[
 {
  "instruction":"It is perhaps too easy to think of mathematical truths as objective entities existing in the universe, simply waiting to be \"discovered\" by brilliant minds such as Pythagoras, Newton, and Descartes. Indeed, such a mentality may be cemented in Western minds raised in the Platonic tradition of a world of ideals that exists outside of the material world we reside in.\nBut new research in the fields of cognitive science and developmental psychology may be challenging this long-held belief in mathematics as a truth outside of human experience, and recasting mathematics as a product of the brain, an entity that is not discovered by man but rather created by him.\nSuch a radical paradigm shift has predictably met with stiff resistance, but the evidence in favor of a created mathematics rather than a discovered mathematics is compelling. Study after study has shown that all people possess an innate arithmetic. Babies as young as three or four days old can differentiate between groups of two and three items. And by the age of four months or so, an infant can see that one plus one is two and two minus one is one. Researchers discovered this startling fact by means of a simple experiment, following what is known as the violation of expectation model in developmental psychology. An infant was presented with a scenario in which a researcher held a puppet before the baby's eyes. Then a screen was moved in front of the puppet and another researcher placed a second puppet behind it. The screen was removed and if there were two puppets now visible, the infant registered no surprise (as measured by both the direction of the child's gaze and the duration of her stare). But if the screen was removed and only one puppet appeared, the infant registered perplexity at the situation. This experiment and others like it strongly suggest that all individuals are born with certain mathematical concepts hardwired into their brains. The ability to quickly and accurately count a small number of items, called subitizing by psychologists, is also found in animals. Researchers using experiments similar to the violation of expectation setup described previously have found an innate mathematical ability not just in primates, our closest evolutionary cousins, but in raccoons, rats, parrots, and pigeons. These findings are consistent with the belief that mathematical thinking is a function of the structures in the brain and not a product of the outside world.\nAnomalous cases involving brain injuries and disorders also support the idea that mathematical thinking arises from the organization of the brain. There is a documented case of a subject with a $\\mathrm{PhD}$ in chemistry who suffers from acalculia, the inability to perform basic arithmetic functions. Strangely, this patient is unable to perform simple calculations such as five plus three or eight minus two, but has no problem manipulating abstract algebraic operations. This curious fact has led psychologists to conclude that the part of the brain that handles abstract algebraic operations must be different from the part of the brain that works with more concrete arithmetic functions.\nThe author supports the passage's main thesis with all of the following types of evidence EXCEPT:\n\nOptions:\nA. experiments\nB. case studies\nC. testimonials\nD. comparisons",
  "response":"To answer this question, you must assess evidence. Since this is an EXCEPT question, you're looking for the choice that is not present in the passage. The passage does discuss experiments, choice $\\mathrm{A}$, in the section about violation of expectation tests. The part about the $\\mathrm{PhD}$ in chemistry who suffered from acalculia is a case study (choice B). Finally, the author presents a comparison (choice D) when showing how animals and humans have similar abilities. That leaves choice $\\mathrm{C}$ as the correct answer. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\"I acknowledge Shakespeare to be the world's greatest dramatic poet, but regret that no parent could place the uncorrected book in the hands of his daughter, and therefore I have prepared the Family Shakespeare.\"\nThus did Thomas Bowdler, a self-appointed editor trained as a physician, explain his creation of a children's edition of Shakespeare that omitted some characters completely, toned down language he considered objectionable, and euphemized such shocking situations as Ophelia's suicide-an accident in Bowdler's version.\nBowdler was hardly the first to tone down the Bard. Poet laureate Nahum Tate rewrote King Lear, banishing the Fool entirely and giving the play a happy ending. His version was staged regularly from the 1680 s through the 18 th century.\nThomas Bowdler was, from all the evidence, a less likely editor. He was born in 1754 near Bath, England, to a wealthy family. He studied medicine but never really practiced, preferring to exercise philanthropy and to play chess, at which he was a master. In his retirement, he decided to try his hand at editorial work. Shakespeare's dramas were his first project. He added nothing to the texts, but by cutting and paraphrasing strove to remove anything that \"could give just offense to the religious and virtuous mind.\"\nThe result was a 10-volume expurgated version that was criticized widely, although hardly universally. The famed British poet Algernon Swinburne remarked that \"no man ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him into the hands of intelligent and imaginative children.\"\nThere is some indication that Bowdler's sister Harriet did the actual editing of Shakespeare's text. She was a poet and editor in her own right, and clearly more qualified than her brother to lay hands on the Bard of Avon. She may have published the expurgated edition anonymously before allowing her brother to take over the rights. If this is so, it is unsurprising that Harriet would not have wanted her name on the book. If the original Shakespeare were truly objectionable, then it would have been doubly so for a well-bred, unmarried Englishwoman of the day.\nBowdler went on to create children's versions of the Old Testament and of Edward Gibbons's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, although neither achieved either the success or ridicule of his Shakespeare. Today, of course, we know Bowdler not for his good works, but instead for the eponym derived from his good name. To bowdlerize is to censor or amend a written work, often with a connotation of prudishness. The process for which Bowdler is known is one that continues to the present day, as texts deemed too difficult for today's high schoolers are \"dumbed-down,\" library editions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have the \"n-word\" blacked out, and middle-school productions of popular Broadway plays have all expletives deleted. We would be hard-pressed to say that we live in a prudish era, but some of the same impulses that drove Thomas and Harriet Bowdler still exist today.\nThe author's claim that Bowdler's Shakespeare was not unanimously criticized is supported by:\n\nOptions:\nA. a quotation from Algernon Swinburne\nB. reference to later children's works by Bowdler\nC. the definition of the eponym formed from his name\nD. the example of Ophelia's revised \"suicide\"",
  "response":"Although choices B, C, and D appear in the passage, none of them supports the claim that Bowdler's revised Shakespeare was not universally despised. The quote from Swinburne (choice A), however, does-Swinburne praises Bowdler for creating a Shakespeare that can be put in the hands of children. The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"The Shawnee people of the Ohio and Cumberland Valleys gave the American elk its other name, wapiti. Yet when we think of elk today, we rarely envision them as eastern animals. If we want to see elk in their natural habitat, we travel to Colorado or Montana, where they still roam the mountainous terrain. Elk were, in fact, once found in the East, from Georgia north to New York and Connecticut. By the time of the Civil War, hunting and habitat destruction had caused their extinction in most eastern states. All of the eastern subspecies are now extinct. Elk County, Pennsylvania, and Elk County, Kansas, were without elk for more than a century. At the beginning of the 20th century, herds of elk in the Rocky Mountains faced death by starvation as encroaching farms depleted their winter feeding and finally the government decided to intercede. They gathered up elk from Yellowstone National Park and shipped 50 of them to Pennsylvania. The elk were to be protected, with no hunting of them allowed until eight years had passed. At that early date, 1913, there was little understanding of the kind of acclimatization required when moving large animals from one habitat to another. The elk were released from cattle cars and chased into the wild to fend for themselves. Two years later, 95 more elk were moved from Yellowstone to Pennsylvania. Elk are large animals with large ranges, and the damage these elk caused to cornfields was substantial. The elk tended to move toward farming areas because that was where the food was. Farmers and poachers took some elk illegally, but the herds still began to grow. During the 1920 s, several hunting seasons went by with harvests of one or two dozen elk, but then the numbers declined dramatically, and the elk were again put under protected status. No real census was taken until 50 years later, in 1971. According to the passage, where might you see elk today?\n\nOptions:\nA. the Tennessee Valley\nB. Georgia\nC. the Adirondacks\nD. Arkansas",
  "response":"\"At present,\" says the passage, \"new herds are established in Arkansas, Kentucky, Michigan, and Wisconsin in addition to Pennsylvania.\" There is talk of moving herds to Tennessee (choiceA) and the Adirondacks (choice C) in the future. Georgia (choice B) is mentioned only as the original southernmost range of eastern elk; it is not a place where they might be seen today. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"The Shawnee people of the Ohio and Cumberland Valleys gave the American elk its other name, wapiti. Yet when we think of elk today, we rarely envision them as eastern animals. If we want to see elk in their natural habitat, we travel to Colorado or Montana, where they still roam the mountainous terrain. Elk were, in fact, once found in the East, from Georgia north to New York and Connecticut. By the time of the Civil War, hunting and habitat destruction had caused their extinction in most eastern states. All of the eastern subspecies are now extinct. Elk County, Pennsylvania, and Elk County, Kansas, were without elk for more than a century. At the beginning of the 20th century, herds of elk in the Rocky Mountains faced death by starvation as encroaching farms depleted their winter feeding and finally the government decided to intercede. They gathered up elk from Yellowstone National Park and shipped 50 of them to Pennsylvania. The elk were to be protected, with no hunting of them allowed until eight years had passed. At that early date, 1913, there was little understanding of the kind of acclimatization required when moving large animals from one habitat to another. The elk were released from cattle cars and chased into the wild to fend for themselves. Two years later, 95 more elk were moved from Yellowstone to Pennsylvania. Elk are large animals with large ranges, and the damage these elk caused to cornfields was substantial. The elk tended to move toward farming areas because that was where the food was. Farmers and poachers took some elk illegally, but the herds still began to grow. During the 1920 s, several hunting seasons went by with harvests of one or two dozen elk, but then the numbers declined dramatically, and the elk were again put under protected status. No real census was taken until 50 years later, in 1971. According to the passage, what is true of the elk in Pennsylvania today?\n\nOptions:\nA. They are the same as the elk who lived there 200 years ago.\nB. They are a different subspecies from the old Pennsylvania elk.\nC. They are a different subspecies from the elk found in the Rockies.\nD. They are only distantly related to the elk found in Yellowstone National Park.",
  "response":"As the passage states clearly, \"All of the eastern subspecies are now extinct.\" The reintroduced subspecies is the western subspecies, the one found in Yellowstone. It is a different subspecies from the original Pennsylvania elk. The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nIn linguistics, metathesis refers to the reversal of phonemes in a word. This can come about by accident, as in the common mispronunciation \"aks\" for ask or the common (and correct) pronunciation of iron as \"i-orn.\" It may come about on purpose, as in various language games.\nAccidental metathesis may be a process that takes place in the evolution of languages. Over time, for example, the Latin words miraculum, periculum, and parabola evolved into the Spanish words milagro, peligro, and palabra. Linguists posit that such changes usually occur when two consonants are of the same type, with similar mouth formations needed to create each one.\nThe Reverend Archibald Spooner, an Oxford dean, was known for his unintentional transpositions and gave his name to the particular metathesis he represented: Spoonerisms. Most famous Spoonerisms once attributed to Spooner are now believed to be apocryphal, but they are nevertheless amusing; for example, his supposed advice to a substandard student: \"You have deliberately tasted two worms and will leave Oxford by the next town drain.\" Spoonerisms are funny when the metathesis involved changes one word into another, and they seem to lend themselves particularly well to off-color jokes.\nEveryone is familiar with Pig Latin, in which initial consonant sounds are moved to the end of a word and followed with the syllable \"ay.\" This is not pure metathesis, but it begins with the kind of metathesis known as backslang, in which syllables or letters in a word are reversed to produce a private code. Pig Latin may have begun as a language spoken in prisoner-of-war camps; it was certainly used in such camps during World War II and in Vietnam.\nIn Pig Latin, the phrase \"Over the river and through the woods\" becomes \"Overay uhthay iverray anday oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" In other variations of Pig Latin, it might instead be \"Overway uhthay iverray andway oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" There are computer programs that translate from English to Pig Latin and back again, and there is even a version of the Bible written entirely in Pig Latin. For the most part, however, outside of prisoner-of-war camps, Pig Latin is a funny code used by children.\nFrench children and teenagers use a similar code. Called verlan (a reversal of l'envers, or \"reversal\"), it is trickier than Pig Latin because it relies much more on phonetics than on spelling. In verlan, the word caf\u00e9 becomes f\u00e9ca, but the word tomber (\"to fall\") becomes b\u00e9ton. Verlan becomes even more complex in words that end in silent $e$ or which have only one syllable. While just a few words from Pig Latin have entered the vernacular (for example, amscray and ixnay), many verlan words are common lingo in France.\nHistorically, for reasons that are not quite clear, butchers have been frequent users of metathesis, creating their own backslang to converse without being understood by patrons. In France, this is called louch\u00e9bem (boucher, or \"butcher,\" with the first consonant moved to the end and the letter $l$ placed in front). In Australia, it is known as rechtub klat. That name, of course, represents the ultimate in metathesis-the reversal of letters instead of merely syllables.\nThe discussion of prisoner-of-war camps shows primarily that:\n\nOptions:\nA. Pig Latin can be entertaining even in difficult circumstances.\nB. Metathesis developed during the mid-20th century.\nC. Prisoners may revert to childish games to pass the time.\nD. Metathesis is useful and practical as a secret code.",
  "response":"Although the origin of Pig Latin appears to be unknown, the author refers to its use in the prisoner-of-war camps of World War II and Vietnam. The implication is that it was used to communicate between prisoners in a language their captors could not understand. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nIn linguistics, metathesis refers to the reversal of phonemes in a word. This can come about by accident, as in the common mispronunciation \"aks\" for ask or the common (and correct) pronunciation of iron as \"i-orn.\" It may come about on purpose, as in various language games.\nAccidental metathesis may be a process that takes place in the evolution of languages. Over time, for example, the Latin words miraculum, periculum, and parabola evolved into the Spanish words milagro, peligro, and palabra. Linguists posit that such changes usually occur when two consonants are of the same type, with similar mouth formations needed to create each one.\nThe Reverend Archibald Spooner, an Oxford dean, was known for his unintentional transpositions and gave his name to the particular metathesis he represented: Spoonerisms. Most famous Spoonerisms once attributed to Spooner are now believed to be apocryphal, but they are nevertheless amusing; for example, his supposed advice to a substandard student: \"You have deliberately tasted two worms and will leave Oxford by the next town drain.\" Spoonerisms are funny when the metathesis involved changes one word into another, and they seem to lend themselves particularly well to off-color jokes.\nEveryone is familiar with Pig Latin, in which initial consonant sounds are moved to the end of a word and followed with the syllable \"ay.\" This is not pure metathesis, but it begins with the kind of metathesis known as backslang, in which syllables or letters in a word are reversed to produce a private code. Pig Latin may have begun as a language spoken in prisoner-of-war camps; it was certainly used in such camps during World War II and in Vietnam.\nIn Pig Latin, the phrase \"Over the river and through the woods\" becomes \"Overay uhthay iverray anday oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" In other variations of Pig Latin, it might instead be \"Overway uhthay iverray andway oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" There are computer programs that translate from English to Pig Latin and back again, and there is even a version of the Bible written entirely in Pig Latin. For the most part, however, outside of prisoner-of-war camps, Pig Latin is a funny code used by children.\nFrench children and teenagers use a similar code. Called verlan (a reversal of l'envers, or \"reversal\"), it is trickier than Pig Latin because it relies much more on phonetics than on spelling. In verlan, the word caf\u00e9 becomes f\u00e9ca, but the word tomber (\"to fall\") becomes b\u00e9ton. Verlan becomes even more complex in words that end in silent $e$ or which have only one syllable. While just a few words from Pig Latin have entered the vernacular (for example, amscray and ixnay), many verlan words are common lingo in France.\nHistorically, for reasons that are not quite clear, butchers have been frequent users of metathesis, creating their own backslang to converse without being understood by patrons. In France, this is called louch\u00e9bem (boucher, or \"butcher,\" with the first consonant moved to the end and the letter $l$ placed in front). In Australia, it is known as rechtub klat. That name, of course, represents the ultimate in metathesis-the reversal of letters instead of merely syllables.\nWhich of the following examples is presented as evidence that butchers are frequent users of metathesis?\nI. Spoonerisms\nII. louch\u00e9bem\nIII. Pig Latin\n\nOptions:\nA. I only\nB. I and II only\nC. II only\nD. II and III only",
  "response":"The final paragraph discusses two forms of metathesis that derive from the butchers' trade. One is louch\u00e9bem (II), and the other is rechtub klat. Since only II is correct, the answer is choice C. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nEngineers and computer scientists are intrigued by the potential power of nanocomputing. Nanocomputers will use atoms and molecules to perform their functions instead of the standard integrated circuits now employed. Theorists believe that the amount of information a nanocomputer could handle is staggering.\nA professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has attempted to calculate the computational limits of a computer with a weight of 1 kilogram and a volume of 1 liter. According to the laws of physics, the potential amount of computational power is a function of the available energy. Basically, each atom and subatomic particle in the computer has an amount of energy attached to it. Furthermore, the energy of each particle or atom is increased by the frequency of its movement. Thus the power of a computer that uses nanotechnology is bounded by the energy available from its atoms.\nSpecifically, the relationship between the energy of an object and its computation potential is a proportionate one. As Einstein has famously calculated, the energy of an object is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared. Thus, a theoretical computer weighing a mere kilogram has a huge amount of potential energy. To find the total computational power, the minimum amount of energy required to perform an operation is divided by the total amount of energy. \nof energy possessed by a 1-kilogram computer by Planck's constant yields a tremendously large number, roughly $5 \\times 10^{50}$ operations per second. Using even the most conservative estimates of the computing power of the human brain, such a computer would have the computational power of five trillion trillion human civilizations. The computer would also have a memory capacity, calculated by determining the degrees of freedom allowed by the state of all the particles comprising it, of $10^{31} \\mathrm{bits}$.\nThese numbers are purely theoretical, however. Were the computer to convert all of its mass to energy, it would be the equivalent of a thermonuclear explosion. And it is unreasonable to expect human technology to ever achieve abilities even close to these limits. However, a project at the University of Oklahoma has succeeded in storing 50 bits of data per atom, albeit on only a limited number of atoms. Given that there are $10^{25}$ atoms in 1 kilogram of material, it may be possible to fit up to $10^{27}$ bits of information in the computer. And if scientists are able to exploit the many properties of atoms to store information, including the position, spin, and quantum state of all its particles, it may be possible to exceed even that number.\nOne interesting consequence of such staggering increases in computing power is that each advance could provide the basis for further evolution. Once technology can achieve, for instance, a level of computation equal to $10^{40}$ operations per second, it can use that massive power to help bring the theoretical limit ever closer.\nThe central thesis of the passage is:\n\nOptions:\nA. Computing power is limited only by the laws of physics.\nB. New advances in computer technology allow for staggering levels of memory and computational ability.\nC. It may not be possible to achieve the theoretical limits of computing power.\nD. Computers using nanotechnology have the potential to tap vast quantities of power.",
  "response":"This question asks you to find the main idea. This passage Passage $\\mathrm{V}$ explains that theoretically, a massive amount of computational power is available. However, practical considerations make it unlikely that this limit would ever be reached. Thus choice $\\mathrm{C}$ is the best answer. Choice $\\mathrm{A}$ is a detail provided in the passage, but it is not the main idea. Choice $\\mathrm{B}$ is incorrect, because the advances discussed are still primarily theoretical. Choice $\\mathrm{D}$ is also only partly correct, because it doesn't deal with the practical limits mentioned in the passage. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nThe Nobel Peace Prize has often engendered controversy. The Red Cross, yes, but Henry Kissinger? Mother Teresa, perhaps, but Yasser Arafat? Surprisingly, a loud and ongoing controversy surrounds a choice that at first look seems most benign-that of the Guatemalan freedom fighter, Rigoberta Mench\u00fa Tum.\nRigoberta Mench\u00fa was born in 1959 to a poor Mayan family in Guatemala. At the time of her birth, General Yd\u00edgoras Fuentes had just seized power, following the assassination of Colonel Castillo Armas. The year she turned one, there was a failed coup by a military group, many of whom fled to the countryside and would return to lead the rebellion that would wax and wane for the next 36 years.\nGuatemala was divided into factions for that entire period, as military governments controlled the nation and guerilla groups controlled the countryside. At the same time, right-wing vigilantes led a campaign of torture and assassination, eliminating students and peasants they deemed to be allied with the guerillas.\nIn the countryside where Rigoberta lived, the battles were largely over control of farmland. Rigoberta's father was taken into custody and tortured when the army believed he had assisted in the assassination of a plantation owner. Following a rout of the guerillas by the army, the guerillas regrouped and began to take their fight to the capital, beginning a long series of assassinations of government figures.\nRigoberta, her father, and some of her siblings joined the Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC). In rapid succession, Rigoberta lost her brother, father, and mother to the army's own assassination squads. Rigoberta, though only in her early 20s, became a key figure in the resistance, traveling from village to village to educate the Mayan peasants in overcoming oppression, and leading demonstrations in Guatemala City.\nSoon Rigoberta was herself a target. She fled to Mexico and continued her life as an organizer, concentrating her focus on peasants' rights. She participated in the founding of the United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG). This period was the most violent of the entire Guatemalan civil war. Under the new president, General Efrain R\u00edos Montt, massacres of civilians became an everyday occurrence.  The controversy is all about the book. It began when anthropologist David Stoll began independent research on the same era about which Rigoberta dictated and discovered discrepancies in her recall of events. Massacres she described were not remembered by the locals; one of her brothers died by shooting rather than by fire, dates were incorrect, and so on. Stoll's discoveries were enough to roil up conservative historians and columnists, who declared Rigoberta's book the grossest propaganda and her career, therefore, unworthy of the Nobel Prize. Not surprisingly, this brought forth charges of racism, sexism, and cultural ignorance from the other side.\nThe Nobel Committee maintained a stiff upper lip throughout the political backand-forth and still insists that Rigoberta's prize had to do with her documented good works and not with her personal recorded history. Rigoberta's book is still widely taught, and her place in the history of Central American peasant revolutions seems assured.\nIn the context of the passage, the word custody means:\n\nOptions:\nA. fortification\nB. safekeeping\nC. incarceration\nD. supervision",
  "response":"For vocabulary-in-context questions like this one, always locate the word in question because the distracters are likely to be alternate meanings of that word. Here, the passage states, \"Rigoberta's father was taken into custody and tortured when the army believed he had assisted in the assassination of a plantation owner.\" The only answer that makes sense in this context is choice $\\mathrm{C}$. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{\nIf our knowledge of the world occurs through the weaving of narratives, as postmodernists would have us believe, then we must judge the truth of each narrative by comparing it with what we value and what we already accept as true. Any metanarrative, or overarching \"big story,\" must be rejected because it attempts to explain away too many individual narratives. \nhistory through that metanarrative, postmodernists would argue, does not allow us to consider the contributions of other groups to the country we live in today. So constructing a metanarrative can often be exclusionary.\nOf course, constructing a series of smaller narratives is just as exclusionary because it frames experience in a limited way. It is easy to see this occurring if you look at any university course list today. How is it possible for American History 4111, \"Imperialism and Amerindians, 1600-1840\" to coexist alongside American History 4546, \"American Military History and Policy\"? Does English 340X, \"Survey of Women's Literature,\" subsume or incorporate elements of English 342X, \"American Indian Women Writers\"? Perhaps we should pity the undergraduate student today. Lacking any overarching metanarrative to provide perspective, how can the poor student wade through the often contradictory mininarratives being thrown his or her way?\nThere is no question that the old way was wrongheaded and elitist. Survey courses that emphasized the white male perspective were removed from the curriculum in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, and for good reason. But replacing them with a smorgasbord of mininarratives risks eliminating any sense of a big picture. Can students connect the dots to define a coherent reality, or must their reality be a series of frames with no links among them?\nRevising the canon was about ridding our perspective of those racist, sexist, or classist notions that insisted on a single Truth with a capital $T$. Of course there is no overriding Truth that applies to everyone. For everyone who believes that Thomas Jefferson was a brilliant reformer, there is someone who thinks he was a two-faced slaveholder. Yet, where does it leave us if everyone we know is approaching history, science, literature, or what have you from a slightly different angle? It's bad enough when partisan politics divides us into red states and blue states. How much worse is it to imagine ourselves clad in thousands upon thousands of shades of purple?\nThe clearest sign that we are not ready to abandon our metanarratives comes in the current and ongoing clash between those who accept evolutionary theory and those who accept the Bible as the written word of God. The latter grant the Earth 6000 years of life, the former give it several million more, and never the twain shall meet. Each of these viewpoints is a metanarrative, a big story that governs people's understanding of the world. Like many metanarratives, each of these completely negates the other.\nSo on the one hand, metanarratives don't work well because they are too exclusionary. And on the other hand, mininarratives don't work well because they are too narrow. It will be fascinating to watch the canon evolve over the next few decades and to see whether this dichotomy can ever be resolved.\nThe passage suggests that the author would MOST likely believe that:\n\nOptions:\nA. Colleges should offer more courses in American history.\nB. Revising the canon in the late 20th century was a bad idea.\nC. Students today need a more global perspective than their coursework provides.\nD. Divisiveness in politics is preferable to conformity or unilateralism.",
  "response":"You must make this prediction based on what the author has said in the passage. Two examples of courses in American history are given to support the notion that some mininarratives are incompatible, but there is no indication that offering more courses would help (choice A). The author mentions revising the canon (choice B) in paragraphs 4 and 5 but implies that it was a good and necessary idea. Red states and blue states are mentioned in passing, but there is little else to indicate the author's feelings about politics (choice D). The best answer is choice $C$; the author is concerned that students today find it hard to see a \"big picture\" due to their immersion in competing mininarratives. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"It is perhaps too easy to think of mathematical truths as objective entities existing in the universe, simply waiting to be \"discovered\" by brilliant minds such as Pythagoras, Newton, and Descartes. Indeed, such a mentality may be cemented in Western minds raised in the Platonic tradition of a world of ideals that exists outside of the material world we reside in.\nBut new research in the fields of cognitive science and developmental psychology may be challenging this long-held belief in mathematics as a truth outside of human experience, and recasting mathematics as a product of the brain, an entity that is not discovered by man but rather created by him.\nSuch a radical paradigm shift has predictably met with stiff resistance, but the evidence in favor of a created mathematics rather than a discovered mathematics is compelling. Study after study has shown that all people possess an innate arithmetic. Babies as young as three or four days old can differentiate between groups of two and three items. And by the age of four months or so, an infant can see that one plus one is two and two minus one is one. Researchers discovered this startling fact by means of a simple experiment, following what is known as the violation of expectation model in developmental psychology. An infant was presented with a scenario in which a researcher held a puppet before the baby's eyes. Then a screen was moved in front of the puppet and another researcher placed a second puppet behind it. The screen was removed and if there were two puppets now visible, the infant registered no surprise (as measured by both the direction of the child's gaze and the duration of her stare). But if the screen was removed and only one puppet appeared, the infant registered perplexity at the situation. This experiment and others like it strongly suggest that all individuals are born with certain mathematical concepts hardwired into their brains. The ability to quickly and accurately count a small number of items, called subitizing by psychologists, is also found in animals. Researchers using experiments similar to the violation of expectation setup described previously have found an innate mathematical ability not just in primates, our closest evolutionary cousins, but in raccoons, rats, parrots, and pigeons. These findings are consistent with the belief that mathematical thinking is a function of the structures in the brain and not a product of the outside world.\nAnomalous cases involving brain injuries and disorders also support the idea that mathematical thinking arises from the organization of the brain. There is a documented case of a subject with a $\\mathrm{PhD}$ in chemistry who suffers from acalculia, the inability to perform basic arithmetic functions. Strangely, this patient is unable to perform simple calculations such as five plus three or eight minus two, but has no problem manipulating abstract algebraic operations. This curious fact has led psychologists to conclude that the part of the brain that handles abstract algebraic operations must be different from the part of the brain that works with more concrete arithmetic functions.\nSuppose a team of anthropologists discovered an isolated community of individuals who possessed absolutely no mathematical ability whatsoever. This discovery would have what effect on the author's argument?\n\nOptions:\nA. It would refute it.\nB. It would support it.\nC. It would neither support nor refute it.\nD. It would be necessary to determine the cause of the individuals' lack of mathematical ability in order to say what effect it would have on the argument.",
  "response":"This question asks you to apply new evidence. This question is very difficult because you must understand both the nature of the author's argument and the effect of new evidence on it. The passage argues that mathematical thinking is a product of the innate structures of the brain and mathematical \"truths\" are created by people. Finding a group of people that lacks mathematical ability might seem to refute the argument as choice A indicates, but upon closer examination it is not the best answer. The author does allow that certain changes in the brain may destroy the ability to perform mathematical operations. Thus, the community of math-deficient people may have a genetic mutation that prevents them from doing math. If so, it would not harm the author's argument. If, however, the group had no brain abnormalities and possessed no mathematical abilities, it would challenge the author's belief that mathematical thought is hardwired into the brain. Thus, choice $\\mathrm{D}$ is the best answer. Answers and Explanations The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nEngineers and computer scientists are intrigued by the potential power of nanocomputing. Nanocomputers will use atoms and molecules to perform their functions instead of the standard integrated circuits now employed. Theorists believe that the amount of information a nanocomputer could handle is staggering.\nA professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has attempted to calculate the computational limits of a computer with a weight of 1 kilogram and a volume of 1 liter. According to the laws of physics, the potential amount of computational power is a function of the available energy. Basically, each atom and subatomic particle in the computer has an amount of energy attached to it. Furthermore, the energy of each particle or atom is increased by the frequency of its movement. Thus the power of a computer that uses nanotechnology is bounded by the energy available from its atoms.\nSpecifically, the relationship between the energy of an object and its computation potential is a proportionate one. As Einstein has famously calculated, the energy of an object is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared. Thus, a theoretical computer weighing a mere kilogram has a huge amount of potential energy. To find the total computational power, the minimum amount of energy required to perform an operation is divided by the total amount of energy. \nof energy possessed by a 1-kilogram computer by Planck's constant yields a tremendously large number, roughly $5 \\times 10^{50}$ operations per second. Using even the most conservative estimates of the computing power of the human brain, such a computer would have the computational power of five trillion trillion human civilizations. The computer would also have a memory capacity, calculated by determining the degrees of freedom allowed by the state of all the particles comprising it, of $10^{31} \\mathrm{bits}$.\nThese numbers are purely theoretical, however. Were the computer to convert all of its mass to energy, it would be the equivalent of a thermonuclear explosion. And it is unreasonable to expect human technology to ever achieve abilities even close to these limits. However, a project at the University of Oklahoma has succeeded in storing 50 bits of data per atom, albeit on only a limited number of atoms. Given that there are $10^{25}$ atoms in 1 kilogram of material, it may be possible to fit up to $10^{27}$ bits of information in the computer. And if scientists are able to exploit the many properties of atoms to store information, including the position, spin, and quantum state of all its particles, it may be possible to exceed even that number.\nOne interesting consequence of such staggering increases in computing power is that each advance could provide the basis for further evolution. Once technology can achieve, for instance, a level of computation equal to $10^{40}$ operations per second, it can use that massive power to help bring the theoretical limit ever closer.\nAccording to the passage, why does the author believe that the theoretical limit of computational power may be approached?\n\nOptions:\nA. Scientists can exploit many different properties of atoms.\nB. Technological advances engender more advances.\nC. Computers only require a minimal amount of energy.\nD. Recent advances have shown the technology exists to reach the limit.",
  "response":"This question asks about supporting details and evidence. Go back to the passage and find why the author believes technology may reach the theoretical limit discussed. In the last paragraph, the author indicates that each technological advance provides the basis for further evolution, as choice B states. Choice A refers to the author's discussion of memory capacity, not computational power, and indicates a way technicians may exceed the theoretical limits described. Choice $C$ has nothing to do with reaching the theoretical limits of computational power. The technology to reach the limits does not yet exist, as choice D seems to indicate. The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nThe Nobel Peace Prize has often engendered controversy. The Red Cross, yes, but Henry Kissinger? Mother Teresa, perhaps, but Yasser Arafat? Surprisingly, a loud and ongoing controversy surrounds a choice that at first look seems most benign-that of the Guatemalan freedom fighter, Rigoberta Mench\u00fa Tum.\nRigoberta Mench\u00fa was born in 1959 to a poor Mayan family in Guatemala. At the time of her birth, General Yd\u00edgoras Fuentes had just seized power, following the assassination of Colonel Castillo Armas. The year she turned one, there was a failed coup by a military group, many of whom fled to the countryside and would return to lead the rebellion that would wax and wane for the next 36 years.\nGuatemala was divided into factions for that entire period, as military governments controlled the nation and guerilla groups controlled the countryside. At the same time, right-wing vigilantes led a campaign of torture and assassination, eliminating students and peasants they deemed to be allied with the guerillas.\nIn the countryside where Rigoberta lived, the battles were largely over control of farmland. Rigoberta's father was taken into custody and tortured when the army believed he had assisted in the assassination of a plantation owner. Following a rout of the guerillas by the army, the guerillas regrouped and began to take their fight to the capital, beginning a long series of assassinations of government figures.\nRigoberta, her father, and some of her siblings joined the Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC). In rapid succession, Rigoberta lost her brother, father, and mother to the army's own assassination squads. Rigoberta, though only in her early 20s, became a key figure in the resistance, traveling from village to village to educate the Mayan peasants in overcoming oppression, and leading demonstrations in Guatemala City.\nSoon Rigoberta was herself a target. She fled to Mexico and continued her life as an organizer, concentrating her focus on peasants' rights. She participated in the founding of the United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG). This period was the most violent of the entire Guatemalan civil war. Under the new president, General Efrain R\u00edos Montt, massacres of civilians became an everyday occurrence.  The controversy is all about the book. It began when anthropologist David Stoll began independent research on the same era about which Rigoberta dictated and discovered discrepancies in her recall of events. Massacres she described were not remembered by the locals; one of her brothers died by shooting rather than by fire, dates were incorrect, and so on. Stoll's discoveries were enough to roil up conservative historians and columnists, who declared Rigoberta's book the grossest propaganda and her career, therefore, unworthy of the Nobel Prize. Not surprisingly, this brought forth charges of racism, sexism, and cultural ignorance from the other side.\nThe Nobel Committee maintained a stiff upper lip throughout the political backand-forth and still insists that Rigoberta's prize had to do with her documented good works and not with her personal recorded history. Rigoberta's book is still widely taught, and her place in the history of Central American peasant revolutions seems assured.\nWhich choice(s) by the Nobel Committee does the author seem to indicate was undeserved?\nI. Rigoberta Mench\u00fa\nII. Henry Kissinger\nIII. The Red Cross\n\nOptions:\nA. I only\nB. II only\nC. I and III only\nD. II and III only",
  "response":"\u201cThe Red Cross, yes, but Henry Kissinger?\" asks the author. The author finds the controversy over Rigoberta \"surprising\" and states, \"her place in the history of Central American peasant revolutions seems assured.\" That indicates that as far as the author is concerned, the committee's choice of Rigoberta is not undeserved (I), but the choice of Kissinger may well be (II). Since the author gives the Red Cross (III) a thumbs-up, only choice B fits the passage. The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nThe Nobel Peace Prize has often engendered controversy. The Red Cross, yes, but Henry Kissinger? Mother Teresa, perhaps, but Yasser Arafat? Surprisingly, a loud and ongoing controversy surrounds a choice that at first look seems most benign-that of the Guatemalan freedom fighter, Rigoberta Mench\u00fa Tum.\nRigoberta Mench\u00fa was born in 1959 to a poor Mayan family in Guatemala. At the time of her birth, General Yd\u00edgoras Fuentes had just seized power, following the assassination of Colonel Castillo Armas. The year she turned one, there was a failed coup by a military group, many of whom fled to the countryside and would return to lead the rebellion that would wax and wane for the next 36 years.\nGuatemala was divided into factions for that entire period, as military governments controlled the nation and guerilla groups controlled the countryside. At the same time, right-wing vigilantes led a campaign of torture and assassination, eliminating students and peasants they deemed to be allied with the guerillas.\nIn the countryside where Rigoberta lived, the battles were largely over control of farmland. Rigoberta's father was taken into custody and tortured when the army believed he had assisted in the assassination of a plantation owner. Following a rout of the guerillas by the army, the guerillas regrouped and began to take their fight to the capital, beginning a long series of assassinations of government figures.\nRigoberta, her father, and some of her siblings joined the Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC). In rapid succession, Rigoberta lost her brother, father, and mother to the army's own assassination squads. Rigoberta, though only in her early 20s, became a key figure in the resistance, traveling from village to village to educate the Mayan peasants in overcoming oppression, and leading demonstrations in Guatemala City.\nSoon Rigoberta was herself a target. She fled to Mexico and continued her life as an organizer, concentrating her focus on peasants' rights. She participated in the founding of the United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG). This period was the most violent of the entire Guatemalan civil war. Under the new president, General Efrain R\u00edos Montt, massacres of civilians became an everyday occurrence.  The controversy is all about the book. It began when anthropologist David Stoll began independent research on the same era about which Rigoberta dictated and discovered discrepancies in her recall of events. Massacres she described were not remembered by the locals; one of her brothers died by shooting rather than by fire, dates were incorrect, and so on. Stoll's discoveries were enough to roil up conservative historians and columnists, who declared Rigoberta's book the grossest propaganda and her career, therefore, unworthy of the Nobel Prize. Not surprisingly, this brought forth charges of racism, sexism, and cultural ignorance from the other side.\nThe Nobel Committee maintained a stiff upper lip throughout the political backand-forth and still insists that Rigoberta's prize had to do with her documented good works and not with her personal recorded history. Rigoberta's book is still widely taught, and her place in the history of Central American peasant revolutions seems assured.\nWhich of the following statements is\/are NOT presented as evidence that Rigoberta may have falsified her autobiography?\nI. Massacres she described were not remembered by the locals.\nII. One of her brothers died by shooting rather than by fire.\nIII. Rigoberta dictated her life story to anthropologist Debray.\n\nOptions:\nA. I only\nB. I and II only\nC. III only\nD. II and III only",
  "response":"The question asks you to find the one or more statements that do NOT support the premise that Rigoberta falsified her book. To do that, you must find the statements that do support that premise and eliminate those. Statements that do support the premise will indicate some kind of disconnect between what she said and what was true. Those statements include I and II. Statement III, on the other hand, is simply a statement of fact. It does not support the premise that she falsified the book. The answer is choice C. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{\nIf our knowledge of the world occurs through the weaving of narratives, as postmodernists would have us believe, then we must judge the truth of each narrative by comparing it with what we value and what we already accept as true. Any metanarrative, or overarching \"big story,\" must be rejected because it attempts to explain away too many individual narratives. \nhistory through that metanarrative, postmodernists would argue, does not allow us to consider the contributions of other groups to the country we live in today. So constructing a metanarrative can often be exclusionary.\nOf course, constructing a series of smaller narratives is just as exclusionary because it frames experience in a limited way. It is easy to see this occurring if you look at any university course list today. How is it possible for American History 4111, \"Imperialism and Amerindians, 1600-1840\" to coexist alongside American History 4546, \"American Military History and Policy\"? Does English 340X, \"Survey of Women's Literature,\" subsume or incorporate elements of English 342X, \"American Indian Women Writers\"? Perhaps we should pity the undergraduate student today. Lacking any overarching metanarrative to provide perspective, how can the poor student wade through the often contradictory mininarratives being thrown his or her way?\nThere is no question that the old way was wrongheaded and elitist. Survey courses that emphasized the white male perspective were removed from the curriculum in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, and for good reason. But replacing them with a smorgasbord of mininarratives risks eliminating any sense of a big picture. Can students connect the dots to define a coherent reality, or must their reality be a series of frames with no links among them?\nRevising the canon was about ridding our perspective of those racist, sexist, or classist notions that insisted on a single Truth with a capital $T$. Of course there is no overriding Truth that applies to everyone. For everyone who believes that Thomas Jefferson was a brilliant reformer, there is someone who thinks he was a two-faced slaveholder. Yet, where does it leave us if everyone we know is approaching history, science, literature, or what have you from a slightly different angle? It's bad enough when partisan politics divides us into red states and blue states. How much worse is it to imagine ourselves clad in thousands upon thousands of shades of purple?\nThe clearest sign that we are not ready to abandon our metanarratives comes in the current and ongoing clash between those who accept evolutionary theory and those who accept the Bible as the written word of God. The latter grant the Earth 6000 years of life, the former give it several million more, and never the twain shall meet. Each of these viewpoints is a metanarrative, a big story that governs people's understanding of the world. Like many metanarratives, each of these completely negates the other.\nSo on the one hand, metanarratives don't work well because they are too exclusionary. And on the other hand, mininarratives don't work well because they are too narrow. It will be fascinating to watch the canon evolve over the next few decades and to see whether this dichotomy can ever be resolved.\nThe author states that metanarratives have been replaced on campuses by a \"smorgasbord\" of mininarratives. The word smorgasbord is used to indicate:\n\nOptions:\nA. freshness\nB. choice\nC. flavor\nD. foreignness",
  "response":"Smorgasbord is a Swedish word meaning \"a buffet meal featuring a variety of dishes.\" It is this variety, or choice, to which the author refers. Even if you do not know the word, you should be able to guess this from context. The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{\nIf our knowledge of the world occurs through the weaving of narratives, as postmodernists would have us believe, then we must judge the truth of each narrative by comparing it with what we value and what we already accept as true. Any metanarrative, or overarching \"big story,\" must be rejected because it attempts to explain away too many individual narratives. \nhistory through that metanarrative, postmodernists would argue, does not allow us to consider the contributions of other groups to the country we live in today. So constructing a metanarrative can often be exclusionary.\nOf course, constructing a series of smaller narratives is just as exclusionary because it frames experience in a limited way. It is easy to see this occurring if you look at any university course list today. How is it possible for American History 4111, \"Imperialism and Amerindians, 1600-1840\" to coexist alongside American History 4546, \"American Military History and Policy\"? Does English 340X, \"Survey of Women's Literature,\" subsume or incorporate elements of English 342X, \"American Indian Women Writers\"? Perhaps we should pity the undergraduate student today. Lacking any overarching metanarrative to provide perspective, how can the poor student wade through the often contradictory mininarratives being thrown his or her way?\nThere is no question that the old way was wrongheaded and elitist. Survey courses that emphasized the white male perspective were removed from the curriculum in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, and for good reason. But replacing them with a smorgasbord of mininarratives risks eliminating any sense of a big picture. Can students connect the dots to define a coherent reality, or must their reality be a series of frames with no links among them?\nRevising the canon was about ridding our perspective of those racist, sexist, or classist notions that insisted on a single Truth with a capital $T$. Of course there is no overriding Truth that applies to everyone. For everyone who believes that Thomas Jefferson was a brilliant reformer, there is someone who thinks he was a two-faced slaveholder. Yet, where does it leave us if everyone we know is approaching history, science, literature, or what have you from a slightly different angle? It's bad enough when partisan politics divides us into red states and blue states. How much worse is it to imagine ourselves clad in thousands upon thousands of shades of purple?\nThe clearest sign that we are not ready to abandon our metanarratives comes in the current and ongoing clash between those who accept evolutionary theory and those who accept the Bible as the written word of God. The latter grant the Earth 6000 years of life, the former give it several million more, and never the twain shall meet. Each of these viewpoints is a metanarrative, a big story that governs people's understanding of the world. Like many metanarratives, each of these completely negates the other.\nSo on the one hand, metanarratives don't work well because they are too exclusionary. And on the other hand, mininarratives don't work well because they are too narrow. It will be fascinating to watch the canon evolve over the next few decades and to see whether this dichotomy can ever be resolved.\nWhich of the following assertions does the author support with an example?\nI. Constructing mininarratives frames experience in a limited way.\nII. We are not ready to abandon our metanarratives.\nIII. Constructing a metanarrative may be exclusionary.\n\nOptions:\nA. I only\nB. III only\nC. I and II only\nD. I, II, and III",
  "response":"Supposition I is supported by the examples of competing American history courses. Supposition II is supported by the clash between evolutionary theory and strict Bible interpretation. Supposition III is supported by the example of a Eurocentric look at American history (see paragraph 2). Since all three suppositions are supported by examples, choice $\\mathrm{D}$ is the best answer. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{\nLanguage consists of three main parts. The first is simply vocabulary, the lexicon of words available to the speaker to describe particular concepts, actions, and states. The second part is morphology, the set of rules that dictates how words and parts of words may be combined to form other words. The final part of language is syntax, the rules that combine words into phrases and sentences. It is morphology that we shall turn our attention to first.\nMorphology has two major subdivisions. They are derivation and inflection. Derivation refers to those rules by which new words may be formed out of preexisting words. Inflection, sometimes referred to as conjugation and declension, states how words are changed to indicate their function within a sentence.\nAlthough common mythology holds that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn, many linguists would beg to differ. In fact, when it comes to inflection, \nthe conditional, the subjunctive, the imperative, and others. Languages from outside the Indo-European family tree may be even more complex. The Bantu language of Kivunjo has roughly half a million combinations of prefixes and suffixes for a verb. English, however, has a mere four combinations. A verb such as to walk is limited to the following forms: walk, walks, walked, and walking.\nAlthough there are only four basic verb forms, the English language does have more than 13 possible inflections. It just makes do with these four forms for the various functions. English also differs significantly from many other Indo-European languages in that in English, the stem of the word can be pronounced and is in fact part of the language. In Spanish, the stem of the verb to walk is camin-, but this is not a word in the language. In order to pronounce this word, it must be conjugated and combined with a suffix. English uses the stem form of the verb for four inflections: the present tense (except for the third-person singular), the infinitive, the imperative, and the subjunctive. The verb form ending in $-s$ is used in only one case, the third-person singular.\nThe two possible verb suffixes, -ing and $-e d$, are put to use in a variety of ways as well. The -ing ending appears in the progressive participle, the present participle, the gerund form, and the verbal adjective form. That leaves the $-e d$ form to handle the remaining inflections, including the past tense, the perfect participle, the passive participle, and some verbal adjectives.\nWhy are there so many different inflections for verb forms that basically sound the same? Simply put, the meanings implied by the various moods are different, even if the words used are fairly similar. Compare the meaning conveyed by the simple past tense (he walked) to the meaning inherent in the perfect participle (he has walked).\nThe passage suggests that the author MOST likely believes that:\n\nOptions:\nA. The English language does not suffer from its lack of inflections.\nB. English is the only language in which the verb stem is a word.\nC. English is not as hard to learn as many think.\nD. At one time the English language had more inflections.",
  "response":"This application question asks you to draw conclusions. The author states that the English language makes do with fewer verb forms than other languages, but it still can convey different meanings. This makes choice A correct. Choices B and D are not supported by the passage, and choice C reflects what some linguists believe. The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nThe Nobel Peace Prize has often engendered controversy. The Red Cross, yes, but Henry Kissinger? Mother Teresa, perhaps, but Yasser Arafat? Surprisingly, a loud and ongoing controversy surrounds a choice that at first look seems most benign-that of the Guatemalan freedom fighter, Rigoberta Mench\u00fa Tum.\nRigoberta Mench\u00fa was born in 1959 to a poor Mayan family in Guatemala. At the time of her birth, General Yd\u00edgoras Fuentes had just seized power, following the assassination of Colonel Castillo Armas. The year she turned one, there was a failed coup by a military group, many of whom fled to the countryside and would return to lead the rebellion that would wax and wane for the next 36 years.\nGuatemala was divided into factions for that entire period, as military governments controlled the nation and guerilla groups controlled the countryside. At the same time, right-wing vigilantes led a campaign of torture and assassination, eliminating students and peasants they deemed to be allied with the guerillas.\nIn the countryside where Rigoberta lived, the battles were largely over control of farmland. Rigoberta's father was taken into custody and tortured when the army believed he had assisted in the assassination of a plantation owner. Following a rout of the guerillas by the army, the guerillas regrouped and began to take their fight to the capital, beginning a long series of assassinations of government figures.\nRigoberta, her father, and some of her siblings joined the Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC). In rapid succession, Rigoberta lost her brother, father, and mother to the army's own assassination squads. Rigoberta, though only in her early 20s, became a key figure in the resistance, traveling from village to village to educate the Mayan peasants in overcoming oppression, and leading demonstrations in Guatemala City.\nSoon Rigoberta was herself a target. She fled to Mexico and continued her life as an organizer, concentrating her focus on peasants' rights. She participated in the founding of the United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG). This period was the most violent of the entire Guatemalan civil war. Under the new president, General Efrain R\u00edos Montt, massacres of civilians became an everyday occurrence.  The controversy is all about the book. It began when anthropologist David Stoll began independent research on the same era about which Rigoberta dictated and discovered discrepancies in her recall of events. Massacres she described were not remembered by the locals; one of her brothers died by shooting rather than by fire, dates were incorrect, and so on. Stoll's discoveries were enough to roil up conservative historians and columnists, who declared Rigoberta's book the grossest propaganda and her career, therefore, unworthy of the Nobel Prize. Not surprisingly, this brought forth charges of racism, sexism, and cultural ignorance from the other side.\nThe Nobel Committee maintained a stiff upper lip throughout the political backand-forth and still insists that Rigoberta's prize had to do with her documented good works and not with her personal recorded history. Rigoberta's book is still widely taught, and her place in the history of Central American peasant revolutions seems assured.\nWhich new information, if true, would BEST support conservatives' claims that Rigoberta was a fraud?\n\nOptions:\nA. the discovery that Rigoberta was really born in early 1960\nB. findings that show Rigoberta educated thousands of Mayan peasants\nC. the discovery that neither Rigoberta nor her parents were part of CUC\nD. findings that show R\u00edos Montt was overthrown by a peasant army",
  "response":"You are asked here to assess the relative relevance of evidence. Falsifying a birth date (choice A) might be evidence of a minor deception, but it would not be enough to support charges of fraud. Falsifying a critical part of her history as it relates to her reputation, as choice C would do, would certainly indicate a desire to deceive. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{\nIf our knowledge of the world occurs through the weaving of narratives, as postmodernists would have us believe, then we must judge the truth of each narrative by comparing it with what we value and what we already accept as true. Any metanarrative, or overarching \"big story,\" must be rejected because it attempts to explain away too many individual narratives. \nhistory through that metanarrative, postmodernists would argue, does not allow us to consider the contributions of other groups to the country we live in today. So constructing a metanarrative can often be exclusionary.\nOf course, constructing a series of smaller narratives is just as exclusionary because it frames experience in a limited way. It is easy to see this occurring if you look at any university course list today. How is it possible for American History 4111, \"Imperialism and Amerindians, 1600-1840\" to coexist alongside American History 4546, \"American Military History and Policy\"? Does English 340X, \"Survey of Women's Literature,\" subsume or incorporate elements of English 342X, \"American Indian Women Writers\"? Perhaps we should pity the undergraduate student today. Lacking any overarching metanarrative to provide perspective, how can the poor student wade through the often contradictory mininarratives being thrown his or her way?\nThere is no question that the old way was wrongheaded and elitist. Survey courses that emphasized the white male perspective were removed from the curriculum in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, and for good reason. But replacing them with a smorgasbord of mininarratives risks eliminating any sense of a big picture. Can students connect the dots to define a coherent reality, or must their reality be a series of frames with no links among them?\nRevising the canon was about ridding our perspective of those racist, sexist, or classist notions that insisted on a single Truth with a capital $T$. Of course there is no overriding Truth that applies to everyone. For everyone who believes that Thomas Jefferson was a brilliant reformer, there is someone who thinks he was a two-faced slaveholder. Yet, where does it leave us if everyone we know is approaching history, science, literature, or what have you from a slightly different angle? It's bad enough when partisan politics divides us into red states and blue states. How much worse is it to imagine ourselves clad in thousands upon thousands of shades of purple?\nThe clearest sign that we are not ready to abandon our metanarratives comes in the current and ongoing clash between those who accept evolutionary theory and those who accept the Bible as the written word of God. The latter grant the Earth 6000 years of life, the former give it several million more, and never the twain shall meet. Each of these viewpoints is a metanarrative, a big story that governs people's understanding of the world. Like many metanarratives, each of these completely negates the other.\nSo on the one hand, metanarratives don't work well because they are too exclusionary. And on the other hand, mininarratives don't work well because they are too narrow. It will be fascinating to watch the canon evolve over the next few decades and to see whether this dichotomy can ever be resolved.\nBased on the information in the passage, which of these might be considered a metanarrative?\nI. Marxism\nII. rationalism\nIII. libertarianism\n\nOptions:\nA. I only\nB. II only\nC. II and III only\nD. I, II, and III\n",
  "response":"All three philosophies are all-encompassing ways to look at the world, so all three could be considered metanarratives. Since all three are valid, the answer is choice $\\mathrm{D}$. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"It is perhaps too easy to think of mathematical truths as objective entities existing in the universe, simply waiting to be \"discovered\" by brilliant minds such as Pythagoras, Newton, and Descartes. Indeed, such a mentality may be cemented in Western minds raised in the Platonic tradition of a world of ideals that exists outside of the material world we reside in.\nBut new research in the fields of cognitive science and developmental psychology may be challenging this long-held belief in mathematics as a truth outside of human experience, and recasting mathematics as a product of the brain, an entity that is not discovered by man but rather created by him.\nSuch a radical paradigm shift has predictably met with stiff resistance, but the evidence in favor of a created mathematics rather than a discovered mathematics is compelling. Study after study has shown that all people possess an innate arithmetic. Babies as young as three or four days old can differentiate between groups of two and three items. And by the age of four months or so, an infant can see that one plus one is two and two minus one is one. Researchers discovered this startling fact by means of a simple experiment, following what is known as the violation of expectation model in developmental psychology. An infant was presented with a scenario in which a researcher held a puppet before the baby's eyes. Then a screen was moved in front of the puppet and another researcher placed a second puppet behind it. The screen was removed and if there were two puppets now visible, the infant registered no surprise (as measured by both the direction of the child's gaze and the duration of her stare). But if the screen was removed and only one puppet appeared, the infant registered perplexity at the situation. This experiment and others like it strongly suggest that all individuals are born with certain mathematical concepts hardwired into their brains. The ability to quickly and accurately count a small number of items, called subitizing by psychologists, is also found in animals. Researchers using experiments similar to the violation of expectation setup described previously have found an innate mathematical ability not just in primates, our closest evolutionary cousins, but in raccoons, rats, parrots, and pigeons. These findings are consistent with the belief that mathematical thinking is a function of the structures in the brain and not a product of the outside world.\nAnomalous cases involving brain injuries and disorders also support the idea that mathematical thinking arises from the organization of the brain. There is a documented case of a subject with a $\\mathrm{PhD}$ in chemistry who suffers from acalculia, the inability to perform basic arithmetic functions. Strangely, this patient is unable to perform simple calculations such as five plus three or eight minus two, but has no problem manipulating abstract algebraic operations. This curious fact has led psychologists to conclude that the part of the brain that handles abstract algebraic operations must be different from the part of the brain that works with more concrete arithmetic functions.\nIn the discussion of the violation of expectation experiment, the author assumes that:\n\nOptions:\nA. Certain observable behaviors accurately indicate inner mental states.\nB. The infants in the study did not know what happened to the puppets behind the screen.\nC. Researchers used the same types of puppets in all of the experiments.\nD. Animals and infants performed at similar levels of competency in the experiments.",
  "response":"In order to answer this question, you must be able to judge credibility. The author cites the violation of expectation experiment as support for the author's claim that mathematics is an innate part of human cognition. In order for these experiments to be credible, the author is assuming that the researchers can accurately determine that the infants are in fact surprised when the number of puppets changes. The only evidence for this is the direction and duration of the stares of the subjects. Accepting these results as evidence indicates the author believes outward signs accurately indicate inner emotional states; otherwise, the evidence would not support the argument. The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"In sharp contrast to the modern, confessional poetry of the 20th century, the oeuvre of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow seems quaint and primly Victorian. During his lifetime, however, he was the most celebrated poet in the country. A closer look at the history of American poetry reveals that, despite his eminence, Longfellow wrote in a mold of both form and content that was already being challenged during his lifetime. But why, a century later, do the artistic works of many of his contemporaries continue to be enjoyed and studied while Longfellow languishes in the tomb of cultural artifacts?\nOne answer lies in the radical shift that began to take place in poetry in the mid19th century. Longfellow's themes and steadfast rhymes (and those of John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell) gave way gradually to confessional verse, whose subjects were more personal and rhymes were looser and less conventional. But to understand this shift, one must first understand the nature of Longfellow's work and his standing in the American literary scene of his time.\nLongfellow took as his subject his country's historical imagination, writing on an epic scale about Paul Revere, the Indian Hiawatha, and the pilgrim Miles Standish. He bestowed a mythic dimension on these figures, giving American readers iconic images that helped form a collective consciousness in the new country (indeed, Longfellow was a part of the first generation to be born in the United States). But Longfellow's content went beyond nationalistic pride-it was highly accessible and incredibly popular. Its accessibility is explained by his obvious themes that could be easily understood and embraced by the public. Longfellow did not challenge his readers, but appealed to their desire for stories that expounded an optimistic, sentimental, and moralistic worldview. Those themes were explored in rhyme that allowed readers to commit the poems to memory, much like songs. In 1857, The Song of Hiawatha, arguably his bestknown poem, sold 50,000 copies, an astounding number at the time. The next year, The Courtship of Miles Standish sold 25,000 copies in two months and in London sold 10,000 copies in one day. His success allowed him to give up a professorship at Harvard and focus full time on his writing.\nWalt Whitman, Longfellow's contemporary, wrote poetry similar to that of Longfellow-romantic and sentimental, with conventional rhyme and meter. But in the 1850s, indeed two years before The Song of Hiawatha, he wrote and published Leaves of Grass; a more radical departure from his previous work could not have been imagined. The 12 unnamed poems comprising Leaves of Grass are written in free verse-that is, without conventional rhyme and meter. Yet, like Longfellow, he was determined to explore the subject of America and his love for his country.\nWhitman looked to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson for inspiration. Emerson wrote \"America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.\" Indeed, Whitman paraphrased Emerson in his preface. Whitman's groundbreaking free verse changed the trajectory of American poetry. The next generation of poets, including Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson, and William Carlos Williams, celebrated their debt to Whitman. Decades later, the influence of Whitman's work on Allen Ginsberg and Langston Hughes, among many others, continues his legacy.\nWhich of the following statements is NOT presented as evidence that Whitman is responsible for the radical shift in American poetry that occurred in the 19th century?\n\nOptions:\nA. He used iconic American figures as his subjects.\nB. His poetry was more personal and intimate than that of his predecessors or contemporaries.\nC. He wrote about the common man and commonplace events.\nD. He began writing in free verse rather than conventional rhymes.",
  "response":"This question asks you to assess evidence. To answer it, first note the hypothesis as stated in the question stem: Whitman was responsible for the radical shift in American poetry. Then determine which statements support it and which one does not. The one that does not is the correct answer. The fact that his poetry was personal and intimate (choice B) supports the hypothesis, as does his use of free verse (choice D). Choice C, choosing as his subjects the common man and commonplace events, also supports the hypothesis. Nowhere in the passage does it state that Whitman used iconic American figures as his subjects; in fact, that is what Longfellow did, and his poetry was what Whitman's shifted away from. That means choice A is correct. The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nEngineers and computer scientists are intrigued by the potential power of nanocomputing. Nanocomputers will use atoms and molecules to perform their functions instead of the standard integrated circuits now employed. Theorists believe that the amount of information a nanocomputer could handle is staggering.\nA professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has attempted to calculate the computational limits of a computer with a weight of 1 kilogram and a volume of 1 liter. According to the laws of physics, the potential amount of computational power is a function of the available energy. Basically, each atom and subatomic particle in the computer has an amount of energy attached to it. Furthermore, the energy of each particle or atom is increased by the frequency of its movement. Thus the power of a computer that uses nanotechnology is bounded by the energy available from its atoms.\nSpecifically, the relationship between the energy of an object and its computation potential is a proportionate one. As Einstein has famously calculated, the energy of an object is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared. Thus, a theoretical computer weighing a mere kilogram has a huge amount of potential energy. To find the total computational power, the minimum amount of energy required to perform an operation is divided by the total amount of energy. \nof energy possessed by a 1-kilogram computer by Planck's constant yields a tremendously large number, roughly $5 \\times 10^{50}$ operations per second. Using even the most conservative estimates of the computing power of the human brain, such a computer would have the computational power of five trillion trillion human civilizations. The computer would also have a memory capacity, calculated by determining the degrees of freedom allowed by the state of all the particles comprising it, of $10^{31} \\mathrm{bits}$.\nThese numbers are purely theoretical, however. Were the computer to convert all of its mass to energy, it would be the equivalent of a thermonuclear explosion. And it is unreasonable to expect human technology to ever achieve abilities even close to these limits. However, a project at the University of Oklahoma has succeeded in storing 50 bits of data per atom, albeit on only a limited number of atoms. Given that there are $10^{25}$ atoms in 1 kilogram of material, it may be possible to fit up to $10^{27}$ bits of information in the computer. And if scientists are able to exploit the many properties of atoms to store information, including the position, spin, and quantum state of all its particles, it may be possible to exceed even that number.\nOne interesting consequence of such staggering increases in computing power is that each advance could provide the basis for further evolution. Once technology can achieve, for instance, a level of computation equal to $10^{40}$ operations per second, it can use that massive power to help bring the theoretical limit ever closer.\nAccording to the information in the passage, which of the following could increase the computational power of the theoretical computer?\n\nOptions:\nA. increasing the amount of energy it takes to perform an operation\nB. decreasing the volume of the computer\nC. decreasing the amount of energy it takes to perform an operation\nD. decreasing the mass of the computer",
  "response":"The question asks you to solve a problem. To answer it, you must first understand how computational power is calculated. The passage states that the power is found by dividing the total energy by the energy required for an operation. Decreasing the amount of energy, as in choice $\\mathrm{C}$, would yield a larger quotient. Choice A would do the opposite, and choices B and D would decrease the total energy available. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\"I acknowledge Shakespeare to be the world's greatest dramatic poet, but regret that no parent could place the uncorrected book in the hands of his daughter, and therefore I have prepared the Family Shakespeare.\"\nThus did Thomas Bowdler, a self-appointed editor trained as a physician, explain his creation of a children's edition of Shakespeare that omitted some characters completely, toned down language he considered objectionable, and euphemized such shocking situations as Ophelia's suicide-an accident in Bowdler's version.\nBowdler was hardly the first to tone down the Bard. Poet laureate Nahum Tate rewrote King Lear, banishing the Fool entirely and giving the play a happy ending. His version was staged regularly from the 1680 s through the 18 th century.\nThomas Bowdler was, from all the evidence, a less likely editor. He was born in 1754 near Bath, England, to a wealthy family. He studied medicine but never really practiced, preferring to exercise philanthropy and to play chess, at which he was a master. In his retirement, he decided to try his hand at editorial work. Shakespeare's dramas were his first project. He added nothing to the texts, but by cutting and paraphrasing strove to remove anything that \"could give just offense to the religious and virtuous mind.\"\nThe result was a 10-volume expurgated version that was criticized widely, although hardly universally. The famed British poet Algernon Swinburne remarked that \"no man ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him into the hands of intelligent and imaginative children.\"\nThere is some indication that Bowdler's sister Harriet did the actual editing of Shakespeare's text. She was a poet and editor in her own right, and clearly more qualified than her brother to lay hands on the Bard of Avon. She may have published the expurgated edition anonymously before allowing her brother to take over the rights. If this is so, it is unsurprising that Harriet would not have wanted her name on the book. If the original Shakespeare were truly objectionable, then it would have been doubly so for a well-bred, unmarried Englishwoman of the day.\nBowdler went on to create children's versions of the Old Testament and of Edward Gibbons's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, although neither achieved either the success or ridicule of his Shakespeare. Today, of course, we know Bowdler not for his good works, but instead for the eponym derived from his good name. To bowdlerize is to censor or amend a written work, often with a connotation of prudishness. The process for which Bowdler is known is one that continues to the present day, as texts deemed too difficult for today's high schoolers are \"dumbed-down,\" library editions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have the \"n-word\" blacked out, and middle-school productions of popular Broadway plays have all expletives deleted. We would be hard-pressed to say that we live in a prudish era, but some of the same impulses that drove Thomas and Harriet Bowdler still exist today.\nThe passage implies that Bowdler's sister was a more likely editor than he because:\n\nOptions:\nA. She would have been truly offended by Shakespeare's plots.\nB. Unlike her brother, she was a published writer and editor.\nC. Bowdler was known for his misuse of the English language.\nD. Women of the time were more likely to read Shakespeare.",
  "response":"Bowdler himself was trained as a doctor; the passage makes clear that he was not an editor. His sister, however, was a poet and editor, and therefore was more likely than he to have made the editorial changes that led to the revised Shakespearean texts. There is no evidence in the passage to support choice $\\mathrm{C}$ or $\\mathrm{D}$, and although there is some implication that choice $\\mathrm{A}$ is true, it does not explain why she would have been a more likely editor than he. The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{\nLanguage consists of three main parts. The first is simply vocabulary, the lexicon of words available to the speaker to describe particular concepts, actions, and states. The second part is morphology, the set of rules that dictates how words and parts of words may be combined to form other words. The final part of language is syntax, the rules that combine words into phrases and sentences. It is morphology that we shall turn our attention to first.\nMorphology has two major subdivisions. They are derivation and inflection. Derivation refers to those rules by which new words may be formed out of preexisting words. Inflection, sometimes referred to as conjugation and declension, states how words are changed to indicate their function within a sentence.\nAlthough common mythology holds that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn, many linguists would beg to differ. In fact, when it comes to inflection, \nthe conditional, the subjunctive, the imperative, and others. Languages from outside the Indo-European family tree may be even more complex. The Bantu language of Kivunjo has roughly half a million combinations of prefixes and suffixes for a verb. English, however, has a mere four combinations. A verb such as to walk is limited to the following forms: walk, walks, walked, and walking.\nAlthough there are only four basic verb forms, the English language does have more than 13 possible inflections. It just makes do with these four forms for the various functions. English also differs significantly from many other Indo-European languages in that in English, the stem of the word can be pronounced and is in fact part of the language. In Spanish, the stem of the verb to walk is camin-, but this is not a word in the language. In order to pronounce this word, it must be conjugated and combined with a suffix. English uses the stem form of the verb for four inflections: the present tense (except for the third-person singular), the infinitive, the imperative, and the subjunctive. The verb form ending in $-s$ is used in only one case, the third-person singular.\nThe two possible verb suffixes, -ing and $-e d$, are put to use in a variety of ways as well. The -ing ending appears in the progressive participle, the present participle, the gerund form, and the verbal adjective form. That leaves the $-e d$ form to handle the remaining inflections, including the past tense, the perfect participle, the passive participle, and some verbal adjectives.\nWhy are there so many different inflections for verb forms that basically sound the same? Simply put, the meanings implied by the various moods are different, even if the words used are fairly similar. Compare the meaning conveyed by the simple past tense (he walked) to the meaning inherent in the perfect participle (he has walked).\nAccording to the passage, which English inflection can be expressed by two different verb suffixes?\nI. the present tense\nII. the verbal adjective\nIII. the present participle\n\nOptions:\nA. I only\nB. I and II only\nC. III only\nD. I, II, and III",
  "response":"This question asks about supporting details. The passage states that the present tense (statement I) is usually expressed using the stem form of the verb, but can also be expressed in the third-person singular by using the $-s$ suffix. Similarly, verbal adjectives (statement II) are sometimes expressed using the -ing suffix and sometimes with the -ed suffix. The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"The man whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt christened \u201cThe Happy Warrior\" in a nominating speech would later become a thorn in Roosevelt's side. Some thought the switch in loyalties was sour grapes, but others saw Alfred E. Smith as the epitome of William Wordsworth's \"happy warrior\" and therefore a man who \"makes his moral being his prime care\"-one who never made a move without consulting his conscience.\nAlfred E. Smith was both a successful politician and an unsuccessful one. A fourterm governor of New York State, he seemed a sure candidate for president, and indeed he ran three times for that position, only to lose each time.\nHe had several strikes against him. He was the Catholic son of Irish and ItalianGerman immigrants, making him anathema to nativists, the xenophobes who underwent a resurgence in the 1920s. He was from New York City, viewed even in the early twentieth century as disconnected from the national character. He was a progressive, which made conservatives of all stripes nervous. And he favored the repeal of Prohibition, a position that lost him the backing of many party leaders.\nWho was this unlikely candidate? Born Alfred Emanuel Smith in 1873, Smith grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His father died when Smith was young, and the boy dropped out of school to take care of the family. At age 21, Smith supported a losing candidate in a local race and came to the attention of New York politicos, who took him under their wing. Nine years later, he ran successfully for the New York State Assembly, where he rapidly rose in the ranks to become Majority Leader and finally Speaker. He played a pivotal role in the revamping of New York's constitution, was elected sheriff of New York County, and then ran for governor in 1918, winning handily. Although he lost a re-election bid two years later, he surged back in 1922 and would remain in the governor's seat for six more years. His terms were marked by unparalleled improvements in labor laws and laws protecting civil liberties, for Smith's goal was to support those he saw as most in need of government's assistance.\nIn this goal, he was allied with Franklin Roosevelt, and the two were close enough that Roosevelt nominated Smith for president in 1924. The Drys, or Prohibitionists, backed William McAdoo, a son-in-law of former President Woodrow Wilson. Smith's supporters and McAdoo's supporters were so far apart that finally a compromise candidate, John Davis, was nominated and promptly lost the general election to Calvin Coolidge.\nIn 1928, Smith received his party's nomination on the second ballot, but along with his anti-Prohibition leanings, his religion became a major issue during the campaign, paving the way for Herbert Hoover to win the general election. Meanwhile, Smith had arranged for the nomination of his New York colleague, Franklin Roosevelt, to be governor of New York. Although Smith lost his bid, Roosevelt did not. Then came the Depression and the election of 1932. Backroom dealings ensured that Franklin Roosevelt won the nominating process, with another would-be presidential candidate in the vice-presidential spot on the ticket. Smith was left out in the cold on his third try for the presidency. Despite his former regard for Roosevelt, he began to work hard, if unsuccessfully, to defeat the New Deal. He supported two Republicans rather than Roosevelt in the 1936 and 1940 elections, and he died in 1944, a man who had never reached his desired goal, yet had inspired many of the changes for which his rival is now known.\nIf Smith were to run for office today on a platform similar to his original plan, which of the following outcomes would MOST likely occur?\n\nOptions:\nA. He would be supported by Progressives and union leaders.\nB. He would be opposed by civil libertarians.\nC. He would be supported by those who favor immigration reform.\nD. He would be opposed by those who support social welfare programs.",
  "response":"Smith was a progressive born of immigrant parents, and he supported both civil liberties and unions, as well as \"those he saw as most in need of government's assistance.\" Of the answers given, only choice A is likely. This question requires you to combine information. The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{\nLanguage consists of three main parts. The first is simply vocabulary, the lexicon of words available to the speaker to describe particular concepts, actions, and states. The second part is morphology, the set of rules that dictates how words and parts of words may be combined to form other words. The final part of language is syntax, the rules that combine words into phrases and sentences. It is morphology that we shall turn our attention to first.\nMorphology has two major subdivisions. They are derivation and inflection. Derivation refers to those rules by which new words may be formed out of preexisting words. Inflection, sometimes referred to as conjugation and declension, states how words are changed to indicate their function within a sentence.\nAlthough common mythology holds that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn, many linguists would beg to differ. In fact, when it comes to inflection, \nthe conditional, the subjunctive, the imperative, and others. Languages from outside the Indo-European family tree may be even more complex. The Bantu language of Kivunjo has roughly half a million combinations of prefixes and suffixes for a verb. English, however, has a mere four combinations. A verb such as to walk is limited to the following forms: walk, walks, walked, and walking.\nAlthough there are only four basic verb forms, the English language does have more than 13 possible inflections. It just makes do with these four forms for the various functions. English also differs significantly from many other Indo-European languages in that in English, the stem of the word can be pronounced and is in fact part of the language. In Spanish, the stem of the verb to walk is camin-, but this is not a word in the language. In order to pronounce this word, it must be conjugated and combined with a suffix. English uses the stem form of the verb for four inflections: the present tense (except for the third-person singular), the infinitive, the imperative, and the subjunctive. The verb form ending in $-s$ is used in only one case, the third-person singular.\nThe two possible verb suffixes, -ing and $-e d$, are put to use in a variety of ways as well. The -ing ending appears in the progressive participle, the present participle, the gerund form, and the verbal adjective form. That leaves the $-e d$ form to handle the remaining inflections, including the past tense, the perfect participle, the passive participle, and some verbal adjectives.\nWhy are there so many different inflections for verb forms that basically sound the same? Simply put, the meanings implied by the various moods are different, even if the words used are fairly similar. Compare the meaning conveyed by the simple past tense (he walked) to the meaning inherent in the perfect participle (he has walked).\nWhich of the following assertions does the author support with an example?\nI. The English language is relatively simple in its inflections.\nII. The English language is not as hard to learn as some believe.\nIII. Inflections in the English language can convey a variety of meanings.\n\nOptions:\nA. I only\nB. III only\nC. I and III only\nD. II and III only",
  "response":"This question involves analyzing an argument. Statement $\\mathrm{I}$ is supported by the examples of the Spanish language and the Kivunjo language, which have far more forms than the English language. Statement II is unsupported by a specific example. Statement III is supported by the example in the final paragraph of the different meanings of similar-sounding verb forms, which makes choice $\\mathrm{C}$ the best answer. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\"I acknowledge Shakespeare to be the world's greatest dramatic poet, but regret that no parent could place the uncorrected book in the hands of his daughter, and therefore I have prepared the Family Shakespeare.\"\nThus did Thomas Bowdler, a self-appointed editor trained as a physician, explain his creation of a children's edition of Shakespeare that omitted some characters completely, toned down language he considered objectionable, and euphemized such shocking situations as Ophelia's suicide-an accident in Bowdler's version.\nBowdler was hardly the first to tone down the Bard. Poet laureate Nahum Tate rewrote King Lear, banishing the Fool entirely and giving the play a happy ending. His version was staged regularly from the 1680 s through the 18 th century.\nThomas Bowdler was, from all the evidence, a less likely editor. He was born in 1754 near Bath, England, to a wealthy family. He studied medicine but never really practiced, preferring to exercise philanthropy and to play chess, at which he was a master. In his retirement, he decided to try his hand at editorial work. Shakespeare's dramas were his first project. He added nothing to the texts, but by cutting and paraphrasing strove to remove anything that \"could give just offense to the religious and virtuous mind.\"\nThe result was a 10-volume expurgated version that was criticized widely, although hardly universally. The famed British poet Algernon Swinburne remarked that \"no man ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him into the hands of intelligent and imaginative children.\"\nThere is some indication that Bowdler's sister Harriet did the actual editing of Shakespeare's text. She was a poet and editor in her own right, and clearly more qualified than her brother to lay hands on the Bard of Avon. She may have published the expurgated edition anonymously before allowing her brother to take over the rights. If this is so, it is unsurprising that Harriet would not have wanted her name on the book. If the original Shakespeare were truly objectionable, then it would have been doubly so for a well-bred, unmarried Englishwoman of the day.\nBowdler went on to create children's versions of the Old Testament and of Edward Gibbons's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, although neither achieved either the success or ridicule of his Shakespeare. Today, of course, we know Bowdler not for his good works, but instead for the eponym derived from his good name. To bowdlerize is to censor or amend a written work, often with a connotation of prudishness. The process for which Bowdler is known is one that continues to the present day, as texts deemed too difficult for today's high schoolers are \"dumbed-down,\" library editions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have the \"n-word\" blacked out, and middle-school productions of popular Broadway plays have all expletives deleted. We would be hard-pressed to say that we live in a prudish era, but some of the same impulses that drove Thomas and Harriet Bowdler still exist today.\nThe mention of Nahum Tate shows primarily that:\n\nOptions:\nA. Few dared to change Shakespeare's works during his lifetime.\nB. Actors and directors often changed Shakespeare's words to suit their talents.\nC. Different versions of King Lear were used depending on the audience.\nD. The Bowdlers were not the first to alter Shakespeare's texts.",
  "response":"Look for the answer that is supported by the text. Although choices A, B, and C may in fact be true, none of them receives support in the passage. The author's reason for including mention of Nehum Tate is to show that the Bowdlers were not the first to edit Shakespeare. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"The Shawnee people of the Ohio and Cumberland Valleys gave the American elk its other name, wapiti. Yet when we think of elk today, we rarely envision them as eastern animals. If we want to see elk in their natural habitat, we travel to Colorado or Montana, where they still roam the mountainous terrain. Elk were, in fact, once found in the East, from Georgia north to New York and Connecticut. By the time of the Civil War, hunting and habitat destruction had caused their extinction in most eastern states. All of the eastern subspecies are now extinct. Elk County, Pennsylvania, and Elk County, Kansas, were without elk for more than a century. At the beginning of the 20th century, herds of elk in the Rocky Mountains faced death by starvation as encroaching farms depleted their winter feeding and finally the government decided to intercede. They gathered up elk from Yellowstone National Park and shipped 50 of them to Pennsylvania. The elk were to be protected, with no hunting of them allowed until eight years had passed. At that early date, 1913, there was little understanding of the kind of acclimatization required when moving large animals from one habitat to another. The elk were released from cattle cars and chased into the wild to fend for themselves. Two years later, 95 more elk were moved from Yellowstone to Pennsylvania. Elk are large animals with large ranges, and the damage these elk caused to cornfields was substantial. The elk tended to move toward farming areas because that was where the food was. Farmers and poachers took some elk illegally, but the herds still began to grow. During the 1920 s, several hunting seasons went by with harvests of one or two dozen elk, but then the numbers declined dramatically, and the elk were again put under protected status. No real census was taken until 50 years later, in 1971. Which new information, if true, would most CHALLENGE the claim that elk reintroduction benefits other species as well?\n\nOptions:\nA. record sightings of wild turkey, pheasant, and grouse on reclaimed land in Pennsylvania\nB. surprising numbers of multiple births in moose from central and western Maine and New Hampshire\nC. a census showing that whitetail deer were migrating northward from Pennsylvania into New York\nD. an increase in temperature of one or two degrees in the headwaters of the Yellowstone River",
  "response":"The claim is that elk reintroduction benefits other species. Your answer must contradict this contention. Choice A shows a clear benefit to other populations, so it does not contradict the claim. Choice B shows a change in a species that does not live where elk live. Choice D does not refer to other species at all. Only choice $\\mathrm{C}$ indicates a possible problem; the fact that deer are migrating northward may mean that elk are encroaching on their habitats. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nIn linguistics, metathesis refers to the reversal of phonemes in a word. This can come about by accident, as in the common mispronunciation \"aks\" for ask or the common (and correct) pronunciation of iron as \"i-orn.\" It may come about on purpose, as in various language games.\nAccidental metathesis may be a process that takes place in the evolution of languages. Over time, for example, the Latin words miraculum, periculum, and parabola evolved into the Spanish words milagro, peligro, and palabra. Linguists posit that such changes usually occur when two consonants are of the same type, with similar mouth formations needed to create each one.\nThe Reverend Archibald Spooner, an Oxford dean, was known for his unintentional transpositions and gave his name to the particular metathesis he represented: Spoonerisms. Most famous Spoonerisms once attributed to Spooner are now believed to be apocryphal, but they are nevertheless amusing; for example, his supposed advice to a substandard student: \"You have deliberately tasted two worms and will leave Oxford by the next town drain.\" Spoonerisms are funny when the metathesis involved changes one word into another, and they seem to lend themselves particularly well to off-color jokes.\nEveryone is familiar with Pig Latin, in which initial consonant sounds are moved to the end of a word and followed with the syllable \"ay.\" This is not pure metathesis, but it begins with the kind of metathesis known as backslang, in which syllables or letters in a word are reversed to produce a private code. Pig Latin may have begun as a language spoken in prisoner-of-war camps; it was certainly used in such camps during World War II and in Vietnam.\nIn Pig Latin, the phrase \"Over the river and through the woods\" becomes \"Overay uhthay iverray anday oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" In other variations of Pig Latin, it might instead be \"Overway uhthay iverray andway oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" There are computer programs that translate from English to Pig Latin and back again, and there is even a version of the Bible written entirely in Pig Latin. For the most part, however, outside of prisoner-of-war camps, Pig Latin is a funny code used by children.\nFrench children and teenagers use a similar code. Called verlan (a reversal of l'envers, or \"reversal\"), it is trickier than Pig Latin because it relies much more on phonetics than on spelling. In verlan, the word caf\u00e9 becomes f\u00e9ca, but the word tomber (\"to fall\") becomes b\u00e9ton. Verlan becomes even more complex in words that end in silent $e$ or which have only one syllable. While just a few words from Pig Latin have entered the vernacular (for example, amscray and ixnay), many verlan words are common lingo in France.\nHistorically, for reasons that are not quite clear, butchers have been frequent users of metathesis, creating their own backslang to converse without being understood by patrons. In France, this is called louch\u00e9bem (boucher, or \"butcher,\" with the first consonant moved to the end and the letter $l$ placed in front). In Australia, it is known as rechtub klat. That name, of course, represents the ultimate in metathesis-the reversal of letters instead of merely syllables.\nIn the context of the passage, the word transposition refers to a:\n\nOptions:\nA. reordering of letters or syllables\nB. movement of terms in an equation\nC. rendering into another language\nD. musical performance in a new key",
  "response":"Spooner was known for his transpositions, of which \"You have deliberately tasted two worms\" (wasted two terms) is an example. Although transposition has a variety of possible meanings, here it refers specifically to the exchange of letters or word parts. The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"Biologists use the term \"living fossil\" to designate a species that maintains many of the features of its ancient ancestors. These species have evidenced very little evolutionary change, indicating not that they are primitive creatures as might be popularly believed, but instead that they are exquisitely suited for their biological and ecological niches and thus have not had any selection pressures to respond to.\nThe four most celebrated living fossils are the lungfish, the horseshoe crab, the lampshell, and the coelacanth. The horseshoe crab is the relative youngster of the group, belonging to the Jurassic period and having shown little structural changes in its 200-million-year lifespan. The lampshell, a member of the phylum Brachiopoda, is part of an even older lineage, resembling ancestors that lived nearly 400 million years ago.\nThe oldest members of the living fossil family are the lungfish and the coelacanth, both species that are remarkably similar to their forebears that roamed the Earth almost 425 million years ago. The lungfish, of which there are six surviving species, has the same basic structure and fleshy lobe fins of its progenitor, the sarcopterygian. Of course, the lungfish has long interested biologists not just because of its connections to the distant past but because of the bridge it represents between aquatic species and land dwellers. In fact, the African and South American species of lungfish live part of their lives entirely on land, burrowing into mud and respiring through a tiny breathing hole in their earthy homes. Although the lungfish has remained evolutionarily stable for close to 250 million years, prior to that the species did experience rapid and dynamic evolutionary change. However, by the end of the Permian period, the changes ground to a halt, and the lungfish has persevered happily ever since.\nThe singular story of the coelacanth stretches all the way from the Silurian period, some 425 million years ago, to the modern day. The coelacanths were well-known from the fossil record and dating technologies placed them in a time when plants were just beginning to encroach on the land. However, biologists thought the species went extinct long before the dinosaurs did. Imagine the surprise when in 1938 a South American trawler captured a strange-looking fish, some five feet in length and a pale blue and silver in color. By an astounding coincidence, the captain of the boat had a relationship with the curator of the East London Museum and had made a habit of sending any interesting finds along to her. Upon seeing this strange specimen, the curator contacted a leading ichthyologist, who, after examining the creature, said he \"would not have been more surprised if I had seen a dinosaur walking down the street.\" But despite all protestations of common sense and amid allegations of forgery and fakery, upon further study, the creature was indubitably a coelacanth. Since that day, explorers have found many more members of the species and have even turned up a second species in the Indian Ocean.\nIn contrast to the other three living fossils, the horseshoe crab:\n\nOptions:\nA. was alive at the same time the dinosaurs were\nB. has experienced few structural changes\nC. is no longer evolutionarily stable\nD. evolved well after land-dwelling plants did",
  "response":"This question asks you to compare and contrast information found in the passage. We know from the second paragraph that the horseshoe crab is the most recent living fossil at 200 million years old. The other three all date from around 400 million years ago. The final paragraph says that at that time, land-dwelling plants were just beginning to evolve. Thus, choice D is the best answer because the land-dwelling plants had been evolving for about 200 million years by the time the horseshoe crab appeared on the scene. Choices A and B indicate aspects the crab shares with some of the other living fossils. There is no evidence of choice C. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nIn linguistics, metathesis refers to the reversal of phonemes in a word. This can come about by accident, as in the common mispronunciation \"aks\" for ask or the common (and correct) pronunciation of iron as \"i-orn.\" It may come about on purpose, as in various language games.\nAccidental metathesis may be a process that takes place in the evolution of languages. Over time, for example, the Latin words miraculum, periculum, and parabola evolved into the Spanish words milagro, peligro, and palabra. Linguists posit that such changes usually occur when two consonants are of the same type, with similar mouth formations needed to create each one.\nThe Reverend Archibald Spooner, an Oxford dean, was known for his unintentional transpositions and gave his name to the particular metathesis he represented: Spoonerisms. Most famous Spoonerisms once attributed to Spooner are now believed to be apocryphal, but they are nevertheless amusing; for example, his supposed advice to a substandard student: \"You have deliberately tasted two worms and will leave Oxford by the next town drain.\" Spoonerisms are funny when the metathesis involved changes one word into another, and they seem to lend themselves particularly well to off-color jokes.\nEveryone is familiar with Pig Latin, in which initial consonant sounds are moved to the end of a word and followed with the syllable \"ay.\" This is not pure metathesis, but it begins with the kind of metathesis known as backslang, in which syllables or letters in a word are reversed to produce a private code. Pig Latin may have begun as a language spoken in prisoner-of-war camps; it was certainly used in such camps during World War II and in Vietnam.\nIn Pig Latin, the phrase \"Over the river and through the woods\" becomes \"Overay uhthay iverray anday oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" In other variations of Pig Latin, it might instead be \"Overway uhthay iverray andway oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" There are computer programs that translate from English to Pig Latin and back again, and there is even a version of the Bible written entirely in Pig Latin. For the most part, however, outside of prisoner-of-war camps, Pig Latin is a funny code used by children.\nFrench children and teenagers use a similar code. Called verlan (a reversal of l'envers, or \"reversal\"), it is trickier than Pig Latin because it relies much more on phonetics than on spelling. In verlan, the word caf\u00e9 becomes f\u00e9ca, but the word tomber (\"to fall\") becomes b\u00e9ton. Verlan becomes even more complex in words that end in silent $e$ or which have only one syllable. While just a few words from Pig Latin have entered the vernacular (for example, amscray and ixnay), many verlan words are common lingo in France.\nHistorically, for reasons that are not quite clear, butchers have been frequent users of metathesis, creating their own backslang to converse without being understood by patrons. In France, this is called louch\u00e9bem (boucher, or \"butcher,\" with the first consonant moved to the end and the letter $l$ placed in front). In Australia, it is known as rechtub klat. That name, of course, represents the ultimate in metathesis-the reversal of letters instead of merely syllables.\nThe author's claim that most Spoonerisms are apocryphal could BEST be supported by the inclusion of:\n\nOptions:\nA. a list of transpositions attributed to the Reverend Spooner\nB. examples of modern-day transpositions based on famous Spoonerisms\nC. interviews with Spooner's contemporaries denying their authenticity\nD. Spooner's own letters to relatives, colleagues, and friends",
  "response":"If most Spoonerisms are apocryphal, or fictional, that would not be proved by a list of attributed transpositions (choice A), which would simply seem to support their authenticity. Examples of modern-day transpositions (choice B) would do nothing to support or deny the authenticity of Spoonerisms, and Spooner's letters (choice D) would not help because his transpositions, if they existed, were oral, not written. Interviews with people who knew Spooner (choice C) would be the best way to settle the issue one way or the other. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"The man whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt christened \u201cThe Happy Warrior\" in a nominating speech would later become a thorn in Roosevelt's side. Some thought the switch in loyalties was sour grapes, but others saw Alfred E. Smith as the epitome of William Wordsworth's \"happy warrior\" and therefore a man who \"makes his moral being his prime care\"-one who never made a move without consulting his conscience.\nAlfred E. Smith was both a successful politician and an unsuccessful one. A fourterm governor of New York State, he seemed a sure candidate for president, and indeed he ran three times for that position, only to lose each time.\nHe had several strikes against him. He was the Catholic son of Irish and ItalianGerman immigrants, making him anathema to nativists, the xenophobes who underwent a resurgence in the 1920s. He was from New York City, viewed even in the early twentieth century as disconnected from the national character. He was a progressive, which made conservatives of all stripes nervous. And he favored the repeal of Prohibition, a position that lost him the backing of many party leaders.\nWho was this unlikely candidate? Born Alfred Emanuel Smith in 1873, Smith grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His father died when Smith was young, and the boy dropped out of school to take care of the family. At age 21, Smith supported a losing candidate in a local race and came to the attention of New York politicos, who took him under their wing. Nine years later, he ran successfully for the New York State Assembly, where he rapidly rose in the ranks to become Majority Leader and finally Speaker. He played a pivotal role in the revamping of New York's constitution, was elected sheriff of New York County, and then ran for governor in 1918, winning handily. Although he lost a re-election bid two years later, he surged back in 1922 and would remain in the governor's seat for six more years. His terms were marked by unparalleled improvements in labor laws and laws protecting civil liberties, for Smith's goal was to support those he saw as most in need of government's assistance.\nIn this goal, he was allied with Franklin Roosevelt, and the two were close enough that Roosevelt nominated Smith for president in 1924. The Drys, or Prohibitionists, backed William McAdoo, a son-in-law of former President Woodrow Wilson. Smith's supporters and McAdoo's supporters were so far apart that finally a compromise candidate, John Davis, was nominated and promptly lost the general election to Calvin Coolidge.\nIn 1928, Smith received his party's nomination on the second ballot, but along with his anti-Prohibition leanings, his religion became a major issue during the campaign, paving the way for Herbert Hoover to win the general election. Meanwhile, Smith had arranged for the nomination of his New York colleague, Franklin Roosevelt, to be governor of New York. Although Smith lost his bid, Roosevelt did not. Then came the Depression and the election of 1932. Backroom dealings ensured that Franklin Roosevelt won the nominating process, with another would-be presidential candidate in the vice-presidential spot on the ticket. Smith was left out in the cold on his third try for the presidency. Despite his former regard for Roosevelt, he began to work hard, if unsuccessfully, to defeat the New Deal. He supported two Republicans rather than Roosevelt in the 1936 and 1940 elections, and he died in 1944, a man who had never reached his desired goal, yet had inspired many of the changes for which his rival is now known.\nThe passage implies that being from New York City is bad for a national candidate because:\n\nOptions:\nA. Urban candidates have trouble relating to those in the heartland.\nB. New York is perceived as too different from the rest of the country.\nC. Westerners rarely support or give money to eastern candidates.\nD. New York is the center of liberalism, but candidates must be neutral.",
  "response":"Although choice A may be true, only choice B is alluded to in the passage, allowing you to draw conclusions. New York City, says the author, was \"viewed even in the early twentieth century as disconnected from the national character.\" The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nThe Nobel Peace Prize has often engendered controversy. The Red Cross, yes, but Henry Kissinger? Mother Teresa, perhaps, but Yasser Arafat? Surprisingly, a loud and ongoing controversy surrounds a choice that at first look seems most benign-that of the Guatemalan freedom fighter, Rigoberta Mench\u00fa Tum.\nRigoberta Mench\u00fa was born in 1959 to a poor Mayan family in Guatemala. At the time of her birth, General Yd\u00edgoras Fuentes had just seized power, following the assassination of Colonel Castillo Armas. The year she turned one, there was a failed coup by a military group, many of whom fled to the countryside and would return to lead the rebellion that would wax and wane for the next 36 years.\nGuatemala was divided into factions for that entire period, as military governments controlled the nation and guerilla groups controlled the countryside. At the same time, right-wing vigilantes led a campaign of torture and assassination, eliminating students and peasants they deemed to be allied with the guerillas.\nIn the countryside where Rigoberta lived, the battles were largely over control of farmland. Rigoberta's father was taken into custody and tortured when the army believed he had assisted in the assassination of a plantation owner. Following a rout of the guerillas by the army, the guerillas regrouped and began to take their fight to the capital, beginning a long series of assassinations of government figures.\nRigoberta, her father, and some of her siblings joined the Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC). In rapid succession, Rigoberta lost her brother, father, and mother to the army's own assassination squads. Rigoberta, though only in her early 20s, became a key figure in the resistance, traveling from village to village to educate the Mayan peasants in overcoming oppression, and leading demonstrations in Guatemala City.\nSoon Rigoberta was herself a target. She fled to Mexico and continued her life as an organizer, concentrating her focus on peasants' rights. She participated in the founding of the United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG). This period was the most violent of the entire Guatemalan civil war. Under the new president, General Efrain R\u00edos Montt, massacres of civilians became an everyday occurrence.  The controversy is all about the book. It began when anthropologist David Stoll began independent research on the same era about which Rigoberta dictated and discovered discrepancies in her recall of events. Massacres she described were not remembered by the locals; one of her brothers died by shooting rather than by fire, dates were incorrect, and so on. Stoll's discoveries were enough to roil up conservative historians and columnists, who declared Rigoberta's book the grossest propaganda and her career, therefore, unworthy of the Nobel Prize. Not surprisingly, this brought forth charges of racism, sexism, and cultural ignorance from the other side.\nThe Nobel Committee maintained a stiff upper lip throughout the political backand-forth and still insists that Rigoberta's prize had to do with her documented good works and not with her personal recorded history. Rigoberta's book is still widely taught, and her place in the history of Central American peasant revolutions seems assured.\nThe author's claim that Rigoberta's book is still widely taught could BEST be supported by the inclusion of:\n\nOptions:\nA. two students' comments on the ongoing controversy\nB. data on the sales for her book from publication until the present day\nC. a record of bookstores that continue to carry her autobiography\nD. a list of universities that include her book in their required reading lists",
  "response":"This question is purely speculative, since the author did not include information to support the statement. If the author had, it would have had to be information that told more about the teaching of Rigoberta's book in schools. Two students' comments (choice A) would not be enough evidence, and choices B and C might show that the book is still sold but not that it is widely taught. Only choice D includes reasonable evidence. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"It is perhaps too easy to think of mathematical truths as objective entities existing in the universe, simply waiting to be \"discovered\" by brilliant minds such as Pythagoras, Newton, and Descartes. Indeed, such a mentality may be cemented in Western minds raised in the Platonic tradition of a world of ideals that exists outside of the material world we reside in.\nBut new research in the fields of cognitive science and developmental psychology may be challenging this long-held belief in mathematics as a truth outside of human experience, and recasting mathematics as a product of the brain, an entity that is not discovered by man but rather created by him.\nSuch a radical paradigm shift has predictably met with stiff resistance, but the evidence in favor of a created mathematics rather than a discovered mathematics is compelling. Study after study has shown that all people possess an innate arithmetic. Babies as young as three or four days old can differentiate between groups of two and three items. And by the age of four months or so, an infant can see that one plus one is two and two minus one is one. Researchers discovered this startling fact by means of a simple experiment, following what is known as the violation of expectation model in developmental psychology. An infant was presented with a scenario in which a researcher held a puppet before the baby's eyes. Then a screen was moved in front of the puppet and another researcher placed a second puppet behind it. The screen was removed and if there were two puppets now visible, the infant registered no surprise (as measured by both the direction of the child's gaze and the duration of her stare). But if the screen was removed and only one puppet appeared, the infant registered perplexity at the situation. This experiment and others like it strongly suggest that all individuals are born with certain mathematical concepts hardwired into their brains. The ability to quickly and accurately count a small number of items, called subitizing by psychologists, is also found in animals. Researchers using experiments similar to the violation of expectation setup described previously have found an innate mathematical ability not just in primates, our closest evolutionary cousins, but in raccoons, rats, parrots, and pigeons. These findings are consistent with the belief that mathematical thinking is a function of the structures in the brain and not a product of the outside world.\nAnomalous cases involving brain injuries and disorders also support the idea that mathematical thinking arises from the organization of the brain. There is a documented case of a subject with a $\\mathrm{PhD}$ in chemistry who suffers from acalculia, the inability to perform basic arithmetic functions. Strangely, this patient is unable to perform simple calculations such as five plus three or eight minus two, but has no problem manipulating abstract algebraic operations. This curious fact has led psychologists to conclude that the part of the brain that handles abstract algebraic operations must be different from the part of the brain that works with more concrete arithmetic functions.\nThe passage implies that:\n\nOptions:\nA. Structures for arithmetic calculations are hardwired into the brain, but those for algebraic manipulations are not.\nB. Most animals are able to perform simple arithmetic operations.\nC. Infants at the age of three or four days can already perform simple calculations.\nD. Mathematical concepts are arbitrary.",
  "response":"This question asks you to draw conclusions about an assertion that is not directly stated. The second paragraph states that mathematics is created by man, which implies that mathematical concepts are to some degree arbitrary. Choice A is contradicted by the passage in the final paragraph when the author says that the acalculia patient \"has no problem manipulating abstract algebraic operations.\" Choice B is not supported because the passage only mentions that some animals have mathematical abilities. Choice $\\mathrm{C}$ is incorrect; infants at the age of a few months can perform simple calculations. At younger ages they can only differentiate between two and three items. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{\nIf our knowledge of the world occurs through the weaving of narratives, as postmodernists would have us believe, then we must judge the truth of each narrative by comparing it with what we value and what we already accept as true. Any metanarrative, or overarching \"big story,\" must be rejected because it attempts to explain away too many individual narratives. \nhistory through that metanarrative, postmodernists would argue, does not allow us to consider the contributions of other groups to the country we live in today. So constructing a metanarrative can often be exclusionary.\nOf course, constructing a series of smaller narratives is just as exclusionary because it frames experience in a limited way. It is easy to see this occurring if you look at any university course list today. How is it possible for American History 4111, \"Imperialism and Amerindians, 1600-1840\" to coexist alongside American History 4546, \"American Military History and Policy\"? Does English 340X, \"Survey of Women's Literature,\" subsume or incorporate elements of English 342X, \"American Indian Women Writers\"? Perhaps we should pity the undergraduate student today. Lacking any overarching metanarrative to provide perspective, how can the poor student wade through the often contradictory mininarratives being thrown his or her way?\nThere is no question that the old way was wrongheaded and elitist. Survey courses that emphasized the white male perspective were removed from the curriculum in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, and for good reason. But replacing them with a smorgasbord of mininarratives risks eliminating any sense of a big picture. Can students connect the dots to define a coherent reality, or must their reality be a series of frames with no links among them?\nRevising the canon was about ridding our perspective of those racist, sexist, or classist notions that insisted on a single Truth with a capital $T$. Of course there is no overriding Truth that applies to everyone. For everyone who believes that Thomas Jefferson was a brilliant reformer, there is someone who thinks he was a two-faced slaveholder. Yet, where does it leave us if everyone we know is approaching history, science, literature, or what have you from a slightly different angle? It's bad enough when partisan politics divides us into red states and blue states. How much worse is it to imagine ourselves clad in thousands upon thousands of shades of purple?\nThe clearest sign that we are not ready to abandon our metanarratives comes in the current and ongoing clash between those who accept evolutionary theory and those who accept the Bible as the written word of God. The latter grant the Earth 6000 years of life, the former give it several million more, and never the twain shall meet. Each of these viewpoints is a metanarrative, a big story that governs people's understanding of the world. Like many metanarratives, each of these completely negates the other.\nSo on the one hand, metanarratives don't work well because they are too exclusionary. And on the other hand, mininarratives don't work well because they are too narrow. It will be fascinating to watch the canon evolve over the next few decades and to see whether this dichotomy can ever be resolved.\nThe ideas in this passage would be MOST useful to:\n\nOptions:\nA. authors of novels in the postmodern tradition\nB. committees responsible for establishing college curricula\nC. students of ancient Roman or Greek philosophy\nD. journalists, detectives, and other seekers of truth",
  "response":"The main idea of the passage has to do with the tension between metanarratives and mininarratives, especially as they affect the way we learn things. This would be most useful for people who develop curricula. The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"Biologists use the term \"living fossil\" to designate a species that maintains many of the features of its ancient ancestors. These species have evidenced very little evolutionary change, indicating not that they are primitive creatures as might be popularly believed, but instead that they are exquisitely suited for their biological and ecological niches and thus have not had any selection pressures to respond to.\nThe four most celebrated living fossils are the lungfish, the horseshoe crab, the lampshell, and the coelacanth. The horseshoe crab is the relative youngster of the group, belonging to the Jurassic period and having shown little structural changes in its 200-million-year lifespan. The lampshell, a member of the phylum Brachiopoda, is part of an even older lineage, resembling ancestors that lived nearly 400 million years ago.\nThe oldest members of the living fossil family are the lungfish and the coelacanth, both species that are remarkably similar to their forebears that roamed the Earth almost 425 million years ago. The lungfish, of which there are six surviving species, has the same basic structure and fleshy lobe fins of its progenitor, the sarcopterygian. Of course, the lungfish has long interested biologists not just because of its connections to the distant past but because of the bridge it represents between aquatic species and land dwellers. In fact, the African and South American species of lungfish live part of their lives entirely on land, burrowing into mud and respiring through a tiny breathing hole in their earthy homes. Although the lungfish has remained evolutionarily stable for close to 250 million years, prior to that the species did experience rapid and dynamic evolutionary change. However, by the end of the Permian period, the changes ground to a halt, and the lungfish has persevered happily ever since.\nThe singular story of the coelacanth stretches all the way from the Silurian period, some 425 million years ago, to the modern day. The coelacanths were well-known from the fossil record and dating technologies placed them in a time when plants were just beginning to encroach on the land. However, biologists thought the species went extinct long before the dinosaurs did. Imagine the surprise when in 1938 a South American trawler captured a strange-looking fish, some five feet in length and a pale blue and silver in color. By an astounding coincidence, the captain of the boat had a relationship with the curator of the East London Museum and had made a habit of sending any interesting finds along to her. Upon seeing this strange specimen, the curator contacted a leading ichthyologist, who, after examining the creature, said he \"would not have been more surprised if I had seen a dinosaur walking down the street.\" But despite all protestations of common sense and amid allegations of forgery and fakery, upon further study, the creature was indubitably a coelacanth. Since that day, explorers have found many more members of the species and have even turned up a second species in the Indian Ocean.\nThe primary purpose of the passage is to:\n\nOptions:\nA. explain how living fossils can remain unchanged by evolution\nB. describe a dilemma facing evolutionary biologists\nC. detail the interesting story of the coelacanth\nD. provide an overview of a biological category",
  "response":"This question requires you to find the main idea. The passage discusses living fossils, a term biologists use to designate a species that has changed little since its inception. It then provides details on four different living fossils. Choice D is the best description of the passage. The passage doesn't primarily explain how these species remain unchanged as choice A states. Nor does it detail a dilemma (choice B) or focus mainly on the coelacanth (choice C). The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"The Shawnee people of the Ohio and Cumberland Valleys gave the American elk its other name, wapiti. Yet when we think of elk today, we rarely envision them as eastern animals. If we want to see elk in their natural habitat, we travel to Colorado or Montana, where they still roam the mountainous terrain. Elk were, in fact, once found in the East, from Georgia north to New York and Connecticut. By the time of the Civil War, hunting and habitat destruction had caused their extinction in most eastern states. All of the eastern subspecies are now extinct. Elk County, Pennsylvania, and Elk County, Kansas, were without elk for more than a century. At the beginning of the 20th century, herds of elk in the Rocky Mountains faced death by starvation as encroaching farms depleted their winter feeding and finally the government decided to intercede. They gathered up elk from Yellowstone National Park and shipped 50 of them to Pennsylvania. The elk were to be protected, with no hunting of them allowed until eight years had passed. At that early date, 1913, there was little understanding of the kind of acclimatization required when moving large animals from one habitat to another. The elk were released from cattle cars and chased into the wild to fend for themselves. Two years later, 95 more elk were moved from Yellowstone to Pennsylvania. Elk are large animals with large ranges, and the damage these elk caused to cornfields was substantial. The elk tended to move toward farming areas because that was where the food was. Farmers and poachers took some elk illegally, but the herds still began to grow. During the 1920 s, several hunting seasons went by with harvests of one or two dozen elk, but then the numbers declined dramatically, and the elk were again put under protected status. No real census was taken until 50 years later, in 1971. According to this passage, a major early threat to elk populations was:\n\nOptions:\nA. Wolves and cougars\nB. vehicular traffic\nC. disease\nD. hunting",
  "response":"Hunting and habitat destruction are the only reasons mentioned for the depopulation of elk prior to the 20th century. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nEngineers and computer scientists are intrigued by the potential power of nanocomputing. Nanocomputers will use atoms and molecules to perform their functions instead of the standard integrated circuits now employed. Theorists believe that the amount of information a nanocomputer could handle is staggering.\nA professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has attempted to calculate the computational limits of a computer with a weight of 1 kilogram and a volume of 1 liter. According to the laws of physics, the potential amount of computational power is a function of the available energy. Basically, each atom and subatomic particle in the computer has an amount of energy attached to it. Furthermore, the energy of each particle or atom is increased by the frequency of its movement. Thus the power of a computer that uses nanotechnology is bounded by the energy available from its atoms.\nSpecifically, the relationship between the energy of an object and its computation potential is a proportionate one. As Einstein has famously calculated, the energy of an object is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared. Thus, a theoretical computer weighing a mere kilogram has a huge amount of potential energy. To find the total computational power, the minimum amount of energy required to perform an operation is divided by the total amount of energy. \nof energy possessed by a 1-kilogram computer by Planck's constant yields a tremendously large number, roughly $5 \\times 10^{50}$ operations per second. Using even the most conservative estimates of the computing power of the human brain, such a computer would have the computational power of five trillion trillion human civilizations. The computer would also have a memory capacity, calculated by determining the degrees of freedom allowed by the state of all the particles comprising it, of $10^{31} \\mathrm{bits}$.\nThese numbers are purely theoretical, however. Were the computer to convert all of its mass to energy, it would be the equivalent of a thermonuclear explosion. And it is unreasonable to expect human technology to ever achieve abilities even close to these limits. However, a project at the University of Oklahoma has succeeded in storing 50 bits of data per atom, albeit on only a limited number of atoms. Given that there are $10^{25}$ atoms in 1 kilogram of material, it may be possible to fit up to $10^{27}$ bits of information in the computer. And if scientists are able to exploit the many properties of atoms to store information, including the position, spin, and quantum state of all its particles, it may be possible to exceed even that number.\nOne interesting consequence of such staggering increases in computing power is that each advance could provide the basis for further evolution. Once technology can achieve, for instance, a level of computation equal to $10^{40}$ operations per second, it can use that massive power to help bring the theoretical limit ever closer.\nThe author of the passage indicates that:\n\nOptions:\nA. The theoretical computer may have even more computational power than described.\nB. Technicians have already built computers that can store $10^{27}$ bits of data.\nC. $10^{27}$ bits of data is the theoretical limit of memory capacity in a computer.\nD. The technology exists to create a computer that can perform $10^{40}$ operations per second.",
  "response":"You are asked to draw a conclusion in order to answer this question. The author indicates that choices $\\mathrm{B}$ and $\\mathrm{D}$ are still in the realm of the theoretical. The author also states that the memory limit in choice $\\mathrm{C}$ may be \"exceeded.\" That leaves choice A, which is supported when the author states that the calculation of the computer's power is based on \"the most conservative estimates\" of human computational power. Thus the proposed computers can be even more powerful than the author describes. The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nThe Nobel Peace Prize has often engendered controversy. The Red Cross, yes, but Henry Kissinger? Mother Teresa, perhaps, but Yasser Arafat? Surprisingly, a loud and ongoing controversy surrounds a choice that at first look seems most benign-that of the Guatemalan freedom fighter, Rigoberta Mench\u00fa Tum.\nRigoberta Mench\u00fa was born in 1959 to a poor Mayan family in Guatemala. At the time of her birth, General Yd\u00edgoras Fuentes had just seized power, following the assassination of Colonel Castillo Armas. The year she turned one, there was a failed coup by a military group, many of whom fled to the countryside and would return to lead the rebellion that would wax and wane for the next 36 years.\nGuatemala was divided into factions for that entire period, as military governments controlled the nation and guerilla groups controlled the countryside. At the same time, right-wing vigilantes led a campaign of torture and assassination, eliminating students and peasants they deemed to be allied with the guerillas.\nIn the countryside where Rigoberta lived, the battles were largely over control of farmland. Rigoberta's father was taken into custody and tortured when the army believed he had assisted in the assassination of a plantation owner. Following a rout of the guerillas by the army, the guerillas regrouped and began to take their fight to the capital, beginning a long series of assassinations of government figures.\nRigoberta, her father, and some of her siblings joined the Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC). In rapid succession, Rigoberta lost her brother, father, and mother to the army's own assassination squads. Rigoberta, though only in her early 20s, became a key figure in the resistance, traveling from village to village to educate the Mayan peasants in overcoming oppression, and leading demonstrations in Guatemala City.\nSoon Rigoberta was herself a target. She fled to Mexico and continued her life as an organizer, concentrating her focus on peasants' rights. She participated in the founding of the United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG). This period was the most violent of the entire Guatemalan civil war. Under the new president, General Efrain R\u00edos Montt, massacres of civilians became an everyday occurrence.  The controversy is all about the book. It began when anthropologist David Stoll began independent research on the same era about which Rigoberta dictated and discovered discrepancies in her recall of events. Massacres she described were not remembered by the locals; one of her brothers died by shooting rather than by fire, dates were incorrect, and so on. Stoll's discoveries were enough to roil up conservative historians and columnists, who declared Rigoberta's book the grossest propaganda and her career, therefore, unworthy of the Nobel Prize. Not surprisingly, this brought forth charges of racism, sexism, and cultural ignorance from the other side.\nThe Nobel Committee maintained a stiff upper lip throughout the political backand-forth and still insists that Rigoberta's prize had to do with her documented good works and not with her personal recorded history. Rigoberta's book is still widely taught, and her place in the history of Central American peasant revolutions seems assured.\nAccording to the passage, why did Rigoberta leave Guatemala?\n\nOptions:\nA. She wanted to alert the world to the problems of the peasants.\nB. She was under fire from the army's assassination squads.\nC. She was invited to Paris to dictate her personal memoirs.\nD. She no longer cared to stay after her family was murdered.",
  "response":"This question calls for a cause-and-effect relationship. You must find the cause of Rigoberta's departure. That is not simply something that happened before her departure (choice D), or something that was true but not a direct cause (choice A). The cause appears in the sentence \"Soon Rigoberta was herself a target.\" She left because otherwise she might have been assassinated (choice B). The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nIn linguistics, metathesis refers to the reversal of phonemes in a word. This can come about by accident, as in the common mispronunciation \"aks\" for ask or the common (and correct) pronunciation of iron as \"i-orn.\" It may come about on purpose, as in various language games.\nAccidental metathesis may be a process that takes place in the evolution of languages. Over time, for example, the Latin words miraculum, periculum, and parabola evolved into the Spanish words milagro, peligro, and palabra. Linguists posit that such changes usually occur when two consonants are of the same type, with similar mouth formations needed to create each one.\nThe Reverend Archibald Spooner, an Oxford dean, was known for his unintentional transpositions and gave his name to the particular metathesis he represented: Spoonerisms. Most famous Spoonerisms once attributed to Spooner are now believed to be apocryphal, but they are nevertheless amusing; for example, his supposed advice to a substandard student: \"You have deliberately tasted two worms and will leave Oxford by the next town drain.\" Spoonerisms are funny when the metathesis involved changes one word into another, and they seem to lend themselves particularly well to off-color jokes.\nEveryone is familiar with Pig Latin, in which initial consonant sounds are moved to the end of a word and followed with the syllable \"ay.\" This is not pure metathesis, but it begins with the kind of metathesis known as backslang, in which syllables or letters in a word are reversed to produce a private code. Pig Latin may have begun as a language spoken in prisoner-of-war camps; it was certainly used in such camps during World War II and in Vietnam.\nIn Pig Latin, the phrase \"Over the river and through the woods\" becomes \"Overay uhthay iverray anday oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" In other variations of Pig Latin, it might instead be \"Overway uhthay iverray andway oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" There are computer programs that translate from English to Pig Latin and back again, and there is even a version of the Bible written entirely in Pig Latin. For the most part, however, outside of prisoner-of-war camps, Pig Latin is a funny code used by children.\nFrench children and teenagers use a similar code. Called verlan (a reversal of l'envers, or \"reversal\"), it is trickier than Pig Latin because it relies much more on phonetics than on spelling. In verlan, the word caf\u00e9 becomes f\u00e9ca, but the word tomber (\"to fall\") becomes b\u00e9ton. Verlan becomes even more complex in words that end in silent $e$ or which have only one syllable. While just a few words from Pig Latin have entered the vernacular (for example, amscray and ixnay), many verlan words are common lingo in France.\nHistorically, for reasons that are not quite clear, butchers have been frequent users of metathesis, creating their own backslang to converse without being understood by patrons. In France, this is called louch\u00e9bem (boucher, or \"butcher,\" with the first consonant moved to the end and the letter $l$ placed in front). In Australia, it is known as rechtub klat. That name, of course, represents the ultimate in metathesis-the reversal of letters instead of merely syllables.\nWhich example(s) of metathesis does the author call accidental?\nI. verlan and other backslang\nII. parabola to palabra\nIII. the pronunciation of iron\n\nOptions:\nA. I only\nB. II only\nC. I and III only\nD. II and III only",
  "response":"Verlan and other backslang (I) are word games and therefore purposeful, not accidental. The examples of accidental metathesis include the change between Latin originals and Spanish derivatives (II) and mispronunciations or skewed pronunciations of English words (III). Since II and III are correct, the answer is choice D. Answers and Explanations The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"It is perhaps too easy to think of mathematical truths as objective entities existing in the universe, simply waiting to be \"discovered\" by brilliant minds such as Pythagoras, Newton, and Descartes. Indeed, such a mentality may be cemented in Western minds raised in the Platonic tradition of a world of ideals that exists outside of the material world we reside in.\nBut new research in the fields of cognitive science and developmental psychology may be challenging this long-held belief in mathematics as a truth outside of human experience, and recasting mathematics as a product of the brain, an entity that is not discovered by man but rather created by him.\nSuch a radical paradigm shift has predictably met with stiff resistance, but the evidence in favor of a created mathematics rather than a discovered mathematics is compelling. Study after study has shown that all people possess an innate arithmetic. Babies as young as three or four days old can differentiate between groups of two and three items. And by the age of four months or so, an infant can see that one plus one is two and two minus one is one. Researchers discovered this startling fact by means of a simple experiment, following what is known as the violation of expectation model in developmental psychology. An infant was presented with a scenario in which a researcher held a puppet before the baby's eyes. Then a screen was moved in front of the puppet and another researcher placed a second puppet behind it. The screen was removed and if there were two puppets now visible, the infant registered no surprise (as measured by both the direction of the child's gaze and the duration of her stare). But if the screen was removed and only one puppet appeared, the infant registered perplexity at the situation. This experiment and others like it strongly suggest that all individuals are born with certain mathematical concepts hardwired into their brains. The ability to quickly and accurately count a small number of items, called subitizing by psychologists, is also found in animals. Researchers using experiments similar to the violation of expectation setup described previously have found an innate mathematical ability not just in primates, our closest evolutionary cousins, but in raccoons, rats, parrots, and pigeons. These findings are consistent with the belief that mathematical thinking is a function of the structures in the brain and not a product of the outside world.\nAnomalous cases involving brain injuries and disorders also support the idea that mathematical thinking arises from the organization of the brain. There is a documented case of a subject with a $\\mathrm{PhD}$ in chemistry who suffers from acalculia, the inability to perform basic arithmetic functions. Strangely, this patient is unable to perform simple calculations such as five plus three or eight minus two, but has no problem manipulating abstract algebraic operations. This curious fact has led psychologists to conclude that the part of the brain that handles abstract algebraic operations must be different from the part of the brain that works with more concrete arithmetic functions.\nThe author probably mentions the \"Platonic tradition\" in order to:\n\nOptions:\nA. explain why some people may be less accepting of certain conclusions\nB. demonstrate the philosophical and historical underpinnings of mathematical studies\nC. highlight another influential Western figure in mathematical thought\nD. argue that followers of non-Western philosophical traditions are more likely to agree with the author's thesis",
  "response":"This evaluation question asks you to analyze an argument. Specifically, you need to figure out why the author mentioned the Platonic tradition. In the first paragraph, the author states that the prevailing view of mathematics is an \"easy\" one that may be \"cemented\" in the minds of people. Later, in the third paragraph, the author states that the new view of mathematics has met with \"stiff resistance.\" Thus, the mention of the Platonic tradition helps to explain why there is resistance to the conclusions of the new paradigm, which is what choice A says. The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nEngineers and computer scientists are intrigued by the potential power of nanocomputing. Nanocomputers will use atoms and molecules to perform their functions instead of the standard integrated circuits now employed. Theorists believe that the amount of information a nanocomputer could handle is staggering.\nA professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has attempted to calculate the computational limits of a computer with a weight of 1 kilogram and a volume of 1 liter. According to the laws of physics, the potential amount of computational power is a function of the available energy. Basically, each atom and subatomic particle in the computer has an amount of energy attached to it. Furthermore, the energy of each particle or atom is increased by the frequency of its movement. Thus the power of a computer that uses nanotechnology is bounded by the energy available from its atoms.\nSpecifically, the relationship between the energy of an object and its computation potential is a proportionate one. As Einstein has famously calculated, the energy of an object is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared. Thus, a theoretical computer weighing a mere kilogram has a huge amount of potential energy. To find the total computational power, the minimum amount of energy required to perform an operation is divided by the total amount of energy. \nof energy possessed by a 1-kilogram computer by Planck's constant yields a tremendously large number, roughly $5 \\times 10^{50}$ operations per second. Using even the most conservative estimates of the computing power of the human brain, such a computer would have the computational power of five trillion trillion human civilizations. The computer would also have a memory capacity, calculated by determining the degrees of freedom allowed by the state of all the particles comprising it, of $10^{31} \\mathrm{bits}$.\nThese numbers are purely theoretical, however. Were the computer to convert all of its mass to energy, it would be the equivalent of a thermonuclear explosion. And it is unreasonable to expect human technology to ever achieve abilities even close to these limits. However, a project at the University of Oklahoma has succeeded in storing 50 bits of data per atom, albeit on only a limited number of atoms. Given that there are $10^{25}$ atoms in 1 kilogram of material, it may be possible to fit up to $10^{27}$ bits of information in the computer. And if scientists are able to exploit the many properties of atoms to store information, including the position, spin, and quantum state of all its particles, it may be possible to exceed even that number.\nOne interesting consequence of such staggering increases in computing power is that each advance could provide the basis for further evolution. Once technology can achieve, for instance, a level of computation equal to $10^{40}$ operations per second, it can use that massive power to help bring the theoretical limit ever closer.\nThe ideas in this passage would MOST likely be presented in:\n\nOptions:\nA. an academic journal\nB. a newspaper\nC. a tabloid\nD. a popular science magazine",
  "response":"This question requires you to combine information. The passage discusses computers, technology, and even physics. However, the information is presented at the level of someone with a casual, rather than expert, knowledge of these fields. Thus choice D would be the best answer. Choice A may be close, but the information in the passage is not written at the level of expertise that a reader would expect in an academic journal. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"In sharp contrast to the modern, confessional poetry of the 20th century, the oeuvre of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow seems quaint and primly Victorian. During his lifetime, however, he was the most celebrated poet in the country. A closer look at the history of American poetry reveals that, despite his eminence, Longfellow wrote in a mold of both form and content that was already being challenged during his lifetime. But why, a century later, do the artistic works of many of his contemporaries continue to be enjoyed and studied while Longfellow languishes in the tomb of cultural artifacts?\nOne answer lies in the radical shift that began to take place in poetry in the mid19th century. Longfellow's themes and steadfast rhymes (and those of John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell) gave way gradually to confessional verse, whose subjects were more personal and rhymes were looser and less conventional. But to understand this shift, one must first understand the nature of Longfellow's work and his standing in the American literary scene of his time.\nLongfellow took as his subject his country's historical imagination, writing on an epic scale about Paul Revere, the Indian Hiawatha, and the pilgrim Miles Standish. He bestowed a mythic dimension on these figures, giving American readers iconic images that helped form a collective consciousness in the new country (indeed, Longfellow was a part of the first generation to be born in the United States). But Longfellow's content went beyond nationalistic pride-it was highly accessible and incredibly popular. Its accessibility is explained by his obvious themes that could be easily understood and embraced by the public. Longfellow did not challenge his readers, but appealed to their desire for stories that expounded an optimistic, sentimental, and moralistic worldview. Those themes were explored in rhyme that allowed readers to commit the poems to memory, much like songs. In 1857, The Song of Hiawatha, arguably his bestknown poem, sold 50,000 copies, an astounding number at the time. The next year, The Courtship of Miles Standish sold 25,000 copies in two months and in London sold 10,000 copies in one day. His success allowed him to give up a professorship at Harvard and focus full time on his writing.\nWalt Whitman, Longfellow's contemporary, wrote poetry similar to that of Longfellow-romantic and sentimental, with conventional rhyme and meter. But in the 1850s, indeed two years before The Song of Hiawatha, he wrote and published Leaves of Grass; a more radical departure from his previous work could not have been imagined. The 12 unnamed poems comprising Leaves of Grass are written in free verse-that is, without conventional rhyme and meter. Yet, like Longfellow, he was determined to explore the subject of America and his love for his country.\nWhitman looked to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson for inspiration. Emerson wrote \"America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.\" Indeed, Whitman paraphrased Emerson in his preface. Whitman's groundbreaking free verse changed the trajectory of American poetry. The next generation of poets, including Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson, and William Carlos Williams, celebrated their debt to Whitman. Decades later, the influence of Whitman's work on Allen Ginsberg and Langston Hughes, among many others, continues his legacy.\nOne of America's most famous Modern poets, Ezra Pound, said of Walt Whitman, \"As for Whitman, I read him (in many parts) with acute pain, but when I write of certain things I find myself using his rhythms.\" How does this quote affect the author's contention that Pound and his generation of poets celebrated their debt to Whitman?\n\nOptions:\nA. It repudiates it.\nB. It endorses it.\nC. It denies the contention by showing Pound's distaste for Whitman's work.\nD. It calls into question the author's use of the word celebrate.",
  "response":"This question asks you to apply new evidence to an existing argument. The new evidence is an ambivalent statement by Ezra Pound, in which he both declares his distaste for much of Whitman's work while still admiring it enough to imitate it. The author declares that Pound celebrated his debt to Whitman, which is neither repudiated nor endorsed (choices A and B) by Pound's ambivalence. Similarly, the second part of the statement (regarding imitation) does not deny the author's contention. Choice D is the correct answer because it identifies the passage's use of celebrate as too positive a word in light of Pound's \"pain\" in reading Whitman. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\"I acknowledge Shakespeare to be the world's greatest dramatic poet, but regret that no parent could place the uncorrected book in the hands of his daughter, and therefore I have prepared the Family Shakespeare.\"\nThus did Thomas Bowdler, a self-appointed editor trained as a physician, explain his creation of a children's edition of Shakespeare that omitted some characters completely, toned down language he considered objectionable, and euphemized such shocking situations as Ophelia's suicide-an accident in Bowdler's version.\nBowdler was hardly the first to tone down the Bard. Poet laureate Nahum Tate rewrote King Lear, banishing the Fool entirely and giving the play a happy ending. His version was staged regularly from the 1680 s through the 18 th century.\nThomas Bowdler was, from all the evidence, a less likely editor. He was born in 1754 near Bath, England, to a wealthy family. He studied medicine but never really practiced, preferring to exercise philanthropy and to play chess, at which he was a master. In his retirement, he decided to try his hand at editorial work. Shakespeare's dramas were his first project. He added nothing to the texts, but by cutting and paraphrasing strove to remove anything that \"could give just offense to the religious and virtuous mind.\"\nThe result was a 10-volume expurgated version that was criticized widely, although hardly universally. The famed British poet Algernon Swinburne remarked that \"no man ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him into the hands of intelligent and imaginative children.\"\nThere is some indication that Bowdler's sister Harriet did the actual editing of Shakespeare's text. She was a poet and editor in her own right, and clearly more qualified than her brother to lay hands on the Bard of Avon. She may have published the expurgated edition anonymously before allowing her brother to take over the rights. If this is so, it is unsurprising that Harriet would not have wanted her name on the book. If the original Shakespeare were truly objectionable, then it would have been doubly so for a well-bred, unmarried Englishwoman of the day.\nBowdler went on to create children's versions of the Old Testament and of Edward Gibbons's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, although neither achieved either the success or ridicule of his Shakespeare. Today, of course, we know Bowdler not for his good works, but instead for the eponym derived from his good name. To bowdlerize is to censor or amend a written work, often with a connotation of prudishness. The process for which Bowdler is known is one that continues to the present day, as texts deemed too difficult for today's high schoolers are \"dumbed-down,\" library editions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have the \"n-word\" blacked out, and middle-school productions of popular Broadway plays have all expletives deleted. We would be hard-pressed to say that we live in a prudish era, but some of the same impulses that drove Thomas and Harriet Bowdler still exist today.\nThe main argument of the final paragraph is that:\n\nOptions:\nA. Bowdler did a disservice to the readers of his works.\nB. Bowdler's edited texts have long since vanished into history.\nC. We continue to bowdlerize texts to the present day.\nD. Today we look at Bowdler as a negative influence on writing.",
  "response":"The final paragraph mentions Bowdler's works other than Shakespeare and discusses the fact that we derive a verb from his name. The main idea of the paragraph, however, is that Bowdler's form of editing continues to the present day (choice C); several examples of present-day bowdlerization are given. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"In sharp contrast to the modern, confessional poetry of the 20th century, the oeuvre of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow seems quaint and primly Victorian. During his lifetime, however, he was the most celebrated poet in the country. A closer look at the history of American poetry reveals that, despite his eminence, Longfellow wrote in a mold of both form and content that was already being challenged during his lifetime. But why, a century later, do the artistic works of many of his contemporaries continue to be enjoyed and studied while Longfellow languishes in the tomb of cultural artifacts?\nOne answer lies in the radical shift that began to take place in poetry in the mid19th century. Longfellow's themes and steadfast rhymes (and those of John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell) gave way gradually to confessional verse, whose subjects were more personal and rhymes were looser and less conventional. But to understand this shift, one must first understand the nature of Longfellow's work and his standing in the American literary scene of his time.\nLongfellow took as his subject his country's historical imagination, writing on an epic scale about Paul Revere, the Indian Hiawatha, and the pilgrim Miles Standish. He bestowed a mythic dimension on these figures, giving American readers iconic images that helped form a collective consciousness in the new country (indeed, Longfellow was a part of the first generation to be born in the United States). But Longfellow's content went beyond nationalistic pride-it was highly accessible and incredibly popular. Its accessibility is explained by his obvious themes that could be easily understood and embraced by the public. Longfellow did not challenge his readers, but appealed to their desire for stories that expounded an optimistic, sentimental, and moralistic worldview. Those themes were explored in rhyme that allowed readers to commit the poems to memory, much like songs. In 1857, The Song of Hiawatha, arguably his bestknown poem, sold 50,000 copies, an astounding number at the time. The next year, The Courtship of Miles Standish sold 25,000 copies in two months and in London sold 10,000 copies in one day. His success allowed him to give up a professorship at Harvard and focus full time on his writing.\nWalt Whitman, Longfellow's contemporary, wrote poetry similar to that of Longfellow-romantic and sentimental, with conventional rhyme and meter. But in the 1850s, indeed two years before The Song of Hiawatha, he wrote and published Leaves of Grass; a more radical departure from his previous work could not have been imagined. The 12 unnamed poems comprising Leaves of Grass are written in free verse-that is, without conventional rhyme and meter. Yet, like Longfellow, he was determined to explore the subject of America and his love for his country.\nWhitman looked to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson for inspiration. Emerson wrote \"America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.\" Indeed, Whitman paraphrased Emerson in his preface. Whitman's groundbreaking free verse changed the trajectory of American poetry. The next generation of poets, including Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson, and William Carlos Williams, celebrated their debt to Whitman. Decades later, the influence of Whitman's work on Allen Ginsberg and Langston Hughes, among many others, continues his legacy.\nAccording to the passage, what might be the current reputation of poets such as Whittier and Holmes?\n\nOptions:\nA. They are considered integral writers in the history of American poetry.\nB. They are reviled as part of the Victorian Romantic period of American poetry.\nC. They are regarded as antiquated due to their conventional form and content.\nD. They are viewed as an influence on the Modern movement.",
  "response":"This question looks at cause and effect, not as directly Passage II presented in the essay, but rather as implied by the essay. Whittier and Holmes are mentioned once as contemporaries of Longfellow who also employed similar themes and rhymes. Because Longfellow's reputation is said to suffer because of these very themes and rhymes, it may be implied that the reputations of Whittier and Holmes suffer a similar fate. There is no evidence in the passage to support choice A, so it should be eliminated. Choice B is too negative; neither Longfellow nor Whittier and Holmes are said to be held in contempt or disdain. Choice D is in opposition to the ideas found in the passage. Modern poetry is influenced MCAT The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{\nLanguage consists of three main parts. The first is simply vocabulary, the lexicon of words available to the speaker to describe particular concepts, actions, and states. The second part is morphology, the set of rules that dictates how words and parts of words may be combined to form other words. The final part of language is syntax, the rules that combine words into phrases and sentences. It is morphology that we shall turn our attention to first.\nMorphology has two major subdivisions. They are derivation and inflection. Derivation refers to those rules by which new words may be formed out of preexisting words. Inflection, sometimes referred to as conjugation and declension, states how words are changed to indicate their function within a sentence.\nAlthough common mythology holds that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn, many linguists would beg to differ. In fact, when it comes to inflection, \nthe conditional, the subjunctive, the imperative, and others. Languages from outside the Indo-European family tree may be even more complex. The Bantu language of Kivunjo has roughly half a million combinations of prefixes and suffixes for a verb. English, however, has a mere four combinations. A verb such as to walk is limited to the following forms: walk, walks, walked, and walking.\nAlthough there are only four basic verb forms, the English language does have more than 13 possible inflections. It just makes do with these four forms for the various functions. English also differs significantly from many other Indo-European languages in that in English, the stem of the word can be pronounced and is in fact part of the language. In Spanish, the stem of the verb to walk is camin-, but this is not a word in the language. In order to pronounce this word, it must be conjugated and combined with a suffix. English uses the stem form of the verb for four inflections: the present tense (except for the third-person singular), the infinitive, the imperative, and the subjunctive. The verb form ending in $-s$ is used in only one case, the third-person singular.\nThe two possible verb suffixes, -ing and $-e d$, are put to use in a variety of ways as well. The -ing ending appears in the progressive participle, the present participle, the gerund form, and the verbal adjective form. That leaves the $-e d$ form to handle the remaining inflections, including the past tense, the perfect participle, the passive participle, and some verbal adjectives.\nWhy are there so many different inflections for verb forms that basically sound the same? Simply put, the meanings implied by the various moods are different, even if the words used are fairly similar. Compare the meaning conveyed by the simple past tense (he walked) to the meaning inherent in the perfect participle (he has walked).\nThe central thesis of the passage is that:\n\nOptions:\nA. English is easier to learn than many other languages.\nB. Each language is unique in its major forms.\nC. The English language uses a minimum of verb forms in its inflections.\nD. The English language is not as rich in meaning as other languages.",
  "response":"This question asks you to find the main idea. This passage discusses the basic structure of language and specifically a feature of the English language, namely its paucity of verb forms. Choice $C$ is the best summary of the passage. Choice $\\mathrm{A}$ is not the main idea of the passage at all. Choice $\\mathrm{B}$ is too strong. It is not stated that each and every language is unique. Choice $\\mathrm{D}$ is wrong because the passage states the English language is able to convey a number of meanings even though its verb forms are limited. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nThe Nobel Peace Prize has often engendered controversy. The Red Cross, yes, but Henry Kissinger? Mother Teresa, perhaps, but Yasser Arafat? Surprisingly, a loud and ongoing controversy surrounds a choice that at first look seems most benign-that of the Guatemalan freedom fighter, Rigoberta Mench\u00fa Tum.\nRigoberta Mench\u00fa was born in 1959 to a poor Mayan family in Guatemala. At the time of her birth, General Yd\u00edgoras Fuentes had just seized power, following the assassination of Colonel Castillo Armas. The year she turned one, there was a failed coup by a military group, many of whom fled to the countryside and would return to lead the rebellion that would wax and wane for the next 36 years.\nGuatemala was divided into factions for that entire period, as military governments controlled the nation and guerilla groups controlled the countryside. At the same time, right-wing vigilantes led a campaign of torture and assassination, eliminating students and peasants they deemed to be allied with the guerillas.\nIn the countryside where Rigoberta lived, the battles were largely over control of farmland. Rigoberta's father was taken into custody and tortured when the army believed he had assisted in the assassination of a plantation owner. Following a rout of the guerillas by the army, the guerillas regrouped and began to take their fight to the capital, beginning a long series of assassinations of government figures.\nRigoberta, her father, and some of her siblings joined the Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC). In rapid succession, Rigoberta lost her brother, father, and mother to the army's own assassination squads. Rigoberta, though only in her early 20s, became a key figure in the resistance, traveling from village to village to educate the Mayan peasants in overcoming oppression, and leading demonstrations in Guatemala City.\nSoon Rigoberta was herself a target. She fled to Mexico and continued her life as an organizer, concentrating her focus on peasants' rights. She participated in the founding of the United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG). This period was the most violent of the entire Guatemalan civil war. Under the new president, General Efrain R\u00edos Montt, massacres of civilians became an everyday occurrence.  The controversy is all about the book. It began when anthropologist David Stoll began independent research on the same era about which Rigoberta dictated and discovered discrepancies in her recall of events. Massacres she described were not remembered by the locals; one of her brothers died by shooting rather than by fire, dates were incorrect, and so on. Stoll's discoveries were enough to roil up conservative historians and columnists, who declared Rigoberta's book the grossest propaganda and her career, therefore, unworthy of the Nobel Prize. Not surprisingly, this brought forth charges of racism, sexism, and cultural ignorance from the other side.\nThe Nobel Committee maintained a stiff upper lip throughout the political backand-forth and still insists that Rigoberta's prize had to do with her documented good works and not with her personal recorded history. Rigoberta's book is still widely taught, and her place in the history of Central American peasant revolutions seems assured.\nIf David Stoll is to be believed, Rigoberta's autobiography seems to be an example of:\n\nOptions:\nA. \"truthiness,\" the quality of preferring facts one wishes were true to those that are true\nB. \"epic,\" a narrative unified by a legendary hero who reflects the aspirations of a nation or race\nC. \"folktale,\" a story of cumulative authorship from the oral tradition\nD. \"manifesto,\" a credo or position paper in which the leader of a political movement sets forth tenets and beliefs",
  "response":"David Stoll objects to what he considers Rigoberta's misleading the public on matters of fact. That would not mean that her work was an epic (choice B) or a folktale (choice C) because those are specific genres of literature that do not fit his accusations. Nor would he call her work a manifesto (choice D) because he does not accept her as a leader. He might, however, use the trendy word truthiness to describe what he feels to be a bending of the truth. Answers and Explanations MCAT The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{\nIf our knowledge of the world occurs through the weaving of narratives, as postmodernists would have us believe, then we must judge the truth of each narrative by comparing it with what we value and what we already accept as true. Any metanarrative, or overarching \"big story,\" must be rejected because it attempts to explain away too many individual narratives. \nhistory through that metanarrative, postmodernists would argue, does not allow us to consider the contributions of other groups to the country we live in today. So constructing a metanarrative can often be exclusionary.\nOf course, constructing a series of smaller narratives is just as exclusionary because it frames experience in a limited way. It is easy to see this occurring if you look at any university course list today. How is it possible for American History 4111, \"Imperialism and Amerindians, 1600-1840\" to coexist alongside American History 4546, \"American Military History and Policy\"? Does English 340X, \"Survey of Women's Literature,\" subsume or incorporate elements of English 342X, \"American Indian Women Writers\"? Perhaps we should pity the undergraduate student today. Lacking any overarching metanarrative to provide perspective, how can the poor student wade through the often contradictory mininarratives being thrown his or her way?\nThere is no question that the old way was wrongheaded and elitist. Survey courses that emphasized the white male perspective were removed from the curriculum in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, and for good reason. But replacing them with a smorgasbord of mininarratives risks eliminating any sense of a big picture. Can students connect the dots to define a coherent reality, or must their reality be a series of frames with no links among them?\nRevising the canon was about ridding our perspective of those racist, sexist, or classist notions that insisted on a single Truth with a capital $T$. Of course there is no overriding Truth that applies to everyone. For everyone who believes that Thomas Jefferson was a brilliant reformer, there is someone who thinks he was a two-faced slaveholder. Yet, where does it leave us if everyone we know is approaching history, science, literature, or what have you from a slightly different angle? It's bad enough when partisan politics divides us into red states and blue states. How much worse is it to imagine ourselves clad in thousands upon thousands of shades of purple?\nThe clearest sign that we are not ready to abandon our metanarratives comes in the current and ongoing clash between those who accept evolutionary theory and those who accept the Bible as the written word of God. The latter grant the Earth 6000 years of life, the former give it several million more, and never the twain shall meet. Each of these viewpoints is a metanarrative, a big story that governs people's understanding of the world. Like many metanarratives, each of these completely negates the other.\nSo on the one hand, metanarratives don't work well because they are too exclusionary. And on the other hand, mininarratives don't work well because they are too narrow. It will be fascinating to watch the canon evolve over the next few decades and to see whether this dichotomy can ever be resolved.\nThe main argument of the passage is that:\n\nOptions:\nA. Metanarratives provide the best way to view the world.\nB. Metanarratives are usually more restrictive than mininarratives.\nC. Mininarratives are racist, sexist, and classist.\nD. Neither metanarratives nor mininarratives offer a flawless perspective.",
  "response":"The author finds that metanarratives are often racist, sexist, or classist; but that mininarratives are often too restrictive or exclusive to be useful. The best answer is choice D. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{\nIf our knowledge of the world occurs through the weaving of narratives, as postmodernists would have us believe, then we must judge the truth of each narrative by comparing it with what we value and what we already accept as true. Any metanarrative, or overarching \"big story,\" must be rejected because it attempts to explain away too many individual narratives. \nhistory through that metanarrative, postmodernists would argue, does not allow us to consider the contributions of other groups to the country we live in today. So constructing a metanarrative can often be exclusionary.\nOf course, constructing a series of smaller narratives is just as exclusionary because it frames experience in a limited way. It is easy to see this occurring if you look at any university course list today. How is it possible for American History 4111, \"Imperialism and Amerindians, 1600-1840\" to coexist alongside American History 4546, \"American Military History and Policy\"? Does English 340X, \"Survey of Women's Literature,\" subsume or incorporate elements of English 342X, \"American Indian Women Writers\"? Perhaps we should pity the undergraduate student today. Lacking any overarching metanarrative to provide perspective, how can the poor student wade through the often contradictory mininarratives being thrown his or her way?\nThere is no question that the old way was wrongheaded and elitist. Survey courses that emphasized the white male perspective were removed from the curriculum in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, and for good reason. But replacing them with a smorgasbord of mininarratives risks eliminating any sense of a big picture. Can students connect the dots to define a coherent reality, or must their reality be a series of frames with no links among them?\nRevising the canon was about ridding our perspective of those racist, sexist, or classist notions that insisted on a single Truth with a capital $T$. Of course there is no overriding Truth that applies to everyone. For everyone who believes that Thomas Jefferson was a brilliant reformer, there is someone who thinks he was a two-faced slaveholder. Yet, where does it leave us if everyone we know is approaching history, science, literature, or what have you from a slightly different angle? It's bad enough when partisan politics divides us into red states and blue states. How much worse is it to imagine ourselves clad in thousands upon thousands of shades of purple?\nThe clearest sign that we are not ready to abandon our metanarratives comes in the current and ongoing clash between those who accept evolutionary theory and those who accept the Bible as the written word of God. The latter grant the Earth 6000 years of life, the former give it several million more, and never the twain shall meet. Each of these viewpoints is a metanarrative, a big story that governs people's understanding of the world. Like many metanarratives, each of these completely negates the other.\nSo on the one hand, metanarratives don't work well because they are too exclusionary. And on the other hand, mininarratives don't work well because they are too narrow. It will be fascinating to watch the canon evolve over the next few decades and to see whether this dichotomy can ever be resolved.\nA comparison of a mininarrative to a metanarrative would be MOST similar to a comparison of:\n\nOptions:\nA. a cropped photograph to a wide-angle photograph\nB. a globe to a world map\nC. a ranch-style house to a palace\nD. a single domestic turkey to a flock of wild turkeys",
  "response":"A mininarrative looks at the world through a limited lens. A metanarrative provides more of a big picture. The best analogy is choice A. The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nEngineers and computer scientists are intrigued by the potential power of nanocomputing. Nanocomputers will use atoms and molecules to perform their functions instead of the standard integrated circuits now employed. Theorists believe that the amount of information a nanocomputer could handle is staggering.\nA professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has attempted to calculate the computational limits of a computer with a weight of 1 kilogram and a volume of 1 liter. According to the laws of physics, the potential amount of computational power is a function of the available energy. Basically, each atom and subatomic particle in the computer has an amount of energy attached to it. Furthermore, the energy of each particle or atom is increased by the frequency of its movement. Thus the power of a computer that uses nanotechnology is bounded by the energy available from its atoms.\nSpecifically, the relationship between the energy of an object and its computation potential is a proportionate one. As Einstein has famously calculated, the energy of an object is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared. Thus, a theoretical computer weighing a mere kilogram has a huge amount of potential energy. To find the total computational power, the minimum amount of energy required to perform an operation is divided by the total amount of energy. \nof energy possessed by a 1-kilogram computer by Planck's constant yields a tremendously large number, roughly $5 \\times 10^{50}$ operations per second. Using even the most conservative estimates of the computing power of the human brain, such a computer would have the computational power of five trillion trillion human civilizations. The computer would also have a memory capacity, calculated by determining the degrees of freedom allowed by the state of all the particles comprising it, of $10^{31} \\mathrm{bits}$.\nThese numbers are purely theoretical, however. Were the computer to convert all of its mass to energy, it would be the equivalent of a thermonuclear explosion. And it is unreasonable to expect human technology to ever achieve abilities even close to these limits. However, a project at the University of Oklahoma has succeeded in storing 50 bits of data per atom, albeit on only a limited number of atoms. Given that there are $10^{25}$ atoms in 1 kilogram of material, it may be possible to fit up to $10^{27}$ bits of information in the computer. And if scientists are able to exploit the many properties of atoms to store information, including the position, spin, and quantum state of all its particles, it may be possible to exceed even that number.\nOne interesting consequence of such staggering increases in computing power is that each advance could provide the basis for further evolution. Once technology can achieve, for instance, a level of computation equal to $10^{40}$ operations per second, it can use that massive power to help bring the theoretical limit ever closer.\nThe project at the University of Oklahoma indicates:\n\nOptions:\nA. Current information-storing technology is still in its infancy.\nB. Researchers are close to achieving the predicted memory capacity.\nC. Scientists have learned how to use different aspects of the atom to store infor- mation.\nD. Work on reaching the theoretical limits of computation power is now under- way.",
  "response":"This question asks you to draw a conclusion. Based on the information in the passage, choice $\\mathrm{A}$ is the best choice. The passage indicates that thus far, researchers have only been able to store information on a few atoms. Choice B is practically the opposite of what the passage states, whereas the information in choice $\\mathrm{C}$ is suggested by the author as a way to exceed the theoretical memory limit. The work at the University of Oklahoma relates to memory capacity, not computing power, as choice D indicates. The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"It is perhaps too easy to think of mathematical truths as objective entities existing in the universe, simply waiting to be \"discovered\" by brilliant minds such as Pythagoras, Newton, and Descartes. Indeed, such a mentality may be cemented in Western minds raised in the Platonic tradition of a world of ideals that exists outside of the material world we reside in.\nBut new research in the fields of cognitive science and developmental psychology may be challenging this long-held belief in mathematics as a truth outside of human experience, and recasting mathematics as a product of the brain, an entity that is not discovered by man but rather created by him.\nSuch a radical paradigm shift has predictably met with stiff resistance, but the evidence in favor of a created mathematics rather than a discovered mathematics is compelling. Study after study has shown that all people possess an innate arithmetic. Babies as young as three or four days old can differentiate between groups of two and three items. And by the age of four months or so, an infant can see that one plus one is two and two minus one is one. Researchers discovered this startling fact by means of a simple experiment, following what is known as the violation of expectation model in developmental psychology. An infant was presented with a scenario in which a researcher held a puppet before the baby's eyes. Then a screen was moved in front of the puppet and another researcher placed a second puppet behind it. The screen was removed and if there were two puppets now visible, the infant registered no surprise (as measured by both the direction of the child's gaze and the duration of her stare). But if the screen was removed and only one puppet appeared, the infant registered perplexity at the situation. This experiment and others like it strongly suggest that all individuals are born with certain mathematical concepts hardwired into their brains. The ability to quickly and accurately count a small number of items, called subitizing by psychologists, is also found in animals. Researchers using experiments similar to the violation of expectation setup described previously have found an innate mathematical ability not just in primates, our closest evolutionary cousins, but in raccoons, rats, parrots, and pigeons. These findings are consistent with the belief that mathematical thinking is a function of the structures in the brain and not a product of the outside world.\nAnomalous cases involving brain injuries and disorders also support the idea that mathematical thinking arises from the organization of the brain. There is a documented case of a subject with a $\\mathrm{PhD}$ in chemistry who suffers from acalculia, the inability to perform basic arithmetic functions. Strangely, this patient is unable to perform simple calculations such as five plus three or eight minus two, but has no problem manipulating abstract algebraic operations. This curious fact has led psychologists to conclude that the part of the brain that handles abstract algebraic operations must be different from the part of the brain that works with more concrete arithmetic functions.\nThe central thesis of the passage is that:\n\nOptions:\nA. Western philosophers were mistaken in their belief in mathematics as an objective truth.\nB. Research in cognitive science and developmental psychology indicates that some animals may have the same mathematical abilities as humans do.\nC. A longstanding attitude toward mathematics may need to be reexamined in light of new evidence.\nD. People create their own mathematical systems based on the structures in their brains.",
  "response":"This question requires you to find the main idea. The passage states that a longstanding view of mathematics as an objective reality is being challenged by new evidence in the fields of cognitive science and developmental psychology. This is what choice $C$ expresses. Choice $A$ is incorrect because the main idea of the passage does not concern Western philosophers. The passage does not claim that animals have the same mathematical abilities as humans do, making choice B wrong. Choice D is not supported by the passage at all. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\"I acknowledge Shakespeare to be the world's greatest dramatic poet, but regret that no parent could place the uncorrected book in the hands of his daughter, and therefore I have prepared the Family Shakespeare.\"\nThus did Thomas Bowdler, a self-appointed editor trained as a physician, explain his creation of a children's edition of Shakespeare that omitted some characters completely, toned down language he considered objectionable, and euphemized such shocking situations as Ophelia's suicide-an accident in Bowdler's version.\nBowdler was hardly the first to tone down the Bard. Poet laureate Nahum Tate rewrote King Lear, banishing the Fool entirely and giving the play a happy ending. His version was staged regularly from the 1680 s through the 18 th century.\nThomas Bowdler was, from all the evidence, a less likely editor. He was born in 1754 near Bath, England, to a wealthy family. He studied medicine but never really practiced, preferring to exercise philanthropy and to play chess, at which he was a master. In his retirement, he decided to try his hand at editorial work. Shakespeare's dramas were his first project. He added nothing to the texts, but by cutting and paraphrasing strove to remove anything that \"could give just offense to the religious and virtuous mind.\"\nThe result was a 10-volume expurgated version that was criticized widely, although hardly universally. The famed British poet Algernon Swinburne remarked that \"no man ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him into the hands of intelligent and imaginative children.\"\nThere is some indication that Bowdler's sister Harriet did the actual editing of Shakespeare's text. She was a poet and editor in her own right, and clearly more qualified than her brother to lay hands on the Bard of Avon. She may have published the expurgated edition anonymously before allowing her brother to take over the rights. If this is so, it is unsurprising that Harriet would not have wanted her name on the book. If the original Shakespeare were truly objectionable, then it would have been doubly so for a well-bred, unmarried Englishwoman of the day.\nBowdler went on to create children's versions of the Old Testament and of Edward Gibbons's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, although neither achieved either the success or ridicule of his Shakespeare. Today, of course, we know Bowdler not for his good works, but instead for the eponym derived from his good name. To bowdlerize is to censor or amend a written work, often with a connotation of prudishness. The process for which Bowdler is known is one that continues to the present day, as texts deemed too difficult for today's high schoolers are \"dumbed-down,\" library editions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have the \"n-word\" blacked out, and middle-school productions of popular Broadway plays have all expletives deleted. We would be hard-pressed to say that we live in a prudish era, but some of the same impulses that drove Thomas and Harriet Bowdler still exist today.\nBased on the information in this passage, which of these would NOT be bowdlerization?\nI. translating a Japanese folktale into English\nII. eliminating references to witches from a fairy tale\nIII. burning copies of The Satanic Verses\n\nOptions:\nA. I only\nB. II only\nC. I and III only\nD. II and III only",
  "response":"Remember that the answer will NOT be an example of bowdlerization. First, you must find the definition of bowdlerization in the text: \"to censor or amend a written work, often with a connotation of prudishness.\" Item I is not an example of this; simply translating from one language to another requires neither censorship or amendment. Item III is not an example either; although some may say that book burning is a radical form of censorship, it does not fit the definition here. Only II, which deals with the censorship of a detail in a text, fits the definition. Since I and III do not, choice $\\mathrm{C}$ is the correct answer. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nIn linguistics, metathesis refers to the reversal of phonemes in a word. This can come about by accident, as in the common mispronunciation \"aks\" for ask or the common (and correct) pronunciation of iron as \"i-orn.\" It may come about on purpose, as in various language games.\nAccidental metathesis may be a process that takes place in the evolution of languages. Over time, for example, the Latin words miraculum, periculum, and parabola evolved into the Spanish words milagro, peligro, and palabra. Linguists posit that such changes usually occur when two consonants are of the same type, with similar mouth formations needed to create each one.\nThe Reverend Archibald Spooner, an Oxford dean, was known for his unintentional transpositions and gave his name to the particular metathesis he represented: Spoonerisms. Most famous Spoonerisms once attributed to Spooner are now believed to be apocryphal, but they are nevertheless amusing; for example, his supposed advice to a substandard student: \"You have deliberately tasted two worms and will leave Oxford by the next town drain.\" Spoonerisms are funny when the metathesis involved changes one word into another, and they seem to lend themselves particularly well to off-color jokes.\nEveryone is familiar with Pig Latin, in which initial consonant sounds are moved to the end of a word and followed with the syllable \"ay.\" This is not pure metathesis, but it begins with the kind of metathesis known as backslang, in which syllables or letters in a word are reversed to produce a private code. Pig Latin may have begun as a language spoken in prisoner-of-war camps; it was certainly used in such camps during World War II and in Vietnam.\nIn Pig Latin, the phrase \"Over the river and through the woods\" becomes \"Overay uhthay iverray anday oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" In other variations of Pig Latin, it might instead be \"Overway uhthay iverray andway oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" There are computer programs that translate from English to Pig Latin and back again, and there is even a version of the Bible written entirely in Pig Latin. For the most part, however, outside of prisoner-of-war camps, Pig Latin is a funny code used by children.\nFrench children and teenagers use a similar code. Called verlan (a reversal of l'envers, or \"reversal\"), it is trickier than Pig Latin because it relies much more on phonetics than on spelling. In verlan, the word caf\u00e9 becomes f\u00e9ca, but the word tomber (\"to fall\") becomes b\u00e9ton. Verlan becomes even more complex in words that end in silent $e$ or which have only one syllable. While just a few words from Pig Latin have entered the vernacular (for example, amscray and ixnay), many verlan words are common lingo in France.\nHistorically, for reasons that are not quite clear, butchers have been frequent users of metathesis, creating their own backslang to converse without being understood by patrons. In France, this is called louch\u00e9bem (boucher, or \"butcher,\" with the first consonant moved to the end and the letter $l$ placed in front). In Australia, it is known as rechtub klat. That name, of course, represents the ultimate in metathesis-the reversal of letters instead of merely syllables.\nWhich of these might be an example of accidental metathesis?\nI. saying interduce instead of introduce\nII. saying asterix instead of asterisk\nIII. saying cause instead of because\n\nOptions:\nA. I only\nB. I and II only\nC. II and III only\nD. I, II, and III",
  "response":"Saying cause instead of because (III) is an example of aphaeresis, the loss of the initial part of a word. The other two examples show transpositions of phonemes that are accidental. Since I and II are correct, the answer is choice B. The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"Biologists use the term \"living fossil\" to designate a species that maintains many of the features of its ancient ancestors. These species have evidenced very little evolutionary change, indicating not that they are primitive creatures as might be popularly believed, but instead that they are exquisitely suited for their biological and ecological niches and thus have not had any selection pressures to respond to.\nThe four most celebrated living fossils are the lungfish, the horseshoe crab, the lampshell, and the coelacanth. The horseshoe crab is the relative youngster of the group, belonging to the Jurassic period and having shown little structural changes in its 200-million-year lifespan. The lampshell, a member of the phylum Brachiopoda, is part of an even older lineage, resembling ancestors that lived nearly 400 million years ago.\nThe oldest members of the living fossil family are the lungfish and the coelacanth, both species that are remarkably similar to their forebears that roamed the Earth almost 425 million years ago. The lungfish, of which there are six surviving species, has the same basic structure and fleshy lobe fins of its progenitor, the sarcopterygian. Of course, the lungfish has long interested biologists not just because of its connections to the distant past but because of the bridge it represents between aquatic species and land dwellers. In fact, the African and South American species of lungfish live part of their lives entirely on land, burrowing into mud and respiring through a tiny breathing hole in their earthy homes. Although the lungfish has remained evolutionarily stable for close to 250 million years, prior to that the species did experience rapid and dynamic evolutionary change. However, by the end of the Permian period, the changes ground to a halt, and the lungfish has persevered happily ever since.\nThe singular story of the coelacanth stretches all the way from the Silurian period, some 425 million years ago, to the modern day. The coelacanths were well-known from the fossil record and dating technologies placed them in a time when plants were just beginning to encroach on the land. However, biologists thought the species went extinct long before the dinosaurs did. Imagine the surprise when in 1938 a South American trawler captured a strange-looking fish, some five feet in length and a pale blue and silver in color. By an astounding coincidence, the captain of the boat had a relationship with the curator of the East London Museum and had made a habit of sending any interesting finds along to her. Upon seeing this strange specimen, the curator contacted a leading ichthyologist, who, after examining the creature, said he \"would not have been more surprised if I had seen a dinosaur walking down the street.\" But despite all protestations of common sense and amid allegations of forgery and fakery, upon further study, the creature was indubitably a coelacanth. Since that day, explorers have found many more members of the species and have even turned up a second species in the Indian Ocean.\nThe passage states that describing living fossils as primitive is a misnomer because:\n\nOptions:\nA. Living fossils are just as advanced as any other species.\nB. The public does not understand how evolution works.\nC. Living fossils continue to evolve.\nD. Living fossils no longer respond to natural selection.",
  "response":"In order to answer this question, you must choose an accurate paraphrase of the information in the passage. The first paragraph states that living fossils are not primitive. Rather they are so well-adapted to their environment that there is little need for change. Thinking that evolution necessarily represents advancement is indeed a misunderstanding, as choice B indicates. Choice A is not what the passage states as there is no comparison to other species. Choice C may be true, but it doesn't answer the question. Choice D is not stated in the passage. The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nIn linguistics, metathesis refers to the reversal of phonemes in a word. This can come about by accident, as in the common mispronunciation \"aks\" for ask or the common (and correct) pronunciation of iron as \"i-orn.\" It may come about on purpose, as in various language games.\nAccidental metathesis may be a process that takes place in the evolution of languages. Over time, for example, the Latin words miraculum, periculum, and parabola evolved into the Spanish words milagro, peligro, and palabra. Linguists posit that such changes usually occur when two consonants are of the same type, with similar mouth formations needed to create each one.\nThe Reverend Archibald Spooner, an Oxford dean, was known for his unintentional transpositions and gave his name to the particular metathesis he represented: Spoonerisms. Most famous Spoonerisms once attributed to Spooner are now believed to be apocryphal, but they are nevertheless amusing; for example, his supposed advice to a substandard student: \"You have deliberately tasted two worms and will leave Oxford by the next town drain.\" Spoonerisms are funny when the metathesis involved changes one word into another, and they seem to lend themselves particularly well to off-color jokes.\nEveryone is familiar with Pig Latin, in which initial consonant sounds are moved to the end of a word and followed with the syllable \"ay.\" This is not pure metathesis, but it begins with the kind of metathesis known as backslang, in which syllables or letters in a word are reversed to produce a private code. Pig Latin may have begun as a language spoken in prisoner-of-war camps; it was certainly used in such camps during World War II and in Vietnam.\nIn Pig Latin, the phrase \"Over the river and through the woods\" becomes \"Overay uhthay iverray anday oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" In other variations of Pig Latin, it might instead be \"Overway uhthay iverray andway oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" There are computer programs that translate from English to Pig Latin and back again, and there is even a version of the Bible written entirely in Pig Latin. For the most part, however, outside of prisoner-of-war camps, Pig Latin is a funny code used by children.\nFrench children and teenagers use a similar code. Called verlan (a reversal of l'envers, or \"reversal\"), it is trickier than Pig Latin because it relies much more on phonetics than on spelling. In verlan, the word caf\u00e9 becomes f\u00e9ca, but the word tomber (\"to fall\") becomes b\u00e9ton. Verlan becomes even more complex in words that end in silent $e$ or which have only one syllable. While just a few words from Pig Latin have entered the vernacular (for example, amscray and ixnay), many verlan words are common lingo in France.\nHistorically, for reasons that are not quite clear, butchers have been frequent users of metathesis, creating their own backslang to converse without being understood by patrons. In France, this is called louch\u00e9bem (boucher, or \"butcher,\" with the first consonant moved to the end and the letter $l$ placed in front). In Australia, it is known as rechtub klat. That name, of course, represents the ultimate in metathesis-the reversal of letters instead of merely syllables.\nThe passage implies that Pig Latin is NOT pure metathesis because it:\n\nOptions:\nA. does not transpose phonemes\nB. is not accidental\nC. includes the addition of an extra syllable\nD. does not add to the language",
  "response":"Compare what you know about Pig Latin to what you know about metathesis. Pig Latin, like other metathesis, does transpose phonemes, so choice A is incorrect. Metathesis may be accidental or purposeful, so choice B is incorrect. There is no indication that the definition of metathesis includes the rule that such words must add to the language, so choice D does not work. Pig Latin involves more than the reversal of phonemes that marks metathesis; it also involves the addition of the \"ay\" syllable. The best answer is choice C. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"Biologists use the term \"living fossil\" to designate a species that maintains many of the features of its ancient ancestors. These species have evidenced very little evolutionary change, indicating not that they are primitive creatures as might be popularly believed, but instead that they are exquisitely suited for their biological and ecological niches and thus have not had any selection pressures to respond to.\nThe four most celebrated living fossils are the lungfish, the horseshoe crab, the lampshell, and the coelacanth. The horseshoe crab is the relative youngster of the group, belonging to the Jurassic period and having shown little structural changes in its 200-million-year lifespan. The lampshell, a member of the phylum Brachiopoda, is part of an even older lineage, resembling ancestors that lived nearly 400 million years ago.\nThe oldest members of the living fossil family are the lungfish and the coelacanth, both species that are remarkably similar to their forebears that roamed the Earth almost 425 million years ago. The lungfish, of which there are six surviving species, has the same basic structure and fleshy lobe fins of its progenitor, the sarcopterygian. Of course, the lungfish has long interested biologists not just because of its connections to the distant past but because of the bridge it represents between aquatic species and land dwellers. In fact, the African and South American species of lungfish live part of their lives entirely on land, burrowing into mud and respiring through a tiny breathing hole in their earthy homes. Although the lungfish has remained evolutionarily stable for close to 250 million years, prior to that the species did experience rapid and dynamic evolutionary change. However, by the end of the Permian period, the changes ground to a halt, and the lungfish has persevered happily ever since.\nThe singular story of the coelacanth stretches all the way from the Silurian period, some 425 million years ago, to the modern day. The coelacanths were well-known from the fossil record and dating technologies placed them in a time when plants were just beginning to encroach on the land. However, biologists thought the species went extinct long before the dinosaurs did. Imagine the surprise when in 1938 a South American trawler captured a strange-looking fish, some five feet in length and a pale blue and silver in color. By an astounding coincidence, the captain of the boat had a relationship with the curator of the East London Museum and had made a habit of sending any interesting finds along to her. Upon seeing this strange specimen, the curator contacted a leading ichthyologist, who, after examining the creature, said he \"would not have been more surprised if I had seen a dinosaur walking down the street.\" But despite all protestations of common sense and amid allegations of forgery and fakery, upon further study, the creature was indubitably a coelacanth. Since that day, explorers have found many more members of the species and have even turned up a second species in the Indian Ocean.\nSuppose a biologist rejects the classification of coelacanths as living fossils. Which of the following pieces of evidence would be MOST helpful to the biologist's argument?\n\nOptions:\nA. New dating technologies reveal the coelacanth species is only 300 million years old.\nB. A third species of coelacanth is discovered that differs from the other two known species.\nC. New evidence shows that the coelacanth actually belongs to the same lineage as do rays and skates.\nD. A new species of living fossil is discovered that is even older than the coelacanth.",
  "response":"To answer this question, you must apply new evidence. According to the passage, a living fossil is one that has changed very little over the eons. In order to argue that the coelacanth is not a living fossil, a biologist would need to find evidence of significant change. Showing that the coelacanth actually comes from a different line, as choice $\\mathrm{C}$ does, would do so. The age of the species is not the issue, as choices A and D indicate. And finding different species, as in choice B, would not affect the status of the coelacanth as a living fossil. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"The man whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt christened \u201cThe Happy Warrior\" in a nominating speech would later become a thorn in Roosevelt's side. Some thought the switch in loyalties was sour grapes, but others saw Alfred E. Smith as the epitome of William Wordsworth's \"happy warrior\" and therefore a man who \"makes his moral being his prime care\"-one who never made a move without consulting his conscience.\nAlfred E. Smith was both a successful politician and an unsuccessful one. A fourterm governor of New York State, he seemed a sure candidate for president, and indeed he ran three times for that position, only to lose each time.\nHe had several strikes against him. He was the Catholic son of Irish and ItalianGerman immigrants, making him anathema to nativists, the xenophobes who underwent a resurgence in the 1920s. He was from New York City, viewed even in the early twentieth century as disconnected from the national character. He was a progressive, which made conservatives of all stripes nervous. And he favored the repeal of Prohibition, a position that lost him the backing of many party leaders.\nWho was this unlikely candidate? Born Alfred Emanuel Smith in 1873, Smith grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His father died when Smith was young, and the boy dropped out of school to take care of the family. At age 21, Smith supported a losing candidate in a local race and came to the attention of New York politicos, who took him under their wing. Nine years later, he ran successfully for the New York State Assembly, where he rapidly rose in the ranks to become Majority Leader and finally Speaker. He played a pivotal role in the revamping of New York's constitution, was elected sheriff of New York County, and then ran for governor in 1918, winning handily. Although he lost a re-election bid two years later, he surged back in 1922 and would remain in the governor's seat for six more years. His terms were marked by unparalleled improvements in labor laws and laws protecting civil liberties, for Smith's goal was to support those he saw as most in need of government's assistance.\nIn this goal, he was allied with Franklin Roosevelt, and the two were close enough that Roosevelt nominated Smith for president in 1924. The Drys, or Prohibitionists, backed William McAdoo, a son-in-law of former President Woodrow Wilson. Smith's supporters and McAdoo's supporters were so far apart that finally a compromise candidate, John Davis, was nominated and promptly lost the general election to Calvin Coolidge.\nIn 1928, Smith received his party's nomination on the second ballot, but along with his anti-Prohibition leanings, his religion became a major issue during the campaign, paving the way for Herbert Hoover to win the general election. Meanwhile, Smith had arranged for the nomination of his New York colleague, Franklin Roosevelt, to be governor of New York. Although Smith lost his bid, Roosevelt did not. Then came the Depression and the election of 1932. Backroom dealings ensured that Franklin Roosevelt won the nominating process, with another would-be presidential candidate in the vice-presidential spot on the ticket. Smith was left out in the cold on his third try for the presidency. Despite his former regard for Roosevelt, he began to work hard, if unsuccessfully, to defeat the New Deal. He supported two Republicans rather than Roosevelt in the 1936 and 1940 elections, and he died in 1944, a man who had never reached his desired goal, yet had inspired many of the changes for which his rival is now known.\nAccording to the passage, why did John Davis win the Democratic nomination in 1924 ?\n\nOptions:\nA. He was not as far to the left as Smith.\nB. He was a Prohibitionist like McAdoo.\nC. He had the support of a former president.\nD. He was acceptable to Smith and McAdoo supporters.",
  "response":"Either choice A or choice B might be true, but neither is supported by a cause-and-effect relationship presented in the text. Davis was chosen as a \"compromise candidate\" when the delegates failed to choose between Smith and McAdoo. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"The man whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt christened \u201cThe Happy Warrior\" in a nominating speech would later become a thorn in Roosevelt's side. Some thought the switch in loyalties was sour grapes, but others saw Alfred E. Smith as the epitome of William Wordsworth's \"happy warrior\" and therefore a man who \"makes his moral being his prime care\"-one who never made a move without consulting his conscience.\nAlfred E. Smith was both a successful politician and an unsuccessful one. A fourterm governor of New York State, he seemed a sure candidate for president, and indeed he ran three times for that position, only to lose each time.\nHe had several strikes against him. He was the Catholic son of Irish and ItalianGerman immigrants, making him anathema to nativists, the xenophobes who underwent a resurgence in the 1920s. He was from New York City, viewed even in the early twentieth century as disconnected from the national character. He was a progressive, which made conservatives of all stripes nervous. And he favored the repeal of Prohibition, a position that lost him the backing of many party leaders.\nWho was this unlikely candidate? Born Alfred Emanuel Smith in 1873, Smith grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His father died when Smith was young, and the boy dropped out of school to take care of the family. At age 21, Smith supported a losing candidate in a local race and came to the attention of New York politicos, who took him under their wing. Nine years later, he ran successfully for the New York State Assembly, where he rapidly rose in the ranks to become Majority Leader and finally Speaker. He played a pivotal role in the revamping of New York's constitution, was elected sheriff of New York County, and then ran for governor in 1918, winning handily. Although he lost a re-election bid two years later, he surged back in 1922 and would remain in the governor's seat for six more years. His terms were marked by unparalleled improvements in labor laws and laws protecting civil liberties, for Smith's goal was to support those he saw as most in need of government's assistance.\nIn this goal, he was allied with Franklin Roosevelt, and the two were close enough that Roosevelt nominated Smith for president in 1924. The Drys, or Prohibitionists, backed William McAdoo, a son-in-law of former President Woodrow Wilson. Smith's supporters and McAdoo's supporters were so far apart that finally a compromise candidate, John Davis, was nominated and promptly lost the general election to Calvin Coolidge.\nIn 1928, Smith received his party's nomination on the second ballot, but along with his anti-Prohibition leanings, his religion became a major issue during the campaign, paving the way for Herbert Hoover to win the general election. Meanwhile, Smith had arranged for the nomination of his New York colleague, Franklin Roosevelt, to be governor of New York. Although Smith lost his bid, Roosevelt did not. Then came the Depression and the election of 1932. Backroom dealings ensured that Franklin Roosevelt won the nominating process, with another would-be presidential candidate in the vice-presidential spot on the ticket. Smith was left out in the cold on his third try for the presidency. Despite his former regard for Roosevelt, he began to work hard, if unsuccessfully, to defeat the New Deal. He supported two Republicans rather than Roosevelt in the 1936 and 1940 elections, and he died in 1944, a man who had never reached his desired goal, yet had inspired many of the changes for which his rival is now known.\nThe author's claim that Smith was a successful politician is supported by:\n\nOptions:\nA. the explanation of his sobriquet, \"The Happy Warrior\"\nB. a review of his work in the assembly and governor's office\nC. descriptions of his three runs for the presidency\nD. a list of the famous names that supported his candidacies",
  "response":"The author presents supporting details about Smith's many successes in the state of New York, from his work as Speaker of the Assembly to his many years as governor. Choice A does not support the claim that he was successful, and choice $C$ actually belies the claim. The list of names mentioned in choice D does not exist in the passage. The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"In sharp contrast to the modern, confessional poetry of the 20th century, the oeuvre of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow seems quaint and primly Victorian. During his lifetime, however, he was the most celebrated poet in the country. A closer look at the history of American poetry reveals that, despite his eminence, Longfellow wrote in a mold of both form and content that was already being challenged during his lifetime. But why, a century later, do the artistic works of many of his contemporaries continue to be enjoyed and studied while Longfellow languishes in the tomb of cultural artifacts?\nOne answer lies in the radical shift that began to take place in poetry in the mid19th century. Longfellow's themes and steadfast rhymes (and those of John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell) gave way gradually to confessional verse, whose subjects were more personal and rhymes were looser and less conventional. But to understand this shift, one must first understand the nature of Longfellow's work and his standing in the American literary scene of his time.\nLongfellow took as his subject his country's historical imagination, writing on an epic scale about Paul Revere, the Indian Hiawatha, and the pilgrim Miles Standish. He bestowed a mythic dimension on these figures, giving American readers iconic images that helped form a collective consciousness in the new country (indeed, Longfellow was a part of the first generation to be born in the United States). But Longfellow's content went beyond nationalistic pride-it was highly accessible and incredibly popular. Its accessibility is explained by his obvious themes that could be easily understood and embraced by the public. Longfellow did not challenge his readers, but appealed to their desire for stories that expounded an optimistic, sentimental, and moralistic worldview. Those themes were explored in rhyme that allowed readers to commit the poems to memory, much like songs. In 1857, The Song of Hiawatha, arguably his bestknown poem, sold 50,000 copies, an astounding number at the time. The next year, The Courtship of Miles Standish sold 25,000 copies in two months and in London sold 10,000 copies in one day. His success allowed him to give up a professorship at Harvard and focus full time on his writing.\nWalt Whitman, Longfellow's contemporary, wrote poetry similar to that of Longfellow-romantic and sentimental, with conventional rhyme and meter. But in the 1850s, indeed two years before The Song of Hiawatha, he wrote and published Leaves of Grass; a more radical departure from his previous work could not have been imagined. The 12 unnamed poems comprising Leaves of Grass are written in free verse-that is, without conventional rhyme and meter. Yet, like Longfellow, he was determined to explore the subject of America and his love for his country.\nWhitman looked to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson for inspiration. Emerson wrote \"America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.\" Indeed, Whitman paraphrased Emerson in his preface. Whitman's groundbreaking free verse changed the trajectory of American poetry. The next generation of poets, including Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson, and William Carlos Williams, celebrated their debt to Whitman. Decades later, the influence of Whitman's work on Allen Ginsberg and Langston Hughes, among many others, continues his legacy.\nWhat does the author mean by \"tomb of cultural artifacts\"?\n\nOptions:\nA. a resting place for dead poets\nB. a kind of cemetery in which people can pay their respects to writers of the past\nC. a crypt where culturally significant items are stored\nD. a group of ideas and works of art from the past that are considered to be dead",
  "response":"To answer this question, you need to interpret vocabulary. Find the phrase in the passage and examine it in context. The sentence in paragraph 1 in which it is found reads, \"Why do his contemporaries continue to be enjoyed and studied while Longfellow languishes in the tomb of cultural artifacts?\" There is a dichotomy set up between continuing to be enjoyed and studied and languishing in the tomb of cultural artifacts. Being in \"the tomb of cultural artifacts\" is therefore the opposite of being enjoyed and studied. Only one answer choice relates to the idea of this dichotomy; if Longfellow's work is \"considered to be dead,\" it is surely not being enjoyed and studied. Choice D is the best answer. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\"I acknowledge Shakespeare to be the world's greatest dramatic poet, but regret that no parent could place the uncorrected book in the hands of his daughter, and therefore I have prepared the Family Shakespeare.\"\nThus did Thomas Bowdler, a self-appointed editor trained as a physician, explain his creation of a children's edition of Shakespeare that omitted some characters completely, toned down language he considered objectionable, and euphemized such shocking situations as Ophelia's suicide-an accident in Bowdler's version.\nBowdler was hardly the first to tone down the Bard. Poet laureate Nahum Tate rewrote King Lear, banishing the Fool entirely and giving the play a happy ending. His version was staged regularly from the 1680 s through the 18 th century.\nThomas Bowdler was, from all the evidence, a less likely editor. He was born in 1754 near Bath, England, to a wealthy family. He studied medicine but never really practiced, preferring to exercise philanthropy and to play chess, at which he was a master. In his retirement, he decided to try his hand at editorial work. Shakespeare's dramas were his first project. He added nothing to the texts, but by cutting and paraphrasing strove to remove anything that \"could give just offense to the religious and virtuous mind.\"\nThe result was a 10-volume expurgated version that was criticized widely, although hardly universally. The famed British poet Algernon Swinburne remarked that \"no man ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him into the hands of intelligent and imaginative children.\"\nThere is some indication that Bowdler's sister Harriet did the actual editing of Shakespeare's text. She was a poet and editor in her own right, and clearly more qualified than her brother to lay hands on the Bard of Avon. She may have published the expurgated edition anonymously before allowing her brother to take over the rights. If this is so, it is unsurprising that Harriet would not have wanted her name on the book. If the original Shakespeare were truly objectionable, then it would have been doubly so for a well-bred, unmarried Englishwoman of the day.\nBowdler went on to create children's versions of the Old Testament and of Edward Gibbons's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, although neither achieved either the success or ridicule of his Shakespeare. Today, of course, we know Bowdler not for his good works, but instead for the eponym derived from his good name. To bowdlerize is to censor or amend a written work, often with a connotation of prudishness. The process for which Bowdler is known is one that continues to the present day, as texts deemed too difficult for today's high schoolers are \"dumbed-down,\" library editions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have the \"n-word\" blacked out, and middle-school productions of popular Broadway plays have all expletives deleted. We would be hard-pressed to say that we live in a prudish era, but some of the same impulses that drove Thomas and Harriet Bowdler still exist today.\nGiven the information in the passage, if a bowdlerized version of Shakespeare were available to parents today, which of the following outcomes would MOST likely occur?\n\nOptions:\nA. Some would ridicule it, and others would buy it.\nB. No one would take it or its author seriously.\nC. Most students would find it too difficult to read.\nD. It would be a dismal failure and be taken off the market.",
  "response":"Because the author makes the point that bowdlerization still occurs today, it is not likely that everyone would revile such a text (choice B) or see that it failed (choice D). More likely would be that it would receive some condemnation but also make some sales (choice A). Although a point is made about \"dumbing down\" texts for high school students (choice C), the author does not appear to support this, nor is it proof that students would not understand the bowdlerized Shakespeare. The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nEngineers and computer scientists are intrigued by the potential power of nanocomputing. Nanocomputers will use atoms and molecules to perform their functions instead of the standard integrated circuits now employed. Theorists believe that the amount of information a nanocomputer could handle is staggering.\nA professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has attempted to calculate the computational limits of a computer with a weight of 1 kilogram and a volume of 1 liter. According to the laws of physics, the potential amount of computational power is a function of the available energy. Basically, each atom and subatomic particle in the computer has an amount of energy attached to it. Furthermore, the energy of each particle or atom is increased by the frequency of its movement. Thus the power of a computer that uses nanotechnology is bounded by the energy available from its atoms.\nSpecifically, the relationship between the energy of an object and its computation potential is a proportionate one. As Einstein has famously calculated, the energy of an object is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared. Thus, a theoretical computer weighing a mere kilogram has a huge amount of potential energy. To find the total computational power, the minimum amount of energy required to perform an operation is divided by the total amount of energy. \nof energy possessed by a 1-kilogram computer by Planck's constant yields a tremendously large number, roughly $5 \\times 10^{50}$ operations per second. Using even the most conservative estimates of the computing power of the human brain, such a computer would have the computational power of five trillion trillion human civilizations. The computer would also have a memory capacity, calculated by determining the degrees of freedom allowed by the state of all the particles comprising it, of $10^{31} \\mathrm{bits}$.\nThese numbers are purely theoretical, however. Were the computer to convert all of its mass to energy, it would be the equivalent of a thermonuclear explosion. And it is unreasonable to expect human technology to ever achieve abilities even close to these limits. However, a project at the University of Oklahoma has succeeded in storing 50 bits of data per atom, albeit on only a limited number of atoms. Given that there are $10^{25}$ atoms in 1 kilogram of material, it may be possible to fit up to $10^{27}$ bits of information in the computer. And if scientists are able to exploit the many properties of atoms to store information, including the position, spin, and quantum state of all its particles, it may be possible to exceed even that number.\nOne interesting consequence of such staggering increases in computing power is that each advance could provide the basis for further evolution. Once technology can achieve, for instance, a level of computation equal to $10^{40}$ operations per second, it can use that massive power to help bring the theoretical limit ever closer.\nThe author mentions \"thermonuclear explosions\" in order to:\n\nOptions:\nA. indicate that some of the previous discussion is not practical\nB. warn of a potential consequence predicted by Einstein's equation\nC. show a design flaw in the proposed computer\nD. point out an absurd result of the previous discussion",
  "response":"This question asks you to analyze an argument. The author mentions thermonuclear explosions in the same sentence in which it is Answers and Explanations MCAT The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"In sharp contrast to the modern, confessional poetry of the 20th century, the oeuvre of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow seems quaint and primly Victorian. During his lifetime, however, he was the most celebrated poet in the country. A closer look at the history of American poetry reveals that, despite his eminence, Longfellow wrote in a mold of both form and content that was already being challenged during his lifetime. But why, a century later, do the artistic works of many of his contemporaries continue to be enjoyed and studied while Longfellow languishes in the tomb of cultural artifacts?\nOne answer lies in the radical shift that began to take place in poetry in the mid19th century. Longfellow's themes and steadfast rhymes (and those of John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell) gave way gradually to confessional verse, whose subjects were more personal and rhymes were looser and less conventional. But to understand this shift, one must first understand the nature of Longfellow's work and his standing in the American literary scene of his time.\nLongfellow took as his subject his country's historical imagination, writing on an epic scale about Paul Revere, the Indian Hiawatha, and the pilgrim Miles Standish. He bestowed a mythic dimension on these figures, giving American readers iconic images that helped form a collective consciousness in the new country (indeed, Longfellow was a part of the first generation to be born in the United States). But Longfellow's content went beyond nationalistic pride-it was highly accessible and incredibly popular. Its accessibility is explained by his obvious themes that could be easily understood and embraced by the public. Longfellow did not challenge his readers, but appealed to their desire for stories that expounded an optimistic, sentimental, and moralistic worldview. Those themes were explored in rhyme that allowed readers to commit the poems to memory, much like songs. In 1857, The Song of Hiawatha, arguably his bestknown poem, sold 50,000 copies, an astounding number at the time. The next year, The Courtship of Miles Standish sold 25,000 copies in two months and in London sold 10,000 copies in one day. His success allowed him to give up a professorship at Harvard and focus full time on his writing.\nWalt Whitman, Longfellow's contemporary, wrote poetry similar to that of Longfellow-romantic and sentimental, with conventional rhyme and meter. But in the 1850s, indeed two years before The Song of Hiawatha, he wrote and published Leaves of Grass; a more radical departure from his previous work could not have been imagined. The 12 unnamed poems comprising Leaves of Grass are written in free verse-that is, without conventional rhyme and meter. Yet, like Longfellow, he was determined to explore the subject of America and his love for his country.\nWhitman looked to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson for inspiration. Emerson wrote \"America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.\" Indeed, Whitman paraphrased Emerson in his preface. Whitman's groundbreaking free verse changed the trajectory of American poetry. The next generation of poets, including Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson, and William Carlos Williams, celebrated their debt to Whitman. Decades later, the influence of Whitman's work on Allen Ginsberg and Langston Hughes, among many others, continues his legacy.\nSales figures for two of Longfellow's poems are cited:\n\nOptions:\nA. to reinforce the idea that Longfellow's popularity was declining\nB. to compare his sales to those of his contemporaries\nC. because they mark a milestone in American publishing\nD. as evidence of his popularity at the time",
  "response":"This kind of question asks you to choose an accurate summary. The sales figures are cited to back up the author's assertion that Longfellow's poems were \"incredibly popular\" (choice D). Choice C is a tricky diversion; although the author does note that sales figures for The Song of Hiawatha were \"astounding for the time,\" he does not state or infer that those numbers marked a milestone. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{\nLanguage consists of three main parts. The first is simply vocabulary, the lexicon of words available to the speaker to describe particular concepts, actions, and states. The second part is morphology, the set of rules that dictates how words and parts of words may be combined to form other words. The final part of language is syntax, the rules that combine words into phrases and sentences. It is morphology that we shall turn our attention to first.\nMorphology has two major subdivisions. They are derivation and inflection. Derivation refers to those rules by which new words may be formed out of preexisting words. Inflection, sometimes referred to as conjugation and declension, states how words are changed to indicate their function within a sentence.\nAlthough common mythology holds that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn, many linguists would beg to differ. In fact, when it comes to inflection, \nthe conditional, the subjunctive, the imperative, and others. Languages from outside the Indo-European family tree may be even more complex. The Bantu language of Kivunjo has roughly half a million combinations of prefixes and suffixes for a verb. English, however, has a mere four combinations. A verb such as to walk is limited to the following forms: walk, walks, walked, and walking.\nAlthough there are only four basic verb forms, the English language does have more than 13 possible inflections. It just makes do with these four forms for the various functions. English also differs significantly from many other Indo-European languages in that in English, the stem of the word can be pronounced and is in fact part of the language. In Spanish, the stem of the verb to walk is camin-, but this is not a word in the language. In order to pronounce this word, it must be conjugated and combined with a suffix. English uses the stem form of the verb for four inflections: the present tense (except for the third-person singular), the infinitive, the imperative, and the subjunctive. The verb form ending in $-s$ is used in only one case, the third-person singular.\nThe two possible verb suffixes, -ing and $-e d$, are put to use in a variety of ways as well. The -ing ending appears in the progressive participle, the present participle, the gerund form, and the verbal adjective form. That leaves the $-e d$ form to handle the remaining inflections, including the past tense, the perfect participle, the passive participle, and some verbal adjectives.\nWhy are there so many different inflections for verb forms that basically sound the same? Simply put, the meanings implied by the various moods are different, even if the words used are fairly similar. Compare the meaning conveyed by the simple past tense (he walked) to the meaning inherent in the perfect participle (he has walked).\nThe Russian language is similar to the Spanish language in that the verbs have stem forms that are not words unto themselves. From this fact, a linguist might infer that:\n\nOptions:\nA. Russian verbs have roughly 50 forms.\nB. The Russian language may be of the Indo-European family.\nC. Russian is harder to learn than Spanish.\nD. The Russian language has more inflections than the English language.",
  "response":"This question requires you to draw conclusions. From the information in the passage, what can be concluded about the Russian language? Its lack of pronounceable stems for its verbs makes it similar to Spanish and different Answers and Explanations MCAT The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"It is perhaps too easy to think of mathematical truths as objective entities existing in the universe, simply waiting to be \"discovered\" by brilliant minds such as Pythagoras, Newton, and Descartes. Indeed, such a mentality may be cemented in Western minds raised in the Platonic tradition of a world of ideals that exists outside of the material world we reside in.\nBut new research in the fields of cognitive science and developmental psychology may be challenging this long-held belief in mathematics as a truth outside of human experience, and recasting mathematics as a product of the brain, an entity that is not discovered by man but rather created by him.\nSuch a radical paradigm shift has predictably met with stiff resistance, but the evidence in favor of a created mathematics rather than a discovered mathematics is compelling. Study after study has shown that all people possess an innate arithmetic. Babies as young as three or four days old can differentiate between groups of two and three items. And by the age of four months or so, an infant can see that one plus one is two and two minus one is one. Researchers discovered this startling fact by means of a simple experiment, following what is known as the violation of expectation model in developmental psychology. An infant was presented with a scenario in which a researcher held a puppet before the baby's eyes. Then a screen was moved in front of the puppet and another researcher placed a second puppet behind it. The screen was removed and if there were two puppets now visible, the infant registered no surprise (as measured by both the direction of the child's gaze and the duration of her stare). But if the screen was removed and only one puppet appeared, the infant registered perplexity at the situation. This experiment and others like it strongly suggest that all individuals are born with certain mathematical concepts hardwired into their brains. The ability to quickly and accurately count a small number of items, called subitizing by psychologists, is also found in animals. Researchers using experiments similar to the violation of expectation setup described previously have found an innate mathematical ability not just in primates, our closest evolutionary cousins, but in raccoons, rats, parrots, and pigeons. These findings are consistent with the belief that mathematical thinking is a function of the structures in the brain and not a product of the outside world.\nAnomalous cases involving brain injuries and disorders also support the idea that mathematical thinking arises from the organization of the brain. There is a documented case of a subject with a $\\mathrm{PhD}$ in chemistry who suffers from acalculia, the inability to perform basic arithmetic functions. Strangely, this patient is unable to perform simple calculations such as five plus three or eight minus two, but has no problem manipulating abstract algebraic operations. This curious fact has led psychologists to conclude that the part of the brain that handles abstract algebraic operations must be different from the part of the brain that works with more concrete arithmetic functions.\nIn the context of the passage, the word curious means:\n\nOptions:\nA. marvelous\nB. exotic\nC. odd\nD. novel\n",
  "response":"This question involves interpreting vocabulary. The word curious appears in the final passage. In that paragraph, the author discusses \"anomalous\" cases and describes the situation as \"strange.\" This makes choice C, \"odd,\" the best choice. There is no indication that the author thinks the fact is superb or excellent (\"marvelous,\" choice A), of foreign origin (\"exotic,\" choice B), or new (\"novel,\" choice D). The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"Biologists use the term \"living fossil\" to designate a species that maintains many of the features of its ancient ancestors. These species have evidenced very little evolutionary change, indicating not that they are primitive creatures as might be popularly believed, but instead that they are exquisitely suited for their biological and ecological niches and thus have not had any selection pressures to respond to.\nThe four most celebrated living fossils are the lungfish, the horseshoe crab, the lampshell, and the coelacanth. The horseshoe crab is the relative youngster of the group, belonging to the Jurassic period and having shown little structural changes in its 200-million-year lifespan. The lampshell, a member of the phylum Brachiopoda, is part of an even older lineage, resembling ancestors that lived nearly 400 million years ago.\nThe oldest members of the living fossil family are the lungfish and the coelacanth, both species that are remarkably similar to their forebears that roamed the Earth almost 425 million years ago. The lungfish, of which there are six surviving species, has the same basic structure and fleshy lobe fins of its progenitor, the sarcopterygian. Of course, the lungfish has long interested biologists not just because of its connections to the distant past but because of the bridge it represents between aquatic species and land dwellers. In fact, the African and South American species of lungfish live part of their lives entirely on land, burrowing into mud and respiring through a tiny breathing hole in their earthy homes. Although the lungfish has remained evolutionarily stable for close to 250 million years, prior to that the species did experience rapid and dynamic evolutionary change. However, by the end of the Permian period, the changes ground to a halt, and the lungfish has persevered happily ever since.\nThe singular story of the coelacanth stretches all the way from the Silurian period, some 425 million years ago, to the modern day. The coelacanths were well-known from the fossil record and dating technologies placed them in a time when plants were just beginning to encroach on the land. However, biologists thought the species went extinct long before the dinosaurs did. Imagine the surprise when in 1938 a South American trawler captured a strange-looking fish, some five feet in length and a pale blue and silver in color. By an astounding coincidence, the captain of the boat had a relationship with the curator of the East London Museum and had made a habit of sending any interesting finds along to her. Upon seeing this strange specimen, the curator contacted a leading ichthyologist, who, after examining the creature, said he \"would not have been more surprised if I had seen a dinosaur walking down the street.\" But despite all protestations of common sense and amid allegations of forgery and fakery, upon further study, the creature was indubitably a coelacanth. Since that day, explorers have found many more members of the species and have even turned up a second species in the Indian Ocean.\nThe author probably mentions the lungfish's early evolutionary changes in order to:\n\nOptions:\nA. clarify the term living fossil\nB. show that biologists are divided as to what constitutes a living fossil\nC. indicate that the lungfish might again experience evolutionary change\nD. compare the lungfish to the coelacanth\n",
  "response":"You need to analyze an argument in order to answer this question. In the context of the passage, in which the majority of the information explains that living fossils have changed very little, why would the author include a part about rapid evolutionary change? The answer is to show that a living fossil does change and evolve; however, the changes are minor or cease at some point. Choice A is the best answer. The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"In sharp contrast to the modern, confessional poetry of the 20th century, the oeuvre of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow seems quaint and primly Victorian. During his lifetime, however, he was the most celebrated poet in the country. A closer look at the history of American poetry reveals that, despite his eminence, Longfellow wrote in a mold of both form and content that was already being challenged during his lifetime. But why, a century later, do the artistic works of many of his contemporaries continue to be enjoyed and studied while Longfellow languishes in the tomb of cultural artifacts?\nOne answer lies in the radical shift that began to take place in poetry in the mid19th century. Longfellow's themes and steadfast rhymes (and those of John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell) gave way gradually to confessional verse, whose subjects were more personal and rhymes were looser and less conventional. But to understand this shift, one must first understand the nature of Longfellow's work and his standing in the American literary scene of his time.\nLongfellow took as his subject his country's historical imagination, writing on an epic scale about Paul Revere, the Indian Hiawatha, and the pilgrim Miles Standish. He bestowed a mythic dimension on these figures, giving American readers iconic images that helped form a collective consciousness in the new country (indeed, Longfellow was a part of the first generation to be born in the United States). But Longfellow's content went beyond nationalistic pride-it was highly accessible and incredibly popular. Its accessibility is explained by his obvious themes that could be easily understood and embraced by the public. Longfellow did not challenge his readers, but appealed to their desire for stories that expounded an optimistic, sentimental, and moralistic worldview. Those themes were explored in rhyme that allowed readers to commit the poems to memory, much like songs. In 1857, The Song of Hiawatha, arguably his bestknown poem, sold 50,000 copies, an astounding number at the time. The next year, The Courtship of Miles Standish sold 25,000 copies in two months and in London sold 10,000 copies in one day. His success allowed him to give up a professorship at Harvard and focus full time on his writing.\nWalt Whitman, Longfellow's contemporary, wrote poetry similar to that of Longfellow-romantic and sentimental, with conventional rhyme and meter. But in the 1850s, indeed two years before The Song of Hiawatha, he wrote and published Leaves of Grass; a more radical departure from his previous work could not have been imagined. The 12 unnamed poems comprising Leaves of Grass are written in free verse-that is, without conventional rhyme and meter. Yet, like Longfellow, he was determined to explore the subject of America and his love for his country.\nWhitman looked to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson for inspiration. Emerson wrote \"America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.\" Indeed, Whitman paraphrased Emerson in his preface. Whitman's groundbreaking free verse changed the trajectory of American poetry. The next generation of poets, including Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson, and William Carlos Williams, celebrated their debt to Whitman. Decades later, the influence of Whitman's work on Allen Ginsberg and Langston Hughes, among many others, continues his legacy.\nThe main argument of the passage is that:\n\nOptions:\nA. Whitman's free verse is superior to Longfellow's rhymes.\nB. Longfellow's standing as an American poet was diminished by a rejection of quaint subjects and conventional rhyme and meter that came in the wake of poets such as Whitman.\nC. Longfellow would be read and studied more today if he had retained his nationalistic subject matter but eschewed the sentimental tone and standard forms of his poems.\nD. Ralph Waldo Emerson aided in the transformation of American poetry from Victorian Romanticism to Modernism.",
  "response":"You are asked to find the main idea in this question. This type of question is passage based, meaning you should focus on what is actually said as opposed to what may be implied or suggested. To answer it, ask \"What is the author trying to say?\" Typically, at least one answer choice is not found within the passage. In this case, choices $\\mathrm{C}$ and $\\mathrm{D}$ can be easily eliminated for that reason-neither is stated. Another type of distracter is an answer choice that is too narrow to be the main idea of the passage. Choice A is a good example; the passage encompasses much more than a simple comparison of free verse as opposed to rhymes. You are left with choice B, which is the correct answer. The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"The man whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt christened \u201cThe Happy Warrior\" in a nominating speech would later become a thorn in Roosevelt's side. Some thought the switch in loyalties was sour grapes, but others saw Alfred E. Smith as the epitome of William Wordsworth's \"happy warrior\" and therefore a man who \"makes his moral being his prime care\"-one who never made a move without consulting his conscience.\nAlfred E. Smith was both a successful politician and an unsuccessful one. A fourterm governor of New York State, he seemed a sure candidate for president, and indeed he ran three times for that position, only to lose each time.\nHe had several strikes against him. He was the Catholic son of Irish and ItalianGerman immigrants, making him anathema to nativists, the xenophobes who underwent a resurgence in the 1920s. He was from New York City, viewed even in the early twentieth century as disconnected from the national character. He was a progressive, which made conservatives of all stripes nervous. And he favored the repeal of Prohibition, a position that lost him the backing of many party leaders.\nWho was this unlikely candidate? Born Alfred Emanuel Smith in 1873, Smith grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His father died when Smith was young, and the boy dropped out of school to take care of the family. At age 21, Smith supported a losing candidate in a local race and came to the attention of New York politicos, who took him under their wing. Nine years later, he ran successfully for the New York State Assembly, where he rapidly rose in the ranks to become Majority Leader and finally Speaker. He played a pivotal role in the revamping of New York's constitution, was elected sheriff of New York County, and then ran for governor in 1918, winning handily. Although he lost a re-election bid two years later, he surged back in 1922 and would remain in the governor's seat for six more years. His terms were marked by unparalleled improvements in labor laws and laws protecting civil liberties, for Smith's goal was to support those he saw as most in need of government's assistance.\nIn this goal, he was allied with Franklin Roosevelt, and the two were close enough that Roosevelt nominated Smith for president in 1924. The Drys, or Prohibitionists, backed William McAdoo, a son-in-law of former President Woodrow Wilson. Smith's supporters and McAdoo's supporters were so far apart that finally a compromise candidate, John Davis, was nominated and promptly lost the general election to Calvin Coolidge.\nIn 1928, Smith received his party's nomination on the second ballot, but along with his anti-Prohibition leanings, his religion became a major issue during the campaign, paving the way for Herbert Hoover to win the general election. Meanwhile, Smith had arranged for the nomination of his New York colleague, Franklin Roosevelt, to be governor of New York. Although Smith lost his bid, Roosevelt did not. Then came the Depression and the election of 1932. Backroom dealings ensured that Franklin Roosevelt won the nominating process, with another would-be presidential candidate in the vice-presidential spot on the ticket. Smith was left out in the cold on his third try for the presidency. Despite his former regard for Roosevelt, he began to work hard, if unsuccessfully, to defeat the New Deal. He supported two Republicans rather than Roosevelt in the 1936 and 1940 elections, and he died in 1944, a man who had never reached his desired goal, yet had inspired many of the changes for which his rival is now known.\nOne important argument of the final paragraph is that:\n\nOptions:\nA. Roosevelt would have done better with Smith at his side.\nB. The New Deal was anathema to someone with Smith's ideals.\nC. Smith's background made him an improbable candidate.\nD. Smith deserves credit for many of Roosevelt's successes.",
  "response":"You are asked to find the main idea of the last paragraph. In the last paragraph, the author states that Smith \"had inspired many of the changes for which his rival is now known.\" His rival was Roosevelt, and the implication is that Roosevelt took credit for many ideas that began with Smith. There is no indication that Roosevelt would have done better on a ticket with Smith (choice A), and Smith's background is not a topic of this paragraph (choice C). Contrary to choice B, many of Smith's ideals were those that formed the foundation of the New Deal. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"Biologists use the term \"living fossil\" to designate a species that maintains many of the features of its ancient ancestors. These species have evidenced very little evolutionary change, indicating not that they are primitive creatures as might be popularly believed, but instead that they are exquisitely suited for their biological and ecological niches and thus have not had any selection pressures to respond to.\nThe four most celebrated living fossils are the lungfish, the horseshoe crab, the lampshell, and the coelacanth. The horseshoe crab is the relative youngster of the group, belonging to the Jurassic period and having shown little structural changes in its 200-million-year lifespan. The lampshell, a member of the phylum Brachiopoda, is part of an even older lineage, resembling ancestors that lived nearly 400 million years ago.\nThe oldest members of the living fossil family are the lungfish and the coelacanth, both species that are remarkably similar to their forebears that roamed the Earth almost 425 million years ago. The lungfish, of which there are six surviving species, has the same basic structure and fleshy lobe fins of its progenitor, the sarcopterygian. Of course, the lungfish has long interested biologists not just because of its connections to the distant past but because of the bridge it represents between aquatic species and land dwellers. In fact, the African and South American species of lungfish live part of their lives entirely on land, burrowing into mud and respiring through a tiny breathing hole in their earthy homes. Although the lungfish has remained evolutionarily stable for close to 250 million years, prior to that the species did experience rapid and dynamic evolutionary change. However, by the end of the Permian period, the changes ground to a halt, and the lungfish has persevered happily ever since.\nThe singular story of the coelacanth stretches all the way from the Silurian period, some 425 million years ago, to the modern day. The coelacanths were well-known from the fossil record and dating technologies placed them in a time when plants were just beginning to encroach on the land. However, biologists thought the species went extinct long before the dinosaurs did. Imagine the surprise when in 1938 a South American trawler captured a strange-looking fish, some five feet in length and a pale blue and silver in color. By an astounding coincidence, the captain of the boat had a relationship with the curator of the East London Museum and had made a habit of sending any interesting finds along to her. Upon seeing this strange specimen, the curator contacted a leading ichthyologist, who, after examining the creature, said he \"would not have been more surprised if I had seen a dinosaur walking down the street.\" But despite all protestations of common sense and amid allegations of forgery and fakery, upon further study, the creature was indubitably a coelacanth. Since that day, explorers have found many more members of the species and have even turned up a second species in the Indian Ocean.\nBased on the information in the passage, which of the following orderings, from earliest to most recent, is correct?\n\nOptions:\nA. Jurassic, Permian, Silurian\nB. Permian, Silurian, Jurassic\nC. Silurian, Permian, Jurassic\nD. Silurian, Jurassic, Permian",
  "response":"This question asks you to solve a problem. Here, you need to use information from the passage to put the time periods in the correct order. The discussion of the horseshoe crab indicates that the Jurassic period is the most recent, some 200 million years ago. The Permian period, at which time the lungfish ceased experiencing major evolutionary changes, was about 250 million years ago. And the Silurian period, from which the coelacanth emerged, was more than 400 million years ago. That makes choice $\\mathrm{C}$ the correct answer. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"Biologists use the term \"living fossil\" to designate a species that maintains many of the features of its ancient ancestors. These species have evidenced very little evolutionary change, indicating not that they are primitive creatures as might be popularly believed, but instead that they are exquisitely suited for their biological and ecological niches and thus have not had any selection pressures to respond to.\nThe four most celebrated living fossils are the lungfish, the horseshoe crab, the lampshell, and the coelacanth. The horseshoe crab is the relative youngster of the group, belonging to the Jurassic period and having shown little structural changes in its 200-million-year lifespan. The lampshell, a member of the phylum Brachiopoda, is part of an even older lineage, resembling ancestors that lived nearly 400 million years ago.\nThe oldest members of the living fossil family are the lungfish and the coelacanth, both species that are remarkably similar to their forebears that roamed the Earth almost 425 million years ago. The lungfish, of which there are six surviving species, has the same basic structure and fleshy lobe fins of its progenitor, the sarcopterygian. Of course, the lungfish has long interested biologists not just because of its connections to the distant past but because of the bridge it represents between aquatic species and land dwellers. In fact, the African and South American species of lungfish live part of their lives entirely on land, burrowing into mud and respiring through a tiny breathing hole in their earthy homes. Although the lungfish has remained evolutionarily stable for close to 250 million years, prior to that the species did experience rapid and dynamic evolutionary change. However, by the end of the Permian period, the changes ground to a halt, and the lungfish has persevered happily ever since.\nThe singular story of the coelacanth stretches all the way from the Silurian period, some 425 million years ago, to the modern day. The coelacanths were well-known from the fossil record and dating technologies placed them in a time when plants were just beginning to encroach on the land. However, biologists thought the species went extinct long before the dinosaurs did. Imagine the surprise when in 1938 a South American trawler captured a strange-looking fish, some five feet in length and a pale blue and silver in color. By an astounding coincidence, the captain of the boat had a relationship with the curator of the East London Museum and had made a habit of sending any interesting finds along to her. Upon seeing this strange specimen, the curator contacted a leading ichthyologist, who, after examining the creature, said he \"would not have been more surprised if I had seen a dinosaur walking down the street.\" But despite all protestations of common sense and amid allegations of forgery and fakery, upon further study, the creature was indubitably a coelacanth. Since that day, explorers have found many more members of the species and have even turned up a second species in the Indian Ocean.\nThe author MOST likely mentions allegations of forgery and fakery in order to:\n\nOptions:\nA. underscore how unprecedented the discovery was\nB. indicate that some thought to profit from the discovery\nC. describe the public's reaction to the find\nD. dismiss the concerns of leading biologists of the time",
  "response":"This question tests your ability to analyze an argument. The last paragraph continually emphasizes how the discovery of the coelacanth was an amazing event. The author uses words like singular, astounding, and surprising. This corresponds to choice $\\mathrm{A}$. There is no evidence for choice $\\mathrm{B}$ or $\\mathrm{D}$, and the paragraph does not make it clear that it was the public who reacted with the allegations as choice $\\mathrm{C}$ indicates. The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{\nLanguage consists of three main parts. The first is simply vocabulary, the lexicon of words available to the speaker to describe particular concepts, actions, and states. The second part is morphology, the set of rules that dictates how words and parts of words may be combined to form other words. The final part of language is syntax, the rules that combine words into phrases and sentences. It is morphology that we shall turn our attention to first.\nMorphology has two major subdivisions. They are derivation and inflection. Derivation refers to those rules by which new words may be formed out of preexisting words. Inflection, sometimes referred to as conjugation and declension, states how words are changed to indicate their function within a sentence.\nAlthough common mythology holds that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn, many linguists would beg to differ. In fact, when it comes to inflection, \nthe conditional, the subjunctive, the imperative, and others. Languages from outside the Indo-European family tree may be even more complex. The Bantu language of Kivunjo has roughly half a million combinations of prefixes and suffixes for a verb. English, however, has a mere four combinations. A verb such as to walk is limited to the following forms: walk, walks, walked, and walking.\nAlthough there are only four basic verb forms, the English language does have more than 13 possible inflections. It just makes do with these four forms for the various functions. English also differs significantly from many other Indo-European languages in that in English, the stem of the word can be pronounced and is in fact part of the language. In Spanish, the stem of the verb to walk is camin-, but this is not a word in the language. In order to pronounce this word, it must be conjugated and combined with a suffix. English uses the stem form of the verb for four inflections: the present tense (except for the third-person singular), the infinitive, the imperative, and the subjunctive. The verb form ending in $-s$ is used in only one case, the third-person singular.\nThe two possible verb suffixes, -ing and $-e d$, are put to use in a variety of ways as well. The -ing ending appears in the progressive participle, the present participle, the gerund form, and the verbal adjective form. That leaves the $-e d$ form to handle the remaining inflections, including the past tense, the perfect participle, the passive participle, and some verbal adjectives.\nWhy are there so many different inflections for verb forms that basically sound the same? Simply put, the meanings implied by the various moods are different, even if the words used are fairly similar. Compare the meaning conveyed by the simple past tense (he walked) to the meaning inherent in the perfect participle (he has walked).\nThe ideas presented in this passage would probably be MOST interesting to:\n\nOptions:\nA. linguists\nB. language teachers\nC. psychologists\nD. translators",
  "response":"In order to answer this question, you'll need to combine information. The passage provides interesting information on language and specifically on the English language. However, it is not directed at linguists (choice A), who presumably would already know much of the information. A language teacher (choice B) would most likely find the information interesting background to a language lesson. It is not clear what psychologists would find interesting in the passage. Translators may find the information interesting, but nothing in the passage pertains specifically to translation, so choice B is a better answer. The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"Biologists use the term \"living fossil\" to designate a species that maintains many of the features of its ancient ancestors. These species have evidenced very little evolutionary change, indicating not that they are primitive creatures as might be popularly believed, but instead that they are exquisitely suited for their biological and ecological niches and thus have not had any selection pressures to respond to.\nThe four most celebrated living fossils are the lungfish, the horseshoe crab, the lampshell, and the coelacanth. The horseshoe crab is the relative youngster of the group, belonging to the Jurassic period and having shown little structural changes in its 200-million-year lifespan. The lampshell, a member of the phylum Brachiopoda, is part of an even older lineage, resembling ancestors that lived nearly 400 million years ago.\nThe oldest members of the living fossil family are the lungfish and the coelacanth, both species that are remarkably similar to their forebears that roamed the Earth almost 425 million years ago. The lungfish, of which there are six surviving species, has the same basic structure and fleshy lobe fins of its progenitor, the sarcopterygian. Of course, the lungfish has long interested biologists not just because of its connections to the distant past but because of the bridge it represents between aquatic species and land dwellers. In fact, the African and South American species of lungfish live part of their lives entirely on land, burrowing into mud and respiring through a tiny breathing hole in their earthy homes. Although the lungfish has remained evolutionarily stable for close to 250 million years, prior to that the species did experience rapid and dynamic evolutionary change. However, by the end of the Permian period, the changes ground to a halt, and the lungfish has persevered happily ever since.\nThe singular story of the coelacanth stretches all the way from the Silurian period, some 425 million years ago, to the modern day. The coelacanths were well-known from the fossil record and dating technologies placed them in a time when plants were just beginning to encroach on the land. However, biologists thought the species went extinct long before the dinosaurs did. Imagine the surprise when in 1938 a South American trawler captured a strange-looking fish, some five feet in length and a pale blue and silver in color. By an astounding coincidence, the captain of the boat had a relationship with the curator of the East London Museum and had made a habit of sending any interesting finds along to her. Upon seeing this strange specimen, the curator contacted a leading ichthyologist, who, after examining the creature, said he \"would not have been more surprised if I had seen a dinosaur walking down the street.\" But despite all protestations of common sense and amid allegations of forgery and fakery, upon further study, the creature was indubitably a coelacanth. Since that day, explorers have found many more members of the species and have even turned up a second species in the Indian Ocean.\nThe passage suggests that the author MOST likely believes:\n\nOptions:\nA. The modern discovery of the coelacanth was somewhat due to luck.\nB. The lungfish is a more interesting living fossil than the coelacanth.\nC. Biologists were wrong to think the coelacanth extinct.\nD. The coelacanth also experiences a period of rapid evolutionary change.",
  "response":"This question requires you to draw conclusions. The author does not state choice A explicitly, but does say that the discovery was aided by an \"astounding coincidence.\" The passage indicates that biologists find the lungfish interesting, but that does not necessarily imply the author believes the same as choice B says. Choice $\\mathrm{C}$ is not a valid conclusion based on the passage. The author indicates that the discovery of the coelacanth was a major surprise, but that doesn't mean that biologists were wrong to believe it was extinct. There is no evidence to support choice D. The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{\nLanguage consists of three main parts. The first is simply vocabulary, the lexicon of words available to the speaker to describe particular concepts, actions, and states. The second part is morphology, the set of rules that dictates how words and parts of words may be combined to form other words. The final part of language is syntax, the rules that combine words into phrases and sentences. It is morphology that we shall turn our attention to first.\nMorphology has two major subdivisions. They are derivation and inflection. Derivation refers to those rules by which new words may be formed out of preexisting words. Inflection, sometimes referred to as conjugation and declension, states how words are changed to indicate their function within a sentence.\nAlthough common mythology holds that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn, many linguists would beg to differ. In fact, when it comes to inflection, \nthe conditional, the subjunctive, the imperative, and others. Languages from outside the Indo-European family tree may be even more complex. The Bantu language of Kivunjo has roughly half a million combinations of prefixes and suffixes for a verb. English, however, has a mere four combinations. A verb such as to walk is limited to the following forms: walk, walks, walked, and walking.\nAlthough there are only four basic verb forms, the English language does have more than 13 possible inflections. It just makes do with these four forms for the various functions. English also differs significantly from many other Indo-European languages in that in English, the stem of the word can be pronounced and is in fact part of the language. In Spanish, the stem of the verb to walk is camin-, but this is not a word in the language. In order to pronounce this word, it must be conjugated and combined with a suffix. English uses the stem form of the verb for four inflections: the present tense (except for the third-person singular), the infinitive, the imperative, and the subjunctive. The verb form ending in $-s$ is used in only one case, the third-person singular.\nThe two possible verb suffixes, -ing and $-e d$, are put to use in a variety of ways as well. The -ing ending appears in the progressive participle, the present participle, the gerund form, and the verbal adjective form. That leaves the $-e d$ form to handle the remaining inflections, including the past tense, the perfect participle, the passive participle, and some verbal adjectives.\nWhy are there so many different inflections for verb forms that basically sound the same? Simply put, the meanings implied by the various moods are different, even if the words used are fairly similar. Compare the meaning conveyed by the simple past tense (he walked) to the meaning inherent in the perfect participle (he has walked).\nThe passage indicates that a native Spanish speaker may be puzzled by the verb to see in which of the following sentences?\n\nOptions:\nA. I saw the car.\nB. They want to see the car.\nC. She sees the car.\nD. Seeing is believing.",
  "response":"This question tests your ability to make predictions. Based on the information in the passage, you need to predict which sentence may strike a Spanish speaker as odd. The passage states that in Spanish, the stem of the verb is not a word. In English, one use of the stem of the verb is in the infinitive form, as used in choice B, \"to see.\" The past tense (choice A), the third-person singular (choice C), and the gerund form (choice D) all involve changing the stem, which is similar to the Spanish language. The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"The man whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt christened \u201cThe Happy Warrior\" in a nominating speech would later become a thorn in Roosevelt's side. Some thought the switch in loyalties was sour grapes, but others saw Alfred E. Smith as the epitome of William Wordsworth's \"happy warrior\" and therefore a man who \"makes his moral being his prime care\"-one who never made a move without consulting his conscience.\nAlfred E. Smith was both a successful politician and an unsuccessful one. A fourterm governor of New York State, he seemed a sure candidate for president, and indeed he ran three times for that position, only to lose each time.\nHe had several strikes against him. He was the Catholic son of Irish and ItalianGerman immigrants, making him anathema to nativists, the xenophobes who underwent a resurgence in the 1920s. He was from New York City, viewed even in the early twentieth century as disconnected from the national character. He was a progressive, which made conservatives of all stripes nervous. And he favored the repeal of Prohibition, a position that lost him the backing of many party leaders.\nWho was this unlikely candidate? Born Alfred Emanuel Smith in 1873, Smith grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His father died when Smith was young, and the boy dropped out of school to take care of the family. At age 21, Smith supported a losing candidate in a local race and came to the attention of New York politicos, who took him under their wing. Nine years later, he ran successfully for the New York State Assembly, where he rapidly rose in the ranks to become Majority Leader and finally Speaker. He played a pivotal role in the revamping of New York's constitution, was elected sheriff of New York County, and then ran for governor in 1918, winning handily. Although he lost a re-election bid two years later, he surged back in 1922 and would remain in the governor's seat for six more years. His terms were marked by unparalleled improvements in labor laws and laws protecting civil liberties, for Smith's goal was to support those he saw as most in need of government's assistance.\nIn this goal, he was allied with Franklin Roosevelt, and the two were close enough that Roosevelt nominated Smith for president in 1924. The Drys, or Prohibitionists, backed William McAdoo, a son-in-law of former President Woodrow Wilson. Smith's supporters and McAdoo's supporters were so far apart that finally a compromise candidate, John Davis, was nominated and promptly lost the general election to Calvin Coolidge.\nIn 1928, Smith received his party's nomination on the second ballot, but along with his anti-Prohibition leanings, his religion became a major issue during the campaign, paving the way for Herbert Hoover to win the general election. Meanwhile, Smith had arranged for the nomination of his New York colleague, Franklin Roosevelt, to be governor of New York. Although Smith lost his bid, Roosevelt did not. Then came the Depression and the election of 1932. Backroom dealings ensured that Franklin Roosevelt won the nominating process, with another would-be presidential candidate in the vice-presidential spot on the ticket. Smith was left out in the cold on his third try for the presidency. Despite his former regard for Roosevelt, he began to work hard, if unsuccessfully, to defeat the New Deal. He supported two Republicans rather than Roosevelt in the 1936 and 1940 elections, and he died in 1944, a man who had never reached his desired goal, yet had inspired many of the changes for which his rival is now known.\nThe mention of nativists shows primarily that:\n\nOptions:\nA. Only those born in the United States are eligible for the presidency.\nB. Bigotry figured into politics in the early twentieth century.\nC. Prohibition was a critical issue for many urban voters.\nD. A candidate for national office must embrace religion.",
  "response":"The discussion of nativism shows that Smith was not a credible candidate to many because of his Catholic immigrant background. It has nothing to do with his eligibility (choice A); it has to do with the bigotry of the electorate. This is an example of interpreting vocabulary. The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"The man whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt christened \u201cThe Happy Warrior\" in a nominating speech would later become a thorn in Roosevelt's side. Some thought the switch in loyalties was sour grapes, but others saw Alfred E. Smith as the epitome of William Wordsworth's \"happy warrior\" and therefore a man who \"makes his moral being his prime care\"-one who never made a move without consulting his conscience.\nAlfred E. Smith was both a successful politician and an unsuccessful one. A fourterm governor of New York State, he seemed a sure candidate for president, and indeed he ran three times for that position, only to lose each time.\nHe had several strikes against him. He was the Catholic son of Irish and ItalianGerman immigrants, making him anathema to nativists, the xenophobes who underwent a resurgence in the 1920s. He was from New York City, viewed even in the early twentieth century as disconnected from the national character. He was a progressive, which made conservatives of all stripes nervous. And he favored the repeal of Prohibition, a position that lost him the backing of many party leaders.\nWho was this unlikely candidate? Born Alfred Emanuel Smith in 1873, Smith grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His father died when Smith was young, and the boy dropped out of school to take care of the family. At age 21, Smith supported a losing candidate in a local race and came to the attention of New York politicos, who took him under their wing. Nine years later, he ran successfully for the New York State Assembly, where he rapidly rose in the ranks to become Majority Leader and finally Speaker. He played a pivotal role in the revamping of New York's constitution, was elected sheriff of New York County, and then ran for governor in 1918, winning handily. Although he lost a re-election bid two years later, he surged back in 1922 and would remain in the governor's seat for six more years. His terms were marked by unparalleled improvements in labor laws and laws protecting civil liberties, for Smith's goal was to support those he saw as most in need of government's assistance.\nIn this goal, he was allied with Franklin Roosevelt, and the two were close enough that Roosevelt nominated Smith for president in 1924. The Drys, or Prohibitionists, backed William McAdoo, a son-in-law of former President Woodrow Wilson. Smith's supporters and McAdoo's supporters were so far apart that finally a compromise candidate, John Davis, was nominated and promptly lost the general election to Calvin Coolidge.\nIn 1928, Smith received his party's nomination on the second ballot, but along with his anti-Prohibition leanings, his religion became a major issue during the campaign, paving the way for Herbert Hoover to win the general election. Meanwhile, Smith had arranged for the nomination of his New York colleague, Franklin Roosevelt, to be governor of New York. Although Smith lost his bid, Roosevelt did not. Then came the Depression and the election of 1932. Backroom dealings ensured that Franklin Roosevelt won the nominating process, with another would-be presidential candidate in the vice-presidential spot on the ticket. Smith was left out in the cold on his third try for the presidency. Despite his former regard for Roosevelt, he began to work hard, if unsuccessfully, to defeat the New Deal. He supported two Republicans rather than Roosevelt in the 1936 and 1940 elections, and he died in 1944, a man who had never reached his desired goal, yet had inspired many of the changes for which his rival is now known.\nThe passage suggests that Roosevelt's change of heart toward Smith was influenced by:\n\nOptions:\nA. ethics\nB. spitefulness\nC. miscommunication\nD. ambition",
  "response":"Without knowing more about the two rivals, any one of these answers might be possible, but the only one that is supported by the text is choice D. Roosevelt's ambition led to political maneuvering that shut Smith out of the nomination. This is a cause-and-effect question. The correct answer is D."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\"I acknowledge Shakespeare to be the world's greatest dramatic poet, but regret that no parent could place the uncorrected book in the hands of his daughter, and therefore I have prepared the Family Shakespeare.\"\nThus did Thomas Bowdler, a self-appointed editor trained as a physician, explain his creation of a children's edition of Shakespeare that omitted some characters completely, toned down language he considered objectionable, and euphemized such shocking situations as Ophelia's suicide-an accident in Bowdler's version.\nBowdler was hardly the first to tone down the Bard. Poet laureate Nahum Tate rewrote King Lear, banishing the Fool entirely and giving the play a happy ending. His version was staged regularly from the 1680 s through the 18 th century.\nThomas Bowdler was, from all the evidence, a less likely editor. He was born in 1754 near Bath, England, to a wealthy family. He studied medicine but never really practiced, preferring to exercise philanthropy and to play chess, at which he was a master. In his retirement, he decided to try his hand at editorial work. Shakespeare's dramas were his first project. He added nothing to the texts, but by cutting and paraphrasing strove to remove anything that \"could give just offense to the religious and virtuous mind.\"\nThe result was a 10-volume expurgated version that was criticized widely, although hardly universally. The famed British poet Algernon Swinburne remarked that \"no man ever did better service to Shakespeare than the man who made it possible to put him into the hands of intelligent and imaginative children.\"\nThere is some indication that Bowdler's sister Harriet did the actual editing of Shakespeare's text. She was a poet and editor in her own right, and clearly more qualified than her brother to lay hands on the Bard of Avon. She may have published the expurgated edition anonymously before allowing her brother to take over the rights. If this is so, it is unsurprising that Harriet would not have wanted her name on the book. If the original Shakespeare were truly objectionable, then it would have been doubly so for a well-bred, unmarried Englishwoman of the day.\nBowdler went on to create children's versions of the Old Testament and of Edward Gibbons's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, although neither achieved either the success or ridicule of his Shakespeare. Today, of course, we know Bowdler not for his good works, but instead for the eponym derived from his good name. To bowdlerize is to censor or amend a written work, often with a connotation of prudishness. The process for which Bowdler is known is one that continues to the present day, as texts deemed too difficult for today's high schoolers are \"dumbed-down,\" library editions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have the \"n-word\" blacked out, and middle-school productions of popular Broadway plays have all expletives deleted. We would be hard-pressed to say that we live in a prudish era, but some of the same impulses that drove Thomas and Harriet Bowdler still exist today.\nThe passage suggests that Bowdler was influenced by:\n\nOptions:\nA. prudery\nB. erudition\nC. a poet laureate\nD. a dream",
  "response":"There is no mention of a dream (choice D), the poet laureate is used as an example of prior editing but not as an inspiration for Bowdler himself (choice C), and Bowdler was not a scholar, making choice B an unlikely answer. Instead, his desire was to make Shakespeare accessible to children, and in its unexpurgated state, he felt that was impossible. Choice A is the best answer. The correct answer is A."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nThe Nobel Peace Prize has often engendered controversy. The Red Cross, yes, but Henry Kissinger? Mother Teresa, perhaps, but Yasser Arafat? Surprisingly, a loud and ongoing controversy surrounds a choice that at first look seems most benign-that of the Guatemalan freedom fighter, Rigoberta Mench\u00fa Tum.\nRigoberta Mench\u00fa was born in 1959 to a poor Mayan family in Guatemala. At the time of her birth, General Yd\u00edgoras Fuentes had just seized power, following the assassination of Colonel Castillo Armas. The year she turned one, there was a failed coup by a military group, many of whom fled to the countryside and would return to lead the rebellion that would wax and wane for the next 36 years.\nGuatemala was divided into factions for that entire period, as military governments controlled the nation and guerilla groups controlled the countryside. At the same time, right-wing vigilantes led a campaign of torture and assassination, eliminating students and peasants they deemed to be allied with the guerillas.\nIn the countryside where Rigoberta lived, the battles were largely over control of farmland. Rigoberta's father was taken into custody and tortured when the army believed he had assisted in the assassination of a plantation owner. Following a rout of the guerillas by the army, the guerillas regrouped and began to take their fight to the capital, beginning a long series of assassinations of government figures.\nRigoberta, her father, and some of her siblings joined the Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC). In rapid succession, Rigoberta lost her brother, father, and mother to the army's own assassination squads. Rigoberta, though only in her early 20s, became a key figure in the resistance, traveling from village to village to educate the Mayan peasants in overcoming oppression, and leading demonstrations in Guatemala City.\nSoon Rigoberta was herself a target. She fled to Mexico and continued her life as an organizer, concentrating her focus on peasants' rights. She participated in the founding of the United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG). This period was the most violent of the entire Guatemalan civil war. Under the new president, General Efrain R\u00edos Montt, massacres of civilians became an everyday occurrence.  The controversy is all about the book. It began when anthropologist David Stoll began independent research on the same era about which Rigoberta dictated and discovered discrepancies in her recall of events. Massacres she described were not remembered by the locals; one of her brothers died by shooting rather than by fire, dates were incorrect, and so on. Stoll's discoveries were enough to roil up conservative historians and columnists, who declared Rigoberta's book the grossest propaganda and her career, therefore, unworthy of the Nobel Prize. Not surprisingly, this brought forth charges of racism, sexism, and cultural ignorance from the other side.\nThe Nobel Committee maintained a stiff upper lip throughout the political backand-forth and still insists that Rigoberta's prize had to do with her documented good works and not with her personal recorded history. Rigoberta's book is still widely taught, and her place in the history of Central American peasant revolutions seems assured.\nThe author of the passage would probably support:\n\nOptions:\nA. an inquiry that led to the removal of Rigoberta's Nobel Prize\nB. the removal of Rigoberta's autobiography from college curricula\nC. keeping Rigoberta's name in the history books as a freedom fighter\nD. granting the Nobel Prize exclusively to groups, not individuals\n",
  "response":"To answer this kind of question, you must compare what you know about the author's point of view with the choices given. The author, unlike some of the people in the passage, seems to have a positive view of Rigoberta, as evinced in the line, \"her place in the history of Central American peasant revolutions seems assured.\" That means that choices A and B would be unlikely views of this author, and there is no evidence to support choice D one way or the other. The best answer is choice C. The correct answer is C."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"\\section{Passage $\\mathrm{V}$}\nIn linguistics, metathesis refers to the reversal of phonemes in a word. This can come about by accident, as in the common mispronunciation \"aks\" for ask or the common (and correct) pronunciation of iron as \"i-orn.\" It may come about on purpose, as in various language games.\nAccidental metathesis may be a process that takes place in the evolution of languages. Over time, for example, the Latin words miraculum, periculum, and parabola evolved into the Spanish words milagro, peligro, and palabra. Linguists posit that such changes usually occur when two consonants are of the same type, with similar mouth formations needed to create each one.\nThe Reverend Archibald Spooner, an Oxford dean, was known for his unintentional transpositions and gave his name to the particular metathesis he represented: Spoonerisms. Most famous Spoonerisms once attributed to Spooner are now believed to be apocryphal, but they are nevertheless amusing; for example, his supposed advice to a substandard student: \"You have deliberately tasted two worms and will leave Oxford by the next town drain.\" Spoonerisms are funny when the metathesis involved changes one word into another, and they seem to lend themselves particularly well to off-color jokes.\nEveryone is familiar with Pig Latin, in which initial consonant sounds are moved to the end of a word and followed with the syllable \"ay.\" This is not pure metathesis, but it begins with the kind of metathesis known as backslang, in which syllables or letters in a word are reversed to produce a private code. Pig Latin may have begun as a language spoken in prisoner-of-war camps; it was certainly used in such camps during World War II and in Vietnam.\nIn Pig Latin, the phrase \"Over the river and through the woods\" becomes \"Overay uhthay iverray anday oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" In other variations of Pig Latin, it might instead be \"Overway uhthay iverray andway oughthray uhthay oodsway.\" There are computer programs that translate from English to Pig Latin and back again, and there is even a version of the Bible written entirely in Pig Latin. For the most part, however, outside of prisoner-of-war camps, Pig Latin is a funny code used by children.\nFrench children and teenagers use a similar code. Called verlan (a reversal of l'envers, or \"reversal\"), it is trickier than Pig Latin because it relies much more on phonetics than on spelling. In verlan, the word caf\u00e9 becomes f\u00e9ca, but the word tomber (\"to fall\") becomes b\u00e9ton. Verlan becomes even more complex in words that end in silent $e$ or which have only one syllable. While just a few words from Pig Latin have entered the vernacular (for example, amscray and ixnay), many verlan words are common lingo in France.\nHistorically, for reasons that are not quite clear, butchers have been frequent users of metathesis, creating their own backslang to converse without being understood by patrons. In France, this is called louch\u00e9bem (boucher, or \"butcher,\" with the first consonant moved to the end and the letter $l$ placed in front). In Australia, it is known as rechtub klat. That name, of course, represents the ultimate in metathesis-the reversal of letters instead of merely syllables.\nBased on information in the passage, which of these would be the verlan translation of critique?\n\nOptions:\nA. euqitirc\nB. ticri\nC. tiquay\nD. quecriti",
  "response":"Verlan transposes the phonemes in syllables, often changing the spelling to match the revised word construction. Since critique is pronounced \/krih-teek\/, reversing those phonemes would give you a word pronounced \/teek-krih\/. The most likely spelling for this is shown in choice B. The correct answer is B."
 },
 {
  "instruction":"In sharp contrast to the modern, confessional poetry of the 20th century, the oeuvre of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow seems quaint and primly Victorian. During his lifetime, however, he was the most celebrated poet in the country. A closer look at the history of American poetry reveals that, despite his eminence, Longfellow wrote in a mold of both form and content that was already being challenged during his lifetime. But why, a century later, do the artistic works of many of his contemporaries continue to be enjoyed and studied while Longfellow languishes in the tomb of cultural artifacts?\nOne answer lies in the radical shift that began to take place in poetry in the mid19th century. Longfellow's themes and steadfast rhymes (and those of John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell) gave way gradually to confessional verse, whose subjects were more personal and rhymes were looser and less conventional. But to understand this shift, one must first understand the nature of Longfellow's work and his standing in the American literary scene of his time.\nLongfellow took as his subject his country's historical imagination, writing on an epic scale about Paul Revere, the Indian Hiawatha, and the pilgrim Miles Standish. He bestowed a mythic dimension on these figures, giving American readers iconic images that helped form a collective consciousness in the new country (indeed, Longfellow was a part of the first generation to be born in the United States). But Longfellow's content went beyond nationalistic pride-it was highly accessible and incredibly popular. Its accessibility is explained by his obvious themes that could be easily understood and embraced by the public. Longfellow did not challenge his readers, but appealed to their desire for stories that expounded an optimistic, sentimental, and moralistic worldview. Those themes were explored in rhyme that allowed readers to commit the poems to memory, much like songs. In 1857, The Song of Hiawatha, arguably his bestknown poem, sold 50,000 copies, an astounding number at the time. The next year, The Courtship of Miles Standish sold 25,000 copies in two months and in London sold 10,000 copies in one day. His success allowed him to give up a professorship at Harvard and focus full time on his writing.\nWalt Whitman, Longfellow's contemporary, wrote poetry similar to that of Longfellow-romantic and sentimental, with conventional rhyme and meter. But in the 1850s, indeed two years before The Song of Hiawatha, he wrote and published Leaves of Grass; a more radical departure from his previous work could not have been imagined. The 12 unnamed poems comprising Leaves of Grass are written in free verse-that is, without conventional rhyme and meter. Yet, like Longfellow, he was determined to explore the subject of America and his love for his country.\nWhitman looked to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson for inspiration. Emerson wrote \"America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.\" Indeed, Whitman paraphrased Emerson in his preface. Whitman's groundbreaking free verse changed the trajectory of American poetry. The next generation of poets, including Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson, and William Carlos Williams, celebrated their debt to Whitman. Decades later, the influence of Whitman's work on Allen Ginsberg and Langston Hughes, among many others, continues his legacy.\nThe author apparently believes that:\n\nOptions:\nA. Poems about iconic American figures can become best-sellers.\nB. Whitman's poems are more popular than Longfellow's because people prefer free verse and more personal poetry.\nC. Ralph Waldo Emerson could be considered the father of Modern American poetry.\nD. Contemporary confessional poetry owes much to the work of Longfellow.",
  "response":"In this question, you are drawing conclusions about the author's intent, choosing the best or most likely answer. Sales figures for Longfellow's poems about iconic American figures are cited as facts and not implied to be an apparent belief of the author, making choice A incorrect. Although Emerson is revealed to be an influence on Whitman, there is nothing in the passage to suggest that he could be considered by the author to be the Father of American Poetry (in fact, he is not mentioned as being a poet), making choice $\\mathrm{C}$ incorrect. The passage clearly delineates the vast differences between the work of Longfellow and confessional poetry; therefore, choice D must also be wrong. The terms the author uses to describe Whitman and his work in the last paragraph (\"groundbreaking,\" \"legacy\") enforce his view that Whitman's poetry is more popular than Longfellow's (that resides in a \"tomb\"). The correct answer is B."
 }
]