ID: 89fbc3eb

The Mission 66 initiative, which was approved by Congress in 1956, represented a major investment in the infrastructure
of overburdened national ______ it prioritized physical improvements to the parks’ roads, utilities, employee housing, and
visitor facilities while also establishing educational programming for the public.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. parks and

B. parks

C. parks;

D. parks,
 ID: 6f08641e
On April 5, 1977, Kitty Cone and 150 other disability rights activists entered a San Francisco federal building. After
pleading for years—to no effect—for the passage of key antidiscrimination legislation, ______ until their demands were
addressed. Finally, on April 28, the legislation was signed.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. pressure on lawmakers increased when the activists staged a sit-in protest

B. a sit-in protest staged by the activists increased pressure on lawmakers

C. lawmakers came under increased pressure when the activists staged a sit-in protest

D. the activists increased pressure on lawmakers by staging a sit-in protest

 ID: 2c49940e
French philosopher René Descartes doubted whether he could prove his own existence. Eventually, he found proof in his
famous phrase “I think, therefore I am.” The ______ complexity: only those who exist would be able to ponder their
existence.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. phrases’ simplicity masks its

B. phrases simplicity masks their

C. phrase’s simplicity masks their

D. phrase’s simplicity masks its

 ID: 7f226b4b
In a 2023 study, researchers documented a fascinating behavior in the aquatic plant Elodea densa. When exposed to low
levels of light, the plant’s ______ the cellular organs that generate energy from light—reshuffled to form a tightly packed,
glass-like surface ideal for collecting more light.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. chloroplasts

B. chloroplasts;

C. chloroplasts,

D. chloroplasts—
 ID: 74ce2f05
A study led by scientist Rebecca Kirby at the University of Wisconsin–Madison found that black bears that eat human
food before hibernation have increased levels of a rare carbon isotope, ______ due to the higher 13C levels in corn and
cane sugar. Bears with these elevated levels were also found to have much shorter hibernation periods on average.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. carbon-13, (13C)

B. carbon-13 (13C)

C. carbon-13, (13C),

D. carbon-13 (13C),
 ID: 1ee7b429
Bonnie Buratti of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory ______ data about Saturn’s rings collected by the Cassini spacecraft
when she made an interesting discovery: the tiny moons embedded between and within Saturn’s rings are shaped by the
buildup of ring material on the moons’ surfaces.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. studies

B. has been studying

C. will study

D. was studying
 ID: 7f48b098
Photosynthesis, the mechanism by which plants use sunlight to turn carbon dioxide and water into ______ is fueled in part
by an enzyme called Photosystem II that harvests energy-giving electrons from water molecules.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. nutrients

B. nutrients and

C. nutrients,

D. nutrients—
 ID: 0f39b19c
After a spate of illnesses as a child, Wilma Rudolph was told she might never walk again. Defying all odds, Rudolph didn’t
just walk, she ______ the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, she won both the 100- and 200-meter dashes and clinched
first place for her team in the 4x100-meter relay, becoming the first US woman to win three gold medals in a single
Olympics.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. ran—fast—during

B. ran—fast during

C. ran—fast, during

D. ran—fast. During
 ID: 6e193b19
Professional American football player Fred Cox invented one of the world’s most popular toys. In the 1970s, he came up
with the idea for the Nerf football, which ______ of the harder and heavier regulation football.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. were a smaller, foam version

B. are smaller, foam versions

C. were smaller, foam versions

D. is a smaller, foam version

 ID: ac5536c1
Beatrix Potter is perhaps best known for writing and illustrating children’s books such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902),
but she also dedicated herself to mycology, the study of ______ more than 350 paintings of the fungal species she
observed in nature and submitting her research on spore germination to the Linnean Society of London.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. fungi; producing

B. fungi. Producing

C. fungi producing

D. fungi, producing
 ID: a153ad6a
While light is known as one of the fastest-moving substances, it slows down when passing through some types of
matter. One such type of matter is a form of cooled, condensed gas called a Bose-Einstein condensate ______ Dutch
physicist Lene Hau famously used a BEC to slow a beam of light to a complete halt.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. (BEC),

B. (BEC) and

C. (BEC);

D. (BEC)
 ID: 9eb43963
Water in the North Atlantic Ocean is pushed eastward by powerful winds, but the rotation of Earth and interference from
nearby landmasses together cause ______ to swirl into a massive, churning whirlpool—also called the North Atlantic Gyre
—that spins clockwise.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. these

B. those

C. them

D. it
 ID: eeb14722
The soundtrack to Mira Nair’s 1991 film Mississippi Masala expressively captures the clashing of cultures that happens
when ______ (a young Indian woman from Uganda and a young African American man from Mississippi) meet. Featured
throughout the film are songs from Uganda’s Afrigo Band, the Indian composer L. Subramaniam, and the Mississippi
blues musician Sam Chatmon.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. it’s two protagonists

B. its two protagonist’s

C. it’s two protagonist’s

D. its two protagonists

 ID: 20ea68b7
It can take time for proposed amendments to the US Constitution to become law. For example, the Twenty-Second
Amendment, which limits the number of ______ can serve, was first proposed in 1947 but wasn’t approved by the required
three-fourths majority of state legislatures until 1951.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. terms presidents

B. term’s presidents

C. term’s president’s

D. terms president’s
 ID: 77e06a09
Between 322 and 184 BCE, the Maurya Empire established a complex economic system that, through trade and
centralized ______ funded major infrastructure projects throughout the Indian subcontinent. This included the building of
many roads, canals, and hospitals.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. taxation:

B. taxation,

C. taxation—

D. taxation
 ID: cdbbbf94
As British scientist Peter Whibberley has observed, “the Earth is not a very good timekeeper.” Earth’s slightly irregular
rotation rate means that measurements of time must be periodically adjusted. Specifically, an extra “leap second” (the
86,401st second of the day) is ______ time based on the planet’s rotation lags a full nine-tenths of a second behind time
kept by precise atomic clocks.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. added, whenever

B. added; whenever

C. added. Whenever

D. added whenever
 ID: a3e87535
Julia Alvarez’s 1994 novel In the Time of the Butterflies, a fictionalized account of the lives of the Mirabal ______ can
serve as a starting point for those wanting to explore how the rule of dictator Rafael Trujillo has been represented in
Dominican American literature.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. sisters, and

B. sisters and

C. sisters,

D. sisters
 ID: 56315bd0
Solarpunk is an art movement that imagines renewable energy–powered technology infused complementarily into
nature. In Paolo Bacigalupi’s solarpunk short story “Efficiency,” an artificial intelligence that absorbs sustainable energies,
redistributing them through intricate networks of weights and generators, ______ Chicago’s energy grid.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. have been powering

B. power

C. powers

D. are powering
 ID: b74f676f
Classical composer Florence Price’s 1927 move to Chicago marked a turning point in her career. It was there that Price
premiered her First Symphony—a piece that was praised for blending traditional Romantic motifs with aspects of Black
folk music—and ______ supportive relationships with other Black artists.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. developing

B. developed

C. to develop

D. having developed
 ID: 083a35dc
Po’Pay was a Tewa leader from Ohkay Owingeh, a pueblo located about twenty-five miles north of present-day Santa Fe,
New Mexico. He was instrumental in organizing the Pueblo Revolt of ______ as a result of his leadership, the Spanish
colonizers were expelled from the region for a time.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. 1680

B. 1680 and

C. 1680,

D. 1680, and
 ID: 145d5ca7
Gathering accurate data on water flow in the United States is challenging because of the country’s millions of miles of
______ the volume and speed of water at any given location can vary drastically over time.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. waterways and the fact that,

B. waterways, and the fact that,

C. waterways, and, the fact that

D. waterways and the fact that

 ID: be34a3df
In 2008, two years after the death of science fiction writer Octavia Butler, the Huntington Library in ______ received a
collection of more than 8,000 items, including Butler’s private notes, research materials, manuscripts, photos, and
drawings. Today, the Octavia E. Butler Collection is one of the most researched archives at the library.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. California,

B. California:

C. California—

D. California
 ID: 1f8cd95f
In the 1950s, a man named Joseph McVicker was struggling to keep his business afloat when his sister-in-law Kay Zufall
advised him to repurpose the company’s product, a nontoxic, clay-like substance for removing soot from wallpaper, as a
modeling putty for kids. In addition, Zufall ______ selling the product under a child-friendly name: Play-Doh.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. suggested

B. suggests

C. had suggested

D. was suggesting
 ID: 8f6d6ae6
Archaeologists have estimated that the pre-Columbian Native American city of Cahokia, located across the Mississippi
River from modern-day St. Louis, Missouri, had as many as 20,000 inhabitants in the year 1150 ______ it one of the largest
cities in North America at the time.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. CE making

B. CE. Making

C. CE, making

D. CE; making
 ID: 7f1df833
In 1966, Emmett Ashford became the first African American to umpire a Major League Baseball game. His energetic
gestures announcing when a player had struck out and his habit of barreling after a hit ball to see if it would land out of
______ transform the traditionally solemn umpire role into a dynamic one.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. bounds helped

B. bounds, helping

C. bounds that helped

D. bounds to help
 ID: 59209b6d
Based on genetic evidence, archaeologists have generally agreed that reindeer domestication began in the eleventh
century CE. However, since uncovering fragments of a 2,000-year-old reindeer training harness in northern Siberia, ______
may have begun much earlier.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. researcher Robert Losey has argued that domestication

B. researcher Robert Losey’s argument is that domestication

C. domestication, researcher Robert Losey has argued,

D. the argument researcher Robert Losey has made is that domestication

 ID: 2b512e65
Eli Eisenberg, a genetics expert at Tel Aviv University in Israel, recently discovered that ______ have a special genetic
ability called RNA editing that confers evolutionary advantages.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. cephalopods, ocean dwellers that include the squid, the octopus, and the cuttlefish

B. cephalopods—ocean dwellers—that include the squid, the octopus, and the cuttlefish,

C. cephalopods, ocean dwellers that include: the squid, the octopus, and the cuttlefish,

D. cephalopods—ocean dwellers that include the squid, the octopus, and the cuttlefish—
 ID: 870ae7ec
Detroit natives Timothy Paule and Nicole Lindsey have combined their two passions, Detroit and beekeeping, to improve
the health of their city’s flowers and other vegetation. In 2017, the couple converted a vacant lot in the city into an ______
in the years that followed they acquired nine additional lots and established more than 35 hives.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. apiary,

B. apiary, and

C. apiary and

D. apiary
 ID: 4f2ff5f2
Tortoises can be found in many works of literature. For example, in Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play Arcadia, there is a tortoise
that ______ by two names (Plautus and Lightning) and appears in both of the play’s parallel timelines. As a character, the
tortoise symbolizes the connection between the past and present.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. goes

B. will have gone

C. went

D. had gone
 ID: fcaff694
The city of Pompeii, which was buried in ash following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, continues to be studied
by archaeologists. Unfortunately, as ______ attest, archaeological excavations have disrupted ash deposits at the site,
causing valuable information about the eruption to be lost.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. researchers, Roberto Scandone and Christopher Kilburn,

B. researchers, Roberto Scandone and Christopher Kilburn

C. researchers Roberto Scandone and Christopher Kilburn

D. researchers Roberto Scandone, and Christopher Kilburn

 ID: c437dd53
Wanting to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Alaska Purchase, ______ up with a motto that best captured the state’s
unique character. The commission selected “North to the Future,” submitted by Juneau journalist Richard Peter, as its
winning entry.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. a contest sponsored by the Alaska Centennial Commission would award $300 to an individual who came

B. an award of $300 would go to an individual in a contest sponsored by the Alaska Centennial Commission for coming

C. $300 would be awarded to an individual by the Alaska Centennial Commission in a contest for coming

D. the Alaska Centennial Commission sponsored a contest that would award $300 to an individual who came
 ID: b0a525be
Santa Clara Pueblo artist Roxanne Swentzell’s sculpture Mud Woman Rolls On consists of five human figures made of
clay and plant fiber and arranged in descending size; each figure holds the smaller one in front of it. The arrangement of
the figures, according to ______ represents her idea that “we all come from the Earth, generation after generation.”

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. Swentzell

B. Swentzell,

C. Swentzell:

D. Swentzell—
 ID: eef91a50
Nine months before Rosa Parks made history by refusing to comply with the segregated seating policy on a Montgomery,
Alabama, bus, a fifteen-year-old Montgomery girl named Claudette Colvin was arrested for the same ______ to some
historians, Colvin’s arrest led to Parks’s action and eventually to the desegregation of Montgomery’s bus system.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. offense. According

B. offense, according

C. offense according

D. offense and according

 ID: 01a32c84
The first computerized spreadsheet, Dan Bricklin’s VisiCalc, improved financial recordkeeping not only by providing users
with an easy means of adjusting data in spreadsheets but also by automatically updating all calculations that were
dependent on these ______ to VisiCalc’s release, changing a paper spreadsheet often required redoing the entire sheet by
hand, a process that could take days.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. adjustments prior

B. adjustments, prior

C. adjustments. Prior

D. adjustments and prior

 ID: 548f4956
It is generally true that technological change is a linear process, in which once-useful technologies are replaced by new
and better ______ the reawakening of interest in the steam engine (from advocates of carbon-neutral rail travel) reminds
us that ostensibly obsolete technologies may be brought back into service to address society’s changing needs.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. ones, even so;

B. ones even so,

C. ones; even so,

D. ones, even so,

 ID: 2c84f96a
In 2017, artists Isabel and Ruben Toledo redesigned the costumes and sets for The Miami City Ballet’s production of The
______ to reviewers, the Toledos’ designs helped infuse the production with elements of Miami’s Latin American culture.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. Nutcracker according,

B. Nutcracker, according

C. Nutcracker according

D. Nutcracker. According
 ID: dd6a0326
African American Percy Julian was a scientist and entrepreneur whose work helped people around the world to see.
Named in 1999 as one of the greatest achievements by a US chemist in the past hundred years, ______ led to the first
mass-produced treatment for glaucoma.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. Julian synthesized the alkaloid physostigmine in 1935; it

B. in 1935 Julian synthesized the alkaloid physostigmine, which

C. Julian’s 1935 synthesis of the alkaloid physostigmine

D. the alkaloid physostigmine was synthesized by Julian in 1935 and

 ID: 4ba99a6f
Seneca sculptor Marie Watt’s blanket art comes in a range of shapes and sizes. In 2004, Watt sewed strips of blankets
together to craft a 10-by-13-inch ______ in 2014, she arranged folded blankets into two large stacks and then cast them in
bronze, creating two curving 18-foot-tall blue-bronze pillars.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. sampler later,

B. sampler;

C. sampler,

D. sampler, later,
 ID: ace95f84
By analyzing the level of radioactive decay within a fossil specimen, scientists can establish the age of that fossil with a
high degree of precision. When radioactive elements aren’t present, scientists turn to ______ analysis of Earth’s sediment
layers (strata)—to estimate how old a fossil is based on the age of the strata in which the fossil is found.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. stratigraphy—the

B. stratigraphy (the

C. stratigraphy: the

D. stratigraphy, the
 ID: 6df020e6
A study showed that a solar park caused nearby land to cool, though the ecological impact of this temperature decrease
isn’t yet known. Before the park’s construction, the surface temperature 30 meters outside of the park boundary was
0.1°C cooler than that of a control ______ construction, the temperature 30 meters outside of the boundary was 1.7°C
cooler than that of the control area.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. area after

B. area after,

C. area. After

D. area, after
 ID: 684b8bd2
Far from being modern inventions, ______ more than 5,000 years ago.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia used drinking straws

B. drinking straws were used by Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia

C. the use of drinking straws by Sumerians in ancient Mesopotamia happened

D. ancient Mesopotamia was home to Sumerians who used drinking straws

 ID: 67667d72
Humans were long thought to have begun occupying the Peruvian settlement of Machu Picchu between 1440 and 1450
CE. However, a team led by anthropologist Dr. Richard Burger used accelerator mass spectrometry to uncover evidence
that it was occupied ______ 1420 CE, according to Burger, humans were likely inhabiting the area.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. earlier. In

B. earlier, in

C. earlier, which in

D. earlier in
 ID: dd428136
Cheng Dang and her colleagues at the University of Washington recently ran simulations to determine the extent to which
individual snow ______ affect the amount of light reflecting off a snowy surface.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. grain’s physical properties’

B. grains’ physical properties

C. grains’ physical property’s

D. grains physical properties

 ID: 36868920
Increasing the heat on an uncovered boiling pot of water does not increase the temperature of the water. What increases
is the rate at which the water turns to ______ a pressure cooker pot, though, an airtight seal traps the vapor in the pot,
creating pressure that allows the temperature of the water to increase past its boiling point.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. vapor. With

B. vapor with

C. vapor, with

D. vapor and with

 ID: b6560e5a
Materials scientist Marie-Agathe Charpagne and her colleagues believed they could improve on the multicomponent alloy
NiCoCr, an equal-proportions mixture of nickel (Ni), cobalt (Co), and chromium (Cr), by replacing chromium with
ruthenium ______ the alloy that resulted, NiCoRu, turned out to be an unsuitable replacement for NiCoCr.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. (Ru)

B. (Ru) but

C. (Ru),

D. (Ru), but
 ID: 432b1ede
The forty-seven geothermal springs of Arkansas’ Hot Springs National Park are sourced via a process known as natural
groundwater recharge, in which rainwater percolates downward through the earth—in this case, the porous rocks of the
hills around Hot ______ collect in a subterranean basin.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. Springs to

B. Springs: to

C. Springs—to

D. Springs, to
 ID: 267a13e2
In 2010, archaeologist Noel Hidalgo Tan was visiting the twelfth-century temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia when he
noticed markings of red paint on the temple ______ the help of digital imaging techniques, he discovered the markings to
be part of an elaborate mural containing over 200 paintings.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. walls, with

B. walls with

C. walls so with

D. walls. With
 ID: 403d7bb5
According to Naomi Nakayama of the University of Edinburgh, the reason seeds from a dying dandelion appear to float in
the air while ______ is that their porous plumes enhance drag, allowing the seeds to stay airborne long enough for the
wind to disperse them throughout the surrounding area.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. falling,

B. falling:

C. falling;

D. falling
 ID: fcab3630
In his Naturalis historia, Pliny the Elder praised Hipparchus’s star catalog, a second-century BCE list of roughly 850
different stars’ celestial positions. For centuries, scholars dreamed about locating a copy of this legendary lost ______
fantasy (partially) became reality in 2022, when researchers uncovered traces of the star catalog on a palimpsest, a
reused parchment.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. work, that

B. work that

C. work. That

D. work and that

 ID: 6b49f5f1
In 1727, dramatist Lewis Theobald presented a new play, Double Falsehood, at a London theater. Theobald claimed that
his drama was based on a little-known play by William Shakespeare, Cardenio. Many, including poet Alexander Pope,
were ______ historians have determined that Shakespeare’s company did perform a play called Cardenio in 1613.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. skeptical but

B. skeptical, but

C. skeptical,

D. skeptical