The following text is adapted from Aphra Behn’s 1689 novel The Lucky Mistake. Atlante and Rinaldo are neighbors who have been secretly exchanging letters through Charlot, Atlante’s sister.

[Atlante] gave this letter to Charlot; who immediately ran into the balcony with it, where she still found Rinaldo in a melancholy posture, leaning his head on his hand: She showed him the letter, but was afraid to toss it to him, for fear it might fall to the ground; so he ran and fetched a long cane, which he cleft at one end, and held it while she put the letter into the cleft, and stayed not to hear what he said to it. But never was man so transported with joy, as he was at the reading of this letter; it gives him new wounds; for to the generous, nothing obliges love so much as love.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

A)It establishes that a character is desperate to receive a letter, and then explains why another character has not yet written that letter.

B) It describes the delivery of a letter, and then portrays a character’s happiness at reading that letter.

C) It presents a character’s concerns about delivering a letter, and then details the contents of that letter.

D) It reveals the inspiration behind a character’s letter, and then emphasizes the excitement that another character feels upon receiving that letter.

The following text is from Sarah Orne Jewett’s 1899 short story “Martha’s Lady.” Martha is employed by Miss Pyne as a maid.

Miss Pyne sat by the window watching, in her best dress, looking stately and calm; she seldom went out now, and it was almost time for the carriage. Martha was just coming in from the garden with the strawberries, and with more flowers in her apron. It was a bright cool evening in June, the golden robins sang in the elms, and the sun was going down behind the apple-trees at the foot of the garden. The beautiful old house stood wide open to the long-expected guest.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

A) To convey the worries brought about by a new guest

B) To describe how the characters have changed over time

C) To contrast the activity indoors with the stillness outside

D) To depict the setting as the characters await a visitor’s arrival

The following text is adapted from Gwendolyn Bennett’s 1926 poem “Street Lamps in Early Spring.”

Night wears a garment
All velvet soft, all violet blue…​
And over her face she draws a veil
As shimmering fine as floating dew…​
And here and there
In the black of her hair
The subtle hands of Night
Move slowly with their gem-starred light.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

A) It makes an extended comparison of night to a human being.

B) It presents alternating descriptions of night in a rural area and in a city.

C) It sketches an image of nightfall, then an image of sunrise.

D) It portrays how night changes from one season of the year to the next.

The following text is adapted from Susan Glaspell’s 1912 short story “‘Out There.’” An elderly shop owner is looking at a picture that he recently acquired and hopes to sell.
It did seem that the picture failed to fit in with the rest of the shop. A persuasive young fellow who claimed he was closing out his stock let the old man have it for what he called a song. It was only a little out-of-the-way store which subsisted chiefly on the framing of pictures. The old man looked around at his views of the city, his pictures of cats and dogs, his flaming bits of landscape. “Don’t belong in here,” he fumed. And yet the old man was secretly proud of his acquisition. There was a hidden dignity in his scowling as he shuffled about pondering the least ridiculous place for the picture.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

A)To convey the shop owner’s resentment of the person he got the new picture from

B) To describe the items that the shop owner most highly prizes

C) To reveal the shop owner’s conflicted feelings about the new picture

D) To explain differences between the new picture and other pictures in the shop

Astronomers are confident that the star Betelgeuse will eventually consume all the helium in its core and explode in a supernova. They are much less confident, however, about when this will happen, since that depends on internal characteristics of Betelgeuse that are largely unknown. Astrophysicist Sarafina El-Badry Nance and colleagues recently investigated whether acoustic waves in the star could be used to determine internal stellar states but concluded that this method could not sufficiently reveal Betelgeuse’s internal characteristics to allow its evolutionary state to be firmly fixed.

Which choice best describes the function of the second sentence in the overall structure of the text?

A)It describes a serious limitation of the method used by Nance and colleagues.

B) It identifies the problem that Nance and colleagues attempted to solve but did not.

C) It presents the central finding reported by Nance and colleagues.

D) dispersed It explains how the work of Nance and colleagues was received by others in the field.

When ancient oak planks were unearthed during subway construction in Rome, Mauro Bernabei and his team examined the growth rings in the wood to determine where these planks came from. By comparing the growth rings on the planks to records of similar rings in oaks from Europe, the team could trace the wood to the Jura region of France, hundreds of kilometers from Rome. Because timber could only have been transported from distant Jura to Rome by boat, the team’s findings suggest the complexity of Roman trade routes.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

A) It explains why the planks were made from oak rather than a different kind of wood.

B) It questions how the team was able to conclude that the planks were used to build a boat.

C) It presents a conclusion about Roman trade routes based on the team’s findings.

D) It describes common methods used in Roman subway construction.

In the Here and Now Storybook (1921), educator Lucy Sprague Mitchell advanced the then controversial idea that books for very young children should imitate how they use language, since toddlers, who cannot yet grasp narrative or abstract ideas, seek reassurance in verbal repetition and naming. The most enduring example of this idea is Margaret Wise Brown’s 1947 picture book Goodnight Moon, in which a young rabbit names the objects in his room as he drifts off to sleep. Scholars note that the book’s emphasis on repetition, rhythm, and nonsense rhyme speaks directly to Mitchell’s influence.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

A)The text outlines a debate between two authors of children’s literature and then traces how that debate shaped theories on early childhood education.

B) The text summarizes an argument about how children’s literature should be evaluated and then discusses a contrasting view on that subject.

C) The text lists the literary characteristics that are common to many classics of children’s literature and then indicates the narrative subjects that are most appropriate for young children.

D) The text presents a philosophy about what material is most suitable for children’s literature and then describes a book influenced by that philosophy.

The field of study called affective neuroscience seeks instinctive, physiological causes for feelings such as pleasure or displeasure. Because these sensations are linked to a chemical component (for example, the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain when one receives or expects a reward), they can be said to have a partly physiological basis. These processes have been described in mammals, but Jingnan Huang and his colleagues have recently observed that some behaviors of honeybees (such as foraging) are also motivated by a dopamine-based signaling process.

What choice best describes the main purpose of the text?

A)It describes an experimental method of measuring the strength of physiological responses in humans.

B) It illustrates processes by which certain insects can express how they are feeling.

C) It summarizes a finding suggesting that some mechanisms in the brains of certain insects resemble mechanisms in mammalian brains.

D) It presents research showing that certain insects and mammals behave similarly when there is a possibility of a reward for their actions.

The following text is from the 1923 poem “Black Finger” by Angelina Weld Grimké, a Black American writer. A cypress is a type of evergreen tree.

I have just seen a most beautiful thing,
Slim and still,
Against a gold, gold sky,
A straight black cypress,
Sensitive,
Exquisite,
A black finger
Pointing upwards.
Why, beautiful still finger, are you black?
And why are you pointing upwards?

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

A)The speaker assesses a natural phenomenon, then questions the accuracy of her assessment.

B) The speaker presents an outdoor scene, then considers a human behavior occurring within that scene.

C) The speaker describes a distinctive sight in nature, then ponders what meaning to attribute to that sight.

D) The speaker examines her surroundings, then speculates about their influence on her emotional state.

The mimosa tree evolved in East Asia, where the beetle Bruchidius terrenus preys on its seeds. In 1785, mimosa trees were introduced to North America, far from any B. terrenus. But evolutionary links between predators and their prey can persist across centuries and continents. Around 2001, B. terrenus was introduced in southeastern North America near where botanist Shu-Mei Chang and colleagues had been monitoring mimosa trees. Within a year, 93 percent of the trees had been attacked by the beetles.

Which choice best describes the function of the third sentence in the overall structure of the text?

A)It presents a generalization that is exemplified by the discussion of the mimosa trees and B. terrenus.

B) It states the hypothesis that Chang and colleagues had set out to investigate using mimosa trees and B. terrenus.

C) It provides context that clarifies why the species mentioned spread to new locations.

D) It offers an alternative explanation for the findings of Chang and colleagues.