Writing Section Practice Tests

Practice Test 1

Summarize the main points in the lecture, explaining how they cast doubt on the ideas in the reading passage.

Passage

Historically, schools in the United States have borrowed the European system of school organization, a system that separates students into grades by chronological age. In general, children begin formal schooling at the age of six in what is referred to as the first grade. For the most part, students progress through twelve grades; however, some students who do not meet minimum requirements for a particular grade may be asked to repeat the year. Graded schools are divided into primary grades, intermediate grades, and secondary grades. Primary education includes grades 1 through 5 or 6, and may also provide kindergarten as a preparation for first grade. Referred to as elementary school, these grades are usually taught by one teacher in a self-contained classroom. Intermediate grades begin with grade 6 or 7 and offer three years of instruction. At this level, teams of teachers may collaborate to provide subject-based classes similar to those offered in high school. Viewed as a preparation for high school, intermediate education is known as junior high school. At grade 9 or 10, secondary school begins. Classes taught by subject specialists usually last about fifty minutes to allow a student ten minutes to move to the next class before it begins at the top of the hour. At the end of twelve successful grades of instruction, students are eligible for a secondary school diploma, more commonly called a high school diploma.

Practice Test 2

Summarize the main points in the reading passage, and then explain how the lecture casts doubt on the ideas in the reading.

Passage

Do computers think? It isn’t a new question. In fact, Alan Turing, a British mathematician, proposed an experiment to answer the question in 1950, and the test, known as the Turing Test, is still used today. In the experiment, groups of people are asked to interact with something in another room through a computer terminal. They don’t know whether it is another person or a computer that they are interacting with. They can ask any questions that they want. They can type their questions onto a computer screen, or they can ask their questions by speaking into a microphone. In response, they see the answers on a computer screen or they hear them played back by a voice synthesizer. At the end of the test, the people have to decide whether they have been talking to a person or to a computer. If they judge the computer to be a person, or if they can’t determine the difference, then the machine has passed the Turing Test. Since 1950, a number of contests have been organized in which machines are challenged to the Turing Test. In 1990, Hugh Loebner sponsored a prize to be awarded by the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies-a gold medal and a cash award of $100,000 to the designer of the computer that could pass the Turing Test; however, so far, no computer has passed the test.

Practice Test 3

Referring to the main points in the reading, describe the Sydney Opera House. Then, using information from both the reading and the lecture, explain why the professor classifies the building as unique.

Passage The design for the Sydney Opera House was selected from entries in an international competition held in 1956. From more than 230 designs submitted by major architectural firms worldwide, the committee selected a dramatic concept by Jorn Utzon, a Danish architect who was virtually unknown outside of Denmark. He described his work as more like a sculpture than a building because it appeared to change shape depending on the direction from which it was viewed. He was also very committed to organic principles, which dictated that the structure must fit in with the environment. Situated in Bennelong Point, a promontory that stretches into the harbor, Utzon drafted the curved roofs of the opera house to look like a sailing ship at full sail on the water. Clearly, the roof is the most revolutionary part of the design, which was so far ahead of the capabilities of engineering at the time that Utzon had to spend several years reworking the details for the construction of the roof sails in order to help the engineers solve the problems associated with actually building them. For example, stabilizing the shells that rose almost 200 feet high presented a serious challenge. Prestressed concrete was very new in building construction at the time that it was used to make the ribbed shells for the roof. In addition, computer technology was just catching up with the complex structural calculations and models that the architect needed for his vision to be realized. By 1966, a decade after the design was chosen, the opera house was not even near completion. It was over budget, there were problems with the engineers and the contractors, and the fate of the structure was the object of political debate; Jorn Utzon resigned from the project. Eventually completed by others, by the time that it opened in 1973, it had been under construction for 17 years. The roof alone had required almost 2200 precast concrete sections, some of which weighed 15 tons, held together by 220 miles of tensioned steel cable and covered by more than a million white glazed ceramic tiles.

Practice Test 4

Describe jet streams by using the information in the reading, and provide examples of the way that they affect air travel by drawing on the material that you heard in the lecture.

Passage

The jet stream is an irregular band of wind that occurs in high altitudes at about 20,000 feet, that is, between 6 and 9 miles above the surface of the Earth. Consequently, the jet stream wanders near the top of the Earth’s troposphere, and, coincidentally, that is exactly where most of the Earth’s weather patterns occur. It is helpful to think of the jet stream like a river of air that occurs at several different locations, but in general flows from west to east over the middle latitudes. Technically, to be called a jet stream, the winds should be moving faster than 57 miles an hour, but it can have average core speeds of 190 miles per hour, and in the winter, when the jet stream is strongest, winds have been clocked at 300 miles an hour. For the most part, the winds are stronger in the winter because during the winter months the surface temperature contrasts more with the temperature in the troposphere. To put that another way, the greater the contrast in the temperature of the Earth and the atmosphere, the stronger the jet stream winds will blow. In general, there are two jet streams between the equator and the North Pole. The subtropical jet stream tends to hover around the southern border of the continental United States, whereas the polar jet stream blows over Idaho and Montana. The condition that causes these two streams is the difference in the temperature between the tropic and the arctic regions of the Earth, which tends to concentrate in small zones called fronts. It is along these fronts that storms tend to develop. The jet streams blow the storms along their path. When the jet stream is over an area, strong storms may move into it, but when the jet stream has dipped out of the area, calm, dry weather will probably be forecast.

Practice Test 5

Referring to the main points in the lecture, summarize the professor’s views on effective discipline and contrast them with the options that parents tend to use, as outlined in the reading passage.

Passage

According to the most recent research on parenting, caretakers tend to use three strategies for disciplining children. Power includes the use of physical punishment such as a spanking or the threat of physical punishment, but parents can also demonstrate power by taking away a privilege such as using the car, attending a sporting event, or, in the case of a very young child, playing with a favorite toy. In spite of the fact that power strategies, especially severe physical punishment, can cause children to fear or even hate parents, it’s surprising that power remains the strategy used most often in disciplining children. It’s also worth noting that children who are harshly disciplined in this way tend to be hostile, defiant, and aggressive socially. Second in popularity after power is the withholding of affection. This can take the form of refusal to communicate with a child, threatening to abandon or reject the child, or otherwise treating children as though they were unworthy of love. Interesting enough, children

disciplined in this way appear on the surface to be very self-disciplined, even model children who are seldom in trouble, but underneath, these same children are generally very nervous, insecure, and dependent on others to approve of and guide their evaluation of behavior. Finally, management techniques are employed for discipline. These begin with a set of rules that are clearly expressed at an age-appropriate level. To enforce the rules, parents use a combination of praise and approval with explanation and reasoning, always referring back to the rules. But regardless of the strategy, the behavior that has precipitated punishment should be clearly understood, and the consequences should be consistent. Key to any kind of discipline is a pattern of consistency so that children understand the relationship between the rules, their behavior, and the consequences

Practice Test 6

Summarize the main points in the reading passage, explaining how the lecture casts doubt on the ideas.

Passage

The origin of life was highly speculative until a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Stanley Miller designed and conducted an empirical research project under the guidance of his graduate advisor, Harold Urey. In this classic experiment, the researchers tried to simulate the chemical evolution process that generated life. Miller and Urey took a five-liter flask half filled with water and connected it with glass tubing to another flask into which they inserted tungsten electrodes. They then mixed methane, hydrogen, and ammonia into the water in the lower flask and heated it to induce evaporation, while at the same time subjecting it to continuous electrical charges that jumped across the space between the electrodes in the upper flask. The atmosphere was cooled again so that the water could condense and trickle back into the first flask in a continuous cycle. In this way, they sought to recreate the conditions in the early atmosphere of Earth, which they speculated was probably subjected to powerful electrical storms. In about an hour, the water turned orange. At the end of the first week, they observed that almost 15 percent of the carbon was converted into organic compounds. After several weeks, the liquid in the flask clouded and then gradually turned a dark brown. When they analyzed it, Miller and Urey found that it contained a large number of amino acids, which form one of the basic structures of living organisms. They then hypothesized that the amino acids that they had created in the laboratory might be typical of the chemical mixture of the early oceans on Earth, and further, that additional amino acids could have been added to the mixture in the early oceans by carbon enriched meteorites or comets. When the scientific results were popularized, the mixture became known as “primordial soup.” However, much was still unknown about the process that caused the first cell to develop within the soup. The molecules produced were relatively simple organic molecules, not a complete living biochemical system. Nevertheless, the experiment established that natural processes could produce the building blocks of life without requiring life to synthesize them in the first place. The experiment served as inspiration for a large number of further investigations.

Practice Test 7

Summarize the main points in the lecture, referring to the way that they relate to the reading passage.

Passage

Solving a problem can be broken down into several steps. First, the problem must be identified correctly. Psychologists refer to this step as problem representation. For many problems, figuring out which information is relevant and which is extraneous can be difficult and can interfere with arriving at a good solution. Clearly, before a problem can be solved, it must be obvious what the problem is; however, this is not as easy as it might seem. One obstacle to efficient problem representation is functional fixedness, that is, allowing preconceived notions and even prejudices to color the facts. Most people tend to see objects and events in certain fixed ways, and by being inflexible in viewing the problem, they may be unable to notice the tools for the solution. Once the problem is identified accurately, however, the second step consists of considering the alternatives for a solution. A common way to evaluate alternatives is to write them down and then make a list of advantages and disadvantages for each solution. Here again, people may be limited by prior experiences. Often people adopt mental sets that lead them to the same problem-solving strategies that were successful for problems in the past. Although that can be helpful most of the time, sometimes a new situation requires a different strategy. In that case, the mental set must be abandoned, and new alternatives must be explored. This can be a difficult adjustment for some people. After the alternatives have been compared, a strategy must be selected from among them. One way to avoid becoming mired in the options is to try the best option with a view to abandoning it for another if the results are unfavorable. This attitude allows many people to move on expeditiously to the next step—action. The strategy selected must be implemented and tested. If it solves the problem, no further action is necessary, but if not, then an unsuccessful solution may actually lead to a more successful option. If the solution is still not apparent, then the cycle begins again, starting with problem identification. By continuing to review the problem and repeat the problem-solving steps, the solution can be improved upon and refined.