her own vulnerability ( Passage 2 -paragraph 2 ) , Heilbrun implies that her grandmother got her way by exploiting her children’s

(A) sense of guilt

(B) innocence of evil

(C) feeling of indifference

(D) abdication of responsibility

(E) lack of experience

20. Each passage mentions which of the following as being important to the writer’s grandmother ?

(A) governing the actions of others

(B) contributing to religious organizations

(C) protecting her children’s virtue

(D) marrying off her daughters

(E) being surrounded by a circle of friends

21 . McCarthy would most likely react to the characterization of her grandmother , like Heilbrun’s grandmother , as one of the “sustaining women” ( the underlined lines Passage 2 first two lines ) by pointing out that

(A) this characterization is not in good taste

(B) the characterization fails to account for her grandmother’s piety

(C) the details of the family’s social life support this characterization

(D) her grandmother’s actual conduct is not in keeping with this characterization

(E) this characterization slightly exaggerates her grandmother’s chief virtue

Answer Key

1 .D 2 . E 3 . E 4 . E 5 . A 6 . A 7 . B 8. D 9 . D 10 . E 11 . E 12 . D 13 . B 14 . B 15 . D 16 . B

17 . D 18 . B 19 . A 20 A 21 . D

3 - ] SAT - The Critical Reading Question

3 - ] SAT - The Critical Reading Question 

The Critical Reading Question

Exercise C

This exercise provides you with a mixture of reading passages similar in variety to what you will encounter on the SAT . Answer all questions on thje basis of what is [ stated ] or [ implied ] in the passages .

The following passage is taken from the introduction to the catalog of a major exhibition of Flemish tapestries .

            Tapestries are made on looms . Their distinctive weave is basically simple : the colored weft threads interface regularly with the monochrome warps , as in darning or plain cloth , but as they do so , they form a design by reversing their direction when a change of color is needed . The wefts are beaten down to cover the warps completely . The result is a design or picture that is the fabric itself , not one laid upon a ground like an embroidery , a print ,or brocading . The back and front of a tapestry show the same design . The weaver always follows a preexisting model , generally a drawing or painting , known as the cartoon ,w hich in most cases he reproduces as exactly as he can . Long training is needed to become a professional tapestry weaver . It can take as much as a year to produce a yard of very finely woven tapestry .

            Tapestry-woven fabrics have been made from China to Peru and from very early times to the present day , but large wall hangings in this technique , mainly of wool , are typically Northern European . Few examples predating the late fourteenth century have survived , but from about 1400 tapestries were an essential part of aristocratic life . The prince or great nobleman sent his plate and his tapestries ahead of him to furnish his castles before his arrival as he traveled through his domains ; both had the same function , to display his wealth and social position . It has frequently been suggested that tapestries helped to heat stone-walled rooms , but this is a modern idea ; comfort was of minor importance in the Middle Ages . Tapestries were portable grandeur , instant splendor , taking the place , north of the Alps , of painted frescoes further south . They were hung without gaps between them , covering entire walls and often doors as well . Only very occasionally were they made as individual works of art such as altar frontals . They were usually commissioned or bought as sets , or “chambers ,” and constituted the most important furnishings of any grand room , except for the display of plate , throughout the Middle Ages and the sixteenth century .Later , woven silks , ornamental wood carving , stucco decoration , and painted leather gradually replaced tapestry as expensive wall coverings , until at last wallpaper was introduced in the late eighteenth dentury and eventually swept away almost everything else .

         By the end of the eighteenth century , the “tapestry-room” [ a room with every available wall covered with wall hangings ] was no longer fashionable : paper had replaced wall coverings of wool and silk . Tapestries , of course . were still made ,but in the nineteenth century they often seem to have been produced mainly as individual works of art that astonish by their resemblance to oil paintings , tours de force woven with a remarkably large number of wefts per inch . In England during the second half of the century , William Morris attempted to reverse this trend and to bring tapestry weaving back to its true principles , those he considered to have governed it in the Middle Ages . He imitated medieval tapestries in both style and technique , using few warps to the inch , but he did not make sets ; the original function for which tapestry is so admirably suited -- completely covering the walls of a room and providing sumptuous surroundings for a life of pomp and splendor -- could not be revived .Morris’s example has been followed , though with less imitation of medieval style , by many weavers of the present century , whose coarsely woven cloths hang like single pictures and can be admired as examples of contemporary art .    

1. Tapestry weaving may be characterized as which of the following ?

I . Time-consuming

II . Spontaneous in concept

III . Faithful to an original

(A) I only  (B) III only (C) I and II only (D) I and III only (E) II and III only

2 . The underlined word “distinctive” means

(A) characteristic (B) stylish (C) discriminatory (D) eminent (E) articulate

3 . Renaissance nobles carried tapestries with them to demonstrate their

(A) piety (B) consequence (C) aesthetic judgment (D) need for privacy (E) dislike for cold

4 . The underlined  word “ground” means

(A) terrain (B) dust (C) thread (D) base (E) pigment

5 . In contrast to nineteenth century tapestries , contemporary tapestries

(A) are displayed in sets of panels

(B) echo medieval themes

(C) faithfully copy oil paintings

(D) have a less fine weave

(E) indicate the owner’s social position

6 . The primary purpose of the passage is to

(A) explain the process of tapestry making

(B) contrast Eastern and Western schools of tapestry

(C) analyze the reasons for the decline in popularity of tapestries

(D) provide a historical perspective on tapestry making

(E) advocate a return to a more colorful way o lie

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The following passage ix taken from a book of popular history written in 1991 .

            The advantage of associating the birth of democracy with the Mayflower Compact is that it is easy to do so . The public loves a simple explanation , and none is simpler than the belief that on November 11 ,1620 -- the day of the compact was approved -- a cornerstone of American democracy was laid . Certainly it makes it easier on schoolchildren . Marking the start of democracy in 1620 relieves students of the responsibility of knowing what happened in the hundred some years before , from the arrival of the Santa Maria to the landing of the Mayflower .

            The compact , to be sure , demonstrated the Englishman’s striking capacity for self-government . And in affirming the principle of majority rule , the Pilgrims showed how far they had come from the days when the king’s whim was law and nobody dared say otherwise .

            But the emphasis on the compact is misplaced . Scholarly research in the last half century indicates that the compact had nothing to do with the development of self-government in America . In truth , the Mayflower Compact was no more a cornerstone of American democracy than the Pilgrim hut was the foundation of American architecture . As Samuel Eliot Morison so emphatically put it . American democracy “was not born in the cabin of the Mayflower .”

            The Pilgrims indeed are miscast as the heroes of American democracy . They spurned democracy and would have been shocked to see themselves held up as its defenders . George Willison , regarded as one of the most careful students of the Pilgrims , stated that “the merest glance at the history of Plymouth” shows that they were not democrats .

            The mythmakers would have us believe that even if the Pilgrims themselves weren’t democratic , the Mayflower Compact itself was . But in fact the compact was expressly designed to curb freedom , not promote it . The Pilgrim governor and historian , William Bradford , from whom we have gotten nearly all of the information there is about the Pilgrims , frankly conceded as much . Bradford wrote that the purpose of the compact was to control renegades aboard the Mayflower who were threatening to go their own way when the ship reached land . Because the Pilgrims had decided to settle in an area outside the jurisdiction of their royal patent , some aboard the Mayflower had hinted that upon landing they would “use their owne libertie , for none had power to command them .” Under the terms of the compact , they couldn’t ; the compact required all who lived in the colony to “promise all due submission and obedience” to it .

               Furthermore , despite the compact’s mention of majority rule , the Pilgrim fathers had no intention of turning over the colony’s government to the people . Plymouth was to e ruled by the elite . And the elite wasn’t bashful in the least about advancing its claims to superiority . When the Mayflower Compact was signed , the elite signed first . The second rank consisted of the “goodmen .”At the bottom of the list came four servants’ names . No women or children signed .

            Whether the compact was or was not actually hostile to the democratic spirit , it was deemed sufficiently hostile that during the Revolution the Tories put it to use as “propaganda for the crown .”The monarchists made much of the fact that the Pilgrims had chosen to establish an English-style government that placed power in the hands of a governor , not a cleric , and a governor who owed his allegiance no to the people or to a church but to “our dread Sovereign Lord King James .” No one thought it significant that the Tories had adopted the principle of majority rule . Tory historian George Chalmers , in a work published in 1780 , claimed the central meaning of the compact was the Pilgrims’ recognition of the necessity of royal authority . This may have been not only a convenient argument but a true one . It is at least as plausible as the belief that the compact stood for democracy .

7 . The author’s attitude toward the general public ( lines 3 - 7 ) can best be described as    

(A) egalitarian (B) grateful (C) sympathetic (D) envious (E) superior

8. The underlined phrase “held up” means

(A) delayed (B) cited (C) accommodated (D) carried (E) waylaid

9 . According to the passage paragraph five ( Because …. to it . ) , the compact’s primary purpose was to 

(A) establish legal authority within the colony

(B) outlaw non-Pilgrims among the settlers

(C) preach against heretical thinking

(D) protect each individual’s civil rights

(E) countermand the original royal patent

10 . The author of the passage can best be described as

(A) an iconoclast  (B) an atheist (C) a mythmaker (D) an elitist (E) an authoritarian

11 . In the underlined lines in paragraph six , the details about the signers of the Mayflower Compact are used to emphasize

(A) the Pilgrims’ respect for the social hierarchy

(B) the inclusion of servants among those signing

(C) their importance to American history

(D) the variety of social classes aboard

(E) the lack of any provision for minority rule

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In this excerpt from her autobiography . One Writer’s Beginnings , the short-story writer Eudora Welty introduces her parents .

            My father loved all instruments that would instruct and fascinate . His place to keep things was the drawer in the “library table” where lying on top of his folded maps was a telescope with brass extensions , to find the moon and the Big Dipper after supper in our front yard , and to keep appointments with eclipses . In the back of the drawer you could find a magnifying glass , a kaleidoscope , and a gyroscope kept in a lack buckram box , which he would set dancing for us on a string pulled tight . He had also supplied himself with an assortment of puzzles composed of metal rings and intersecting links and keys chained together , impossible for the rest of us , however patiently shown , to take apart , he had an almost childlike love of the ingenious .

            In time , a barometer was added to our dining room wall , but we didn’t really need it . My father had the country boy’s accurate knowledge of the weather and its skies . He went out and stood on our front steps first thing in the morning and took a good look at it and a sniff . He was a pretty good weather prophet .

            “Well , I’m not ,” my mother would say , with enormous self-satisfaction .

            He told us children what to do if we were lost in a strange country . “Look for where the sky is brightest along the horizon ,” he said . “That reflects the nearest river . Strike out for s a river and you will find habitation .” Eventualities were much on his mind . In his care for us children he cautioned us to take measures against such things as being struck y lightning . He drew us all away from the windows during the severe electrical storms that are common where we live . My mother stood apart , scoffing at caution as a character failing . “Why , I always loved a storm ! High winds never bothered me in West Virginia ! Just listen at that ! I wasn’t a bit afraid of a little lightning and spread my arms wide and run in a good big storm !”

            So I developed a strong meteorological sensibility . In years ahead when I wrote stores , atmosphere took its influential role from the start . Commotion in the weather and the inner feelings aroused by such a hovering disturbance emerged connected in dramatic form . ( I tried a tornado first , in a story called “The Winds .” )

            From our earliest Christmas times , Santa Claus brought us toys that instruct oys and girls ( separately ) how to build things -- stone locks cut to the castle-building style , Tinker Toys , and Erector sets .Daddy made for us himself elaborate kites that needed to e take miles out of the town to a pasture long enough ( and my father was not afraid of horses and cows watching ) for him to run with and get up on a long cord to which my mother held the spindle , and then we children were given it to hold , tugging like something alive at our hands . They were beautiful , sound , shapely box kites , smelling delicately of office glue for their entire short lives .And of course , as soon as the boys attained anywhere near the right age , there was an electric train , the enguine with its pea-sized working headlight , its lines of cars , tracks equipped with switches semaphores , its station , its bridges , and its tunnel , which blocked off all other traffic in the upstairs hall . Even from downstairs , and through the cries of excited children , the elegant rush and click of the train could be heard through the ceiling , running around and around its figure eight .

            All of this , but especially the train , represents my father’s fondest beliefs -- in progress , in the future . With these gifts , he was preparing his children .

            And so was my mother with her different gifts .

            I learned from the age of two or three that any room in our house , at any time , was there to read in , or be read to . My mother read to me . She’d read to me in the big bedroom in the mornings , when we were in her rocker together , which ticked in rhythm as we rocked , as though we had a cricket accompanying the story . She’d read to me in the dining room on winter afternoons in front of the coal fire , with our cuckoo clock ending the story with “Cuckoo ,” and at night when I’d ot in my own bed . I must have given her no peace . Sometimes she read to me in the kitchen while she sat churning , and the churning sobbed along with any story . It was my ambition to have her read to me while I churned ; once she granted my wish , but she read off my story before I brought her butter.  She was an expressive reader . When she was reading “Puss in Boots ,” for instance , it was impossible not to know that she distrusted all cats .

12 . In saying that her father used the telescope to “keep appointments with eclipses” , Welty means that  

(A) the regularity of eclipses helped him avoid missing engagements

(B) his attempts at astronomical observation met with failure

(C) he made a point of observing major astronomical phenomena

(D) he tried to instruct his children in the importance of keeping appointments

(E) he invented ingenious new ways to use the telescope

13. We can infer from the underlined lines in paragraph two that Welty’s father stood on the front steps and sniffed first thing in the morning

(A) because he disapproved of the day’s weather

(B) because he suffered from nasal congestion

(C) to enjoy the fragrance of the flowers

(D) to detect signs of changes in the weather

(E) in an instinctive response to fresh air

14 . The underlined word “measures” in paragraph three means

(A) legislative actions (B) preventative steps  (C) yardsticks (D) food rations (E) warnings

15 . When Welty’s mother exclaims “Just listen at that !”  at the end of paragraph three , she wants everyone to pay attention to

(A) her husband’s advice

(B) her memories of West Virginia

(C) the sounds of the storm

(D) her reasons for being unafraid

(E) the noise the children are making

16 . Compared to Welty’s father , her mother can best be described as

(A) more literate and more progressive

(B) proud of her knowledge of the weather , but imprudent about storms

(C) unafraid of ordinary storms , but deeply disturbed by tornadoes

(D) more protective of her children , but less patient with them

(E) less apt to foresee problems , but more apt to enjoy the moment

17 . The underlined word “fondest” means

(A) most affectionate

(B) most foolish

(C) most radical

(D) most cherished

(E) most credulous

18. By the the underlined phrase “brought her butter” , Welty means that she

(A) manufactured butter

(B) fetched butter

(C) spread butter

(D) purchased butter

(E) melted butter

19 . Why does Welty recount these anecdotes about her parents ?

(A) She wishes to prove that theirs was an unhappy marriage of opposites

(B) The anecdotes are vivid illustrations of truths that she holds dear

(C) She seeks to provide advice for travelers lost in the wilderness

(D) She envisions her parents chiefly as humorous subjects for ironic characterization

(E) She wishes to provide background on early influences on her as a writer

Answer Key

1 . D 2. A 3 . B 4 . D 5 . D 6 . D 7 . E 8 . B 9 . A 10 . A 11 . A 12 . C 13 . D

14 . B 15 . C 18 . E 17 . D 18 . A 19 . E