A number of Indigenous politicians have been elected to the United States Congress since 2000 as members of the country’s two established political parties. In Canada and several Latin American countries, on the other hand, Indigenous people have formed their own political parties to advance candidates who will advocate for the interests of their communities. This movement has been particularly successful in Ecuador, where Guadalupe Llori, a member of the Indigenous party known as Pachakutik, was elected president of the National Assembly in 2021.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

A)To trace the history of an Indigenous political movement and speculate about its future development

B) To argue that Indigenous politicians in the United States should form their own political party.

C) To highlight two approaches to achieving political representation for Indigenous people.

D) To consider how Indigenous politicians in the United States have influenced Indigenous politicians in Canada and Latin America.

The following text is adapted from Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto’s 1925 memoir A Daughter of the Samurai. As a young woman, Sugimoto moved from feudal Japan to the United States. The standards of my own and my adopted country differed so widely in some ways, and my love for both lands was so sincere, that sometimes I had an odd feeling of standing upon a cloud in space, and gazing with measuring eyes upon two separate worlds. At first I was continually trying to explain, by Japanese standards, all the queer things that came every day before my surprised eyes; for no one seemed to know the origin or significance of even the most familiar customs, nor why they existed and were followed.

Which choice best describes the main purpose of the text?

A) To convey the narrator’s experience of observing and making sense of differences between two cultures she embraces.

B) To establish the narrator’s hope of forming connections with new companions by sharing customs she learned as a child.

C) To reveal the narrator’s recognition that she is hesitant to ask questions about certain aspects of a culture she is newly encountering.

D) To emphasize the narrator’s wonder at discovering that the physical distance between two countries is greater than she had expected.

In 1973, poet Miguel Algarín started inviting other writers who, like him, were Nuyorican—a term for New Yorkers of Puerto Rican heritage—to gather in his apartment to present their work. The gatherings were so well attended that Algarín soon had to rent space in a cafe to accommodate them. Thus, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe was born. Moving to a permanent location in 1981, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe expanded its original scope beyond the written word, hosting art exhibitions and musical performances as well. Half a century since its inception, it continues to foster emerging Nuyorican talent.

Which choice best describes the overall purpose of the text?

A)To explain what motivated Algarín to found the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

B) To provide an overview of the founding and mission of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

C) To discuss why the Nuyorican Poets Cafe expanded its scope to include art and music.

D) To situate the Nuyorican Poets Cafe within the cultural life of New York as a whole.

The following text is from Herman Melville’s 1854 novel The Lightning-rod Man. The stranger still stood in the exact middle of the cottage, where he had first planted himself. His singularity impelled a closer scrutiny. A lean, gloomy figure. Hair dark and lank, mattedly streaked over his brow. His sunken pitfalls of eyes were ringed by indigo halos, and played with an innocuous sort of lightning: the gleam without the bolt. The whole man was dripping. He stood in a puddle on the bare oak floor: his strange walking-stick vertically resting at his side.

Which choice best states the function of the underlined sentence in the overall structure of the text?

A) It elaborates on the previous sentence’s description of the character.

B) It sets up the character description presented in the sentences that follow.

C) It introduces the setting that is described in the sentences that follow.

D) It establishes a contrast with the description in the previous sentence.

“How lifelike are they?” Many computer animators prioritize this question as they strive to create ever more realistic environments and lighting. Generally, while characters in computer-animated films appear highly exaggerated, environments and lighting are carefully engineered to mimic reality. But some animators, such as Pixar’s Sanjay Patel, are focused on a different question. Rather than asking first whether the environments and lighting they’re creating are convincingly lifelike, Patel and others are asking whether these elements reflect their films’ unique stories.

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

A) It represents a concern of computer animators who are more interested in creating unique backgrounds and lighting effects than realistic ones.

B) It conveys the uncertainty among many computer animators about how to create realistic animations using current technology.

C) It reflects a primary goal that many computer animators have for certain components of the animations they produce.

D) It illustrates a reaction that audiences typically have to the appearance of characters created by computer animators.

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

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

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 reveal the shop owner’s conflicted feelings about the new picture.

C) To describe the items that the shop owner most highly prizes.

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 presents the central finding reported by Nance and colleagues.

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

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

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

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

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