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

D) 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.

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

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

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

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 examines her surroundings, then speculates about their influence on her emotional state.

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

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

B) It presents a generalization that is exemplified by the discussion of the 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.

A study by a team including finance professor Madhu Veeraraghavan suggests that exposure to sunshine during the workday can lead to overly optimistic behavior. Using data spanning from 1994 to 2010 for a set of US companies, the team compared over 29,000 annual earnings forecasts to the actual earnings later reported by those companies. The team found that the greater the exposure to sunshine at work in the two weeks before a manager submitted an earnings forecast, the more the manager’s forecast exceeded what the company actually earned that year.

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

A) To summarize the results of the team’s analysis

B) To present a specific example that illustrates the study’s findings

C) To explain part of the methodology used in the team’s study

D) To call out a challenge the team faced in conducting its analysis

Industrial activity is often assumed to be a threat to wildlife, but that isn’t always so. Consider the silver-studded blue butterfly (Plebejus argus): as forest growth has reduced grasslands in northern Germany, many of these butterflies have left meadow habitats and are now thriving in active limestone quarries. In a survey of multiple active quarries and patches of maintained grassland, an ecologist found silver-studded blue butterflies in 100% of the quarries but only 57% of the grassland patches. Moreover, butterfly populations in the quarries were four times larger than those in the meadows.

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

A)It challenges a common assumption about the species under investigation in the research referred to in the text.

B) It suggests that a certain species should be included in additional studies like the one mentioned later in the text.

C) It provides a definition for an unfamiliar term that is central to the main argument in the text.

D) It introduces discussion of a specific example that supports the general claim made in the previous sentence.

Many archaeologists assume that large-scale engineering projects in ancient societies required an elite class to plan and direct the necessary labor. However, recent discoveries, such as the excavation of an ancient canal near the Gulf Coast of Alabama, have complicated this picture. Using radiocarbon dating, a team of researchers concluded that the 1.39-kilometerlong canal was most likely constructed between 576 and 650 CE by an Indigenous society that was relatively free of social classes.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

A) It outlines a method used in some archaeological fieldwork, then explains why an alternative method is superior to it.

B) It describes a common view among archaeologists, then discusses a recent finding that challenges that view.

C) It presents contradictory conclusions drawn by archaeologists, then evaluates a study that has apparently resolved that contradiction.

D) It identifies a gap in scientific research, then presents a strategy used by some archaeologists to remedy that gap.

Using NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Mercedes López-Morales and colleagues measured the wavelengths of light traveling through the atmosphere of WASP-39b, an exoplanet, or planet outside our solar system. Different molecules absorb different wavelengths of light, and the wavelength measurements showed the presence of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in WASP-39b’s atmosphere. This finding not only offers the first decisive evidence of CO₂ in the atmosphere of an exoplanet but also illustrates the potential for future scientific breakthroughs held by the JWST.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

A) It discusses a method used by some researchers, then states why an alternative method is superior to it.

B) It describes how researchers made a scientific discovery, then explains the importance of that discovery.

C) It outlines the steps taken in a scientific study, then presents a hypothesis based on that study.

D) It examines how a group of scientists reached a conclusion, then shows how other scientists have challenged that conclusion.

Archeological excavation of Market Street Chinatown, a nineteenth-century Chinese American community in San Jose, California, provided the first evidence that Asian food products were imported to the United States in the 1800s: bones from a freshwater fish species native to Southeast Asia. Jinshanzhuang—Hong Kong–based import/export firms—likely coordinated the fish’s transport from Chinese-operated fisheries in Vietnam and Malaysia to North American markets. This route reveals the (often overlooked) multinational dimensions of the trade networks linking Chinese diaspora communities.

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

A) It explains why efforts to determine the country of origin of the items mentioned in the previous sentence remain inconclusive.

B) It traces the steps that were taken to locate and recover the objects that are described in the previous sentence.

C) It provides information that helps support a claim about a discovery’s significance that is presented in the following sentence.

D) It outlines a hypothesis that additional evidence discussed in the following sentence casts some doubt on.

The following text is adapted from Charles Dickens’s 1854 novel Hard Times. Coketown is a fictional town in England. [Coketown] contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

A) To emphasize the uniformity of both the town and the people who live there

B) To explain the limited work opportunities available to the town’s residents

C) To reveal how the predictability of the town makes it easy for people lose track of time

D) To argue that the simplicity of life in the town makes it a pleasant place to live