DIRECTIONS:
In the passage that follows, certain words and phrases are bolded and numbered. And you will find alternatives for the bolded part. In most cases, you are to choose the one that best expresses the idea, makes the statement appropriate for standard written English, or is worded most consistently with the style and tone of the passage as a whole. If you think the original version is best, choose “NO CHANGE.” You will also find questions about a section of the passage, or about the passage as a whole. These questions do not refer to an bolded portion of the passage, but rather are identified by a number or numbers in a box.
PASSAGE Everyday People
Part 1
Rita Dove’s poems are sometimes described as intimate. They are identified as such (1) because they focus on people involved in the pure and simple act of being human. An African American writer, Dove tackles stuff (2) that crosses and undermines racial boundaries. Her vision includes ordinary people from diverse walks of life as she explores the depth of their reactions to the world. An (3) example of this perception is her poetry collection Thomas and Beulah, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987.
Seventy-nine pages long, Thomas and Beulah is loosely based on the lives of Dove’s maternal grandparents.[4] Q Their story is neither tragic nor dramatic, but it does portray people who (5) Dove states have been “ignored and lost.” Although the characters, Thomas and Beulah, live together for decades; the (6) poems reveal lives that rarely link.[7]
1.
F. NO CHANGE
G. identified, as such,
H. identified, as such
J. identified as such:
2.
A. NO CHANGE
B. contemporary substance
C. topics of concern
D. subject matter
3.
F. NO CHANGE
G. world, an
H. world, one
J. world one
4.
If the writer were to delete the phrase “Seventy-nine pages long,” the preceding sentence would primarily lose:
A. a sense of the length and complexity of Dove’s grandparents’ lives.
B. an indication of the literary importance of this book.
C. information about how long it took Dove to write this book.
D. nothing of significance, since this information is irrelevant here.
5.
F. NO CHANGE
G. whose
H. and
J. as
6.
A. NO CHANGE
B. decades. These
C. decades. The
D. decades, the
7.
In order to clarify the preceding sentence’s main point, the writer has decided to add a phrase to the end of that sentence (replacing the period after link with a
comma). Given that all the following are true, which one would best accomplish this purpose?
F. with a chronology of family history providing helpful background information. G. the couple living out their years in Akron, Ohio, as Dove’s grandparents did. H. the husband and wife more often moving along their own separate paths.
J. as personal and social history are gracefully combined.