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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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In Death Valley National Park’s Racetrack Playa, a flat, dry lakebed, are 162 rocks—some weighing less than a pound
but others almost 700 pounds—that move periodically from place to place, seemingly of their own volition.
Racetrack-like trails in the ______ mysterious migration.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. playas sediment mark the rock’s
B. playa’s sediment mark the rocks
C. playa’s sediment mark the rocks’
D. playas’ sediment mark the rocks’
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The human brain is primed to recognize faces—so much so that, due to a perceptual tendency called pareidolia,
______ will even find faces in clouds, wooden doors, pieces of fruit, and other faceless inanimate objects.
Researcher Susan Magsamen has focused her work on better understanding this everyday phenomenon.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. she
B. they
C. it
D. those
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Official measurements of the Mississippi River’s length vary: according to the US Geologic Survey, the river is 2,300
miles long, whereas the Environmental Protection Agency records its length as 2,320 miles. This disparity can be
explained in part by the fact that rivers such as the Mississippi expand and contract as ______ sediment.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. they accumulate
B. one accumulates
C. it accumulates
D. we accumulate
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Slam poet Elizabeth Acevedo’s debut novel The Poet X, winner of the 2018 National Book Award for Young People’s
Literature, is composed of ______ protagonist, fifteen-year-old Xiomara Batista.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. poems putatively written by the novel’s
B. poem’s putatively written by the novel’s
C. poem’s putatively written by the novels’
D. poems putatively written by the novels’
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The Progressive Era in the United States witnessed the rise of numerous Black women’s clubs, local organizations
that advocated for racial and gender equality. Among the clubs’ leaders ______ Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, founder
of the Women’s Era Club of Boston.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. was
B. were
C. are
D. have been
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In many of her landscape paintings from the 1970s and 1980s, Lebanese American artist Etel Adnan worked to
capture the essence of California’s fog-shrouded Mount Tamalpais region through abstraction, using splotches of
color to represent the area’s features. Interestingly, the triangle representing the mountain itself ______ among the
few defined figures in her paintings.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. are
B. have been
C. were
D. is
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In 1930, Japanese American artist Chiura Obata depicted the natural beauty of Yosemite National Park in two
memorable woodcuts: Evening at Carl Inn and Lake Basin in the High Sierra. In 2019, ______ exhibited alongside 150
of Obata’s other works in a single-artist show at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. it was
B. they were
C. this was
D. some were
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Inventor John Friedman created a prototype of the first flexible straw by inserting a screw into a paper straw and,
using dental floss, binding the straw tightly around the ______ When the floss and screw were removed, the
resulting corrugations in the paper allowed the straw to bend easily over the edge of a glass.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. screw’s thread’s.
B. screws’ threads.
C. screw’s threads.
D. screws threads’.
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Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier’s star quilt poems offer an unusually open-ended reading experience. With
______ eight panels of text stitched together in the shape of a traditional eight-pointed Lakota star quilt, the poems
present viewers with a seemingly infinite number of ways to read them.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. their
B. it’s
C. they’re
D. its
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“Praise Song for the Day,” Elizabeth Alexander’s 2009 inaugural poem, asserts that “We cross dirt roads and
highways…to see what’s on the other side.” Alexander’s use of “we” ______ Americans’ collective efforts and shared
desire to seek new opportunity.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. evokes
B. are evoking
C. have evoked
D. evoke
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By the time Hawaiian king Kamehameha III ______ the throne, the number of longhorn cattle, first introduced to the
islands in 1793, had drastically increased, and so too had the need for paniolo (Hawaiian cowboys) to manage the
wild herds that then roamed throughout the volcanic terrain.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. ascended
B. will ascend
C. ascends
D. is ascending
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Nuhād al-Ḥaddād, known as Fairuz, was one of the most beloved Lebanese singers of the twentieth century. Her
broad singing repertoire—which included traditional forms, such as the Arabic qasida and maqam, alongside
modern pop and jazz styles—lent Fairuz a timeless, cross-generational appeal, ______ her the moniker “the soul of
Lebanon.”
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. earned
B. had earned
C. earning
D. earn
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The violins handmade in the seventeeth century by Italian craftsman Antonio Stradivari have been celebrated as
some of the finest in the world. In close collaboration with musicians, Stradivari introduced changes to the shape of
a traditional violin, flattening some of the instrument’s curves and making ______ lighter overall.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. those
B. one
C. them
D. it
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Known for her massive photorealistic paintings of African American figures floating or swimming in pools, Calida
Garcia ______ was the logical choice to design the book cover for Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, a novel
about an African American man who can travel great distances through water.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. Rawles—
B. Rawles:
C. Rawles,
D. Rawles
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A pioneer in the field of taphonomy (the study of how organic remains become fossils), ______ may be just as
prevalent in the fossil record as those of thick-shelled organisms.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. fossils of thin-shelled organisms, Anna Behrensmeyer demonstrated in a 2005 analysis,
B. Anna Behrensmeyer demonstrated in a 2005 analysis that fossils of thin-shelled organisms
C. it was demonstrated in a 2005 analysis by Anna Behrensmeyer that fossils of thin-shelled organisms
D. a 2005 analysis—by Anna Behrensmeyer—demonstrated that fossils of thin-shelled organisms
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Because a cycle of lunar phases ______ 29.5 days to complete, it’s possible to observe two full moons in a single
month, one at the beginning and one at the end.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. are taking
B. have taken
C. take
D. takes
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After winning the 1860 presidential election, Abraham Lincoln appointed Edward Bates, Salmon P. Chase, and
William H. Seward to his cabinet. Lincoln’s decision was surprising, since each of these men had run against him,
but historians have praised it, noting that Lincoln ______ his rivals’ diverse talents to strengthen his administration.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
A. has leveraged
B. is leveraging
C. will leverage
D. leveraged