Module I: Reading and Writing

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Prediction Verbal 1_Watermarked
Text 1: Claims that most species will go extinct before they can be discovered have been debunked by- researchers in an article published in Science. The scientists show that the claims are based on two key misconceptions: an over-estimation of how many species may exist on Earth, and the erroneous belief that the number of taxonomists (people who describe and identify species) is declining. The researchers propose that there are 5, plus or minus 3, million species on Earth far fewer than has been widely believed of which 1.5 million species have been named.
Text 2: The main problem of identifying the total number of species, Caley says, is that new estimates usually fail to take previous work into account. But a larger problem is that many are just single- number estimates. This range incorporates the likelihood that the actual number of species is not, say, five million-it could be five million plus or minus three million. The new paper calls for future estimates to include these ranges and to be statistically based, instead of what they call "simple best guesses."
Based on the information in the passages, Caley (text 2) would most likely approve of which of the following aspects of the study described in text 1?
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Mark for Review
The exclusion of data from previous estimates
The use of multiple techniques to arrive at the estimate
The presentation of the figure as a single-number estimate
The inclusion of a range of error for the total number of species
Cognitive psychologist Quentin Atkinson has recently suggested an alternative. According to Atkinson, in seeking the origins o language we are better off looking not at words as a whole, but at the individual sound components the phonemes of which they are comprised. This makes sense, because the phonemes are much more bound by biology than are the ideas that their combinations represent. And when Atkinson looked at the distribution of phonemes in languages around the world, he found a remarkable pattern. The farther away from Africa you go, the fewer phonemes are typically used in producing words.
For example.______

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Which of the following data points from the table supports Atkinson’s claim?
2
Mark for Review
the distance between the geographic center of the Afro-Asiatic language family and the postulated language origin site in southwestern Africa was 10,703 with a mean phoneme of 0.040
the distance between the geographic center of the Yanomam language family and the postulated language origin site in southwestern Africa was 25,619 with a mean phoneme of - 0.623
the distance between the geographic center of the Mayan language family and the postulated language origin site in southwestern Africa was 1,161 with a mean phoneme of -0.198
the distance between the geographic center of the Trans New Guinea language family and the postulated language origin site in southwestern Africa was 18,038 kilometers with a mean phoneme of -.153
Many scientists have accordingly used the differentiation of languages as a guide to the spread of mankind across the globe. And in doing this they have traditionally concentrated on the words that make up those languages. But this has proved a tricky endeavor, for individual words change quite rapidly over time: so rapidly that beyond a time depth of about five
thousand years, or ten at the very most, it turns out to be fairly hopeless to look for substantial traces of relationship. As a result, while language has indeed proven useful in tracing the movement of peoples around the Earth over the last few thousand years, linguists have been somewhat stymied when it comes to its very early evolution. Cognitive psychologist Quentin Atkinson has recently suggested an alternative. According to Atkinson, in seeking the origins of language we are better off looking not at words as a whole, but at the individual sound components-the phonemes of which they are comprised.
Which of the following best describes the overall structure of the paragraph?
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Mark for Review
a discussion of events leading to a definite conclusion
an introduction to a vexing issue plaguing researchers to a proposed solution
a detailed explanation of a flawed process to a controversial application of the process
a criticism of a method to a likely alternative method
This passage is from James Baldwin, Another Country.©1990 by Gloria Baldwin Karefa-Smart. Originally published in 1962. Eric, an actor, and Vivaldo, a writer, are watching Vivaldo's girlfriend, Ida, sing with a band that her brother, the Kid, once played with.
Yet, she had something which made Eric look up and caused the room to fall silent; and Vivaldo stared at Ida as though he had never seen her before. She finished her first number and the applause was stunned and sporadic. She looked over at Vivaldo with a small, childish shrug. The drummer went into a down-on-the- levee-type song, which turned out to be a song Eric had never heard before: Betty told Dupree she wanted a diamond ring. And Dupree said, Betty, so I'll get you most any old thing. "My God," muttered Vivaldo, "she's been working." His tone unconsciously implied that he had not been, and held an unconscious resentment. And this threw Eric in on himself. Neither had he been working for a long time; he had merely been keeping his hand in.
Based on the text, how do Eric and Vivaldo compare to Ida?
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Mark for Review
They are less able to captivate a group of people.
They have significantly less musical knowledge.
They more strongly prefer to comfort the friendships over the difficulty of work.
They have exerted less effort in pursuing their career goals.

When Atkinson looked at the distribution of phonemes in languages around the world, he found a remarkable pattern. The farther away from Africa you go, the fewer phonemes are typically used in producing words. Some of the very ancient “click” languages of Africa, spoken by people with very deep genetic roots, have over a hundred phonemes. English has about 44; and in Hawaii, one of the last places on Earth to be colonized by people, there are only 13. Atkinson attributes this pattern to what is known as "serial founder effect": a phenomenon, well known to population geneticists, that is due to the drop in effective population size each time a descendant group buds off and spreads away from an ancestral one. With each successive budding, genetic and apparently also phonemic-diversity diminishes. Which choice best describes the function of underlined sentence in the overall structure of the text?
 

5
Mark for Review
provide an example in support of a claim made by the author.
note an exception to a pattern described in the passage.
define a term that may be unfamiliar to some readers.
describe an occurrence that raises additional research questions
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