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When learners can act from their most vital selves, their curiosity emerges. They want to make sense of things and seek out challenges that are in their range of capacities and values. This leads to what human beings experience as interest, the emotional nutrient for a continuing positive attitude toward learning. When we feel interested, we have to make choices about what to do to follow that interest. Such choosing or self-determination involves a sense of feeling free in doing what one has chosen to do (Deci and Ryan, 1991). For the process of learning—thinking, practicing, reading, revising, studying, and other similar activities—to be desirable and genuinely enjoyable, adults must see themselves as personally endorsing their own learning.
Q. According to the passage, which of the following is true?
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In embarking on the fight for independence, America faced formidable obstacles. The Continental Congress did not have the authority to pass binding legislation or to impose taxes. The new nation had no army and no navy, and its population numbered only 2.5 million people, 20 percent of whom were slaves. Britain, by contrast, was a mighty power of 11 million people with the world’s best navy and a well-disciplined army. Fifty thousand troops were in North America in 1776, and Britain hired thirty thousand German soldiers to supplement its forces during the war. However, the American Revolutionaries were not deterred.
Q. The main idea of the passage is:
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Since the Hawaiian Islands have never been connected to other land masses, the great variety of plants in Hawaii must be a result of the long-distance dispersal of seeds, a process that requires both a method of transport and an equivalence between the ecology of the source area and that of the recipient area.
There is some dispute about the method of transport involved. Some biologists argue that ocean and air currents are responsible for the transport of plant seeds to Hawaii. Yet the results of flotation experiments and the low temperatures of air currents cast doubt on these hypotheses. More probable is bird transport, either externally, by accidental attachment of the seeds to feathers, or internally, by the swallowing of fruit and subsequent excretion of the seeds. While it is likely that fewer varieties of plant seeds have reached Hawaii externally than internally, more varieties are known to be adapted to external than to internal transport.
Q. The author is primarily concerned with
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Diamonds, an occasional component of rare igneous rocks called lamproites and kimberlites, have never been dated satisfactorily. However, some diamonds contain minute inclusions of silicate minerals, commonly olivine, pyroxene, and garnet. These minerals can be dated by radioactive decay techniques because of the very small quantities of radioactive trace elements they, in turn, contain. Usually, it is possible to conclude that the inclusions are older than their diamond hosts, but with little indication of the time interval involved. Sometimes, however, the crystal form of the silicate inclusions is observed to resemble more closely the internal structure of diamond than that of other silicate minerals. It is not known how rare this resemblance is, or whether it is most often seen in inclusions of silicates such as garnet, whose crystallography is generally somewhat similar to that of diamond; but when present, the resemblance is regarded as compelling evidence that the diamonds and inclusions are truly cogenetic.
Q. The main purpose of the passage is to
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The social sciences are less likely than other intellectual enterprises to get credit for their accomplishments. Arguably, this is so because the theories and conceptual constructs of the social sciences are especially accessible: human intelligence apprehends truths about human affairs with a particular facility. And the discoveries of the social sciences, once isolated and labeled, are quickly absorbed into conventional wisdom, whereupon they lose their distinctiveness as scientific advances.
This under-appreciation of the social sciences contrasts oddly with what many see as their over-utilization. Game theory is pressed into service in studies of shifting international alliances. Evaluation research is called upon to demonstrate successes or failures of social programs. Models from economics and demography become the definitive tools for examining the financial base of social security. Yet this rush into practical applications is itself quite understandable: public policy must continually be made, and policymakers rightly feel that even tentative findings and untested theories are better guides to decision-making than no findings and no theories at all.
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Traditional research has confronted only Mexican and United States interpretations of Mexican-American culture. Now we must also examine the culture as we Mexican Americans have experienced it, passing from a sovereign people to compatriots with newly arriving settlers to, finally, a conquered people—a charter minority on our own land.
When the Spanish first came to Mexico, they intermarried with and absorbed the culture of the indigenous Indians. This policy of colonization through acculturation was continued when Mexico acquired Texas in the early 1800’s and brought the indigenous Indians into Mexican life and government. In the 1820’s, United States citizens migrated to Texas, attracted by land suitable for cotton. As their numbers became more substantial, their policy of acquiring land by subduing native populations began to dominate. The two ideologies clashed repeatedly, culminating in a military conflict that led to victory for the United States. Thus, suddenly deprived of our parent culture, we had to evolve uniquely Mexican-American modes of thought and action in order to survive.
Q. The author’s purpose in writing this passage is primarily to
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By 1784, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was internationally renowned as the composer of The Marriage of Figaro, and consequently received a commission from the Prague Opera House to compose another opera.
The resulting product was Don Giovanni, which tells the tale of a criminal and seducer who nevertheless evokes sympathy from audiences, and whose behavior fluctuates from moral crisis to hilarious escapade.
While Don Giovanni is widely considered to be Mozart’s greatest achievement, eighteenth century audiences in Vienna — Mozart’s own city — were ambivalent at best. The opera mixed traditions of moralism with those of comedy — a practice heretofore unknown among the composer’s works — creating a production that was not well liked by conservative Viennese audiences. Meanwhile, however, Don Giovanni was performed to much acclaim throughout Europe.
Q. The primary purpose of the passage is to
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Stars create energy through the process of fusion. When a star explodes—a phenomenon called a supernova—so much energy is released that heavy metals such as iron and gold are formed, seeding surrounding hydrogen clouds. Newer stars therefore contain more heavy elements in their atmospheres. Heavy elements form the materials that make up our planet (and even human bodies). It is believed that for a system of planets such as our solar system to form around a star during cloud contraction, the presence of these heavy elements in the cloud is a necessity.
A molecular cloud can become unstable and collapse by the force of gravity, overcoming outward thermal pressure of the constituent gases. At a given temperature and density, two critical measures of size, Jeans mass and Jeans length, can be calculated. If the size of the cloud exceeds either of these critical values, gravity will ultimately win, and the probability of eventual cloud contraction is high. However, some outside influence is still evidently required for a theoretically unstable cloud to initiate collapse.
The natural rotation of a galaxy can slowly alter the structure of a cloud, for instance. Surrounding supernovae can generate shock-waves powerful enough to affect the debris in other clouds, forcing the debris inward and possibly causing contraction to begin. One theory states that density waves propagating through spiral structures can also sufficiently stimulate clouds to cause contraction.
Q. Which of the following inferences about our solar system is best supported by the passage?
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For many years, most physicists supported one of two cosmological theories: the steady-state universe, , and the Big Bang. The theory of the steady-state universe states that the universe has always existed exactly as we observe it at present, whereas the Big Bang theory postulates that the universe was conceived from a singularity in space-time that has expanded into current universe. The validity of either theory was not tested until 19 when Edwin Hubble famously discovered what is now known as Hubble’s Law.Hubble’s experiment is now a famous benchmark in modern physics. Hubble, using the Mount Wilson Observatory, observed a class of stars known as Cepheid variables, luminous stars that blink and flicker with a rate that depends on their distance from the observer.
Using this relation and years of observing, Hubble calculated the distance to many of these variable stars. Milton Humason, a fellow astronomer, helped Hubble to calculate the stars’ relative velocities to Earth. When Hubble combined the two data sets he found an interesting relationship: all the stars appeared to be moving away from us! In fact, the speed at which they were moving increased with an increasing distance from Earth.Hubble realized, from this small set of data, that the earth was a part of the expanding universe.
As the universe expands outward in all directions, any observer from a fixed vantage point will look out and see everything running away from them. The further away any two points are, the more the expansion affects them, and the faster they appear to be moving away from each other. Hubble’s result was the first experimental proof that we do not live in a steady-state universe, but rather a dynamic and expanding one.
Q. Which of the following best expresses the main idea of the passage?
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The American people have an incorrect understanding of what it means to be at war. At least so argues T.H. Pickett in his conservative interpretation of American military history.
Pickett does present a wealth of examples along with a refreshing candid argument that America often goes to war for an abstract ideal such as the democratization of societies, would peace, liberty, or freedom. For instance, the Spanish – American War of 1898 was ostensibly a consequence of national enthusiasm for the cause of Cuban liberty. And, more obviously, America’s entry into World War I stemmed from a desire to “make the world safe for democracy.”
Although these observations are supportable, Pickett overstates the cause typically lead to a war hysteria in which American leadership can no longer enforce any measured policies.
Q. Which of the following best states the author’s main point?