ID: e38b3e4f

The radiation that ______ during the decay of radioactive atomic nuclei is known as gamma radiation.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. occurs

B. have occurred

C. occur

D. are occurring
 ID: 37e5c794
Despite being cheap, versatile, and easy to produce, ______ they are made from nonrenewable petroleum, and most do not
biodegrade in landfills.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. there are two problems associated with commercial plastics:

B. two problems are associated with commercial plastics:

C. commercial plastics’ two associated problems are that

D. commercial plastics have two associated problems:

 ID: 6f08641e
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

 ID: 3580533b
In recent years, economists around the world have created new tools that quantify the overall well-being of a country’s
citizens. Economists in India, for example, use an Ease of Living Index. This tool ______ economic potential, sustainability, and
citizens’ quality of life.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. measures

B. had measured

C. would have measured

D. will have been measuring

 ID: b7363ba2
Mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz used the metaphor of the “butterfly effect” to explain how seemingly minor
events can have major impacts on future weather. According to Lorenz’s metaphor, the wind from a butterfly flapping ______
in Brazil might eventually grow into a storm elsewhere across the globe.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. its wings

B. its wings’

C. it’s wing’s

D. it’s wings’
 ID: 1ee7b429
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
 ID: f0864217
Rabinal Achí is a precolonial Maya dance drama performed annually in Rabinal, a town in the Guatemalan highlands. Based
on events that occurred when Rabinal was a city-state ruled by a king, ______ had once been an ally of the king but was later
captured while leading an invading force against him.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. Rabinal Achí tells the story of K’iche’ Achí, a military leader who

B. K’iche’ Achí, the military leader in the story of Rabinal Achí,

C. the military leader whose story is told in Rabinal Achí, K’iche’ Achí,

D. there was a military leader, K’iche’ Achí, who in Rabinal Achí

 ID: c91ef0f0
During the American Civil War, Thomas Morris Chester braved the front lines as a war correspondent for the Philadelphia
Press. Amplifying the voices and experiences of Black soldiers ______ of particular importance to Chester, who later became an
activist and lawyer during the postwar Reconstruction period.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. were

B. have been

C. are

D. was
 ID: 7b419faf
In 1903, environmentalist John Muir guided President Theodore Roosevelt on a scenic, sprawling trip through California’s
Yosemite Valley. Upon returning from the three-day excursion, Roosevelt ______ to conserve the nation’s wilderness areas, a
vow he upheld for his remaining six years in office.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. is vowing

B. vowed

C. will vow

D. vows
 ID: 29c9be28
To survive when water is scarce, embryos inside African turquoise killifish eggs ______ a dormant state known as diapause. In
this state, embryonic development is paused for as long as two years—longer than the life span of an adult killifish.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. enter

B. to enter

C. having entered

D. entering
 ID: 983d33fa
In 1637, the price of tulips skyrocketed in Amsterdam, with single bulbs of rare varieties selling for up to the equivalent of
$200,000 in today’s US dollars. Some historians ______ that this “tulip mania” was the first historical instance of an asset
bubble, which occurs when investors drive prices to highs not supported by actual demand.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. claiming

B. claim

C. having claimed

D. to claim
 ID: 6e193b19
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

 ID: 52b61716
Formed in 1967 to foster political and economic stability within the Asia-Pacific region, the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations was originally made up of five members: Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. By the end of
the 1990s, the organization ______ its initial membership.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. has doubled

B. had doubled

C. doubles

D. will double
 ID: 96c720af
Atoms in a synchrotron, a type of circular particle accelerator, travel faster and faster until they ______ a desired energy level,
at which point they are diverted to collide with a target, smashing the atoms.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. will reach

B. reach

C. had reached

D. are reaching
 ID: dbd78791
Led by Syrian American astronomer Shadia Habbal, the Solar Wind Sherpas are an intrepid team of scientists who travel the
globe to study solar winds, the streams of particles emanating from the Sun that are only visible from certain locations
during a total solar eclipse. When such an eclipse is imminent, the Sherpas pack up their telescopes and ______ ready.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. get

B. had gotten

C. got

D. were getting
 ID: 77bf77cd
Farouk El-Baz, a geologist and space scientist, ______ part of the team that selected the lunar landing sites for the Apollo
program during the 1960s and 1970s.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. are

B. was

C. have been

D. were
 ID: ea0aa676
In the 1970s, Janaki Ammal, a prominent botanist, emerged as a powerful voice in India’s environmental conservation
movement. Her exhaustive chromosomal survey of plants in Silent Valley, a pristine tropical forest in Kerala, India, that is
home to nearly 1,000 species of native flora (many of which are endangered), ______ instrumental in the government’s
decision to preserve the forest.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. are

B. were

C. have been

D. was
 ID: 57998dd3
Obsidian is a kind of volcanic glass formed when lava cools so quickly that the atoms inside it cannot arrange themselves in a
crystalline structure. You ______ more about obsidian’s structure, which is classified as amorphous, in a later chapter.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. had learned

B. had been learning

C. will learn

D. have learned
 ID: dc645172
The artistic talents of Barbara Chase-Riboud, most known for her 1979 historical novel Sally Hemings and the conversation it
inspired, ______ limited to the realm of prose: she first excelled in sculpture, where her affinity for bronze—a material she
described as “timeless” due to its use across eras and cultures—became part of her artistic identity.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. hasn’t been

B. wasn’t

C. isn’t

D. aren’t
 ID: 166efaa2
Public-awareness campaigns about the need to reduce single-use plastics can be successful, says researcher Kim Borg of
Monash University in Australia, when these campaigns give consumers a choice: for example, Japan achieved a 40 percent
reduction in plastic-bag use after cashiers were instructed to ask customers whether ______ wanted a bag.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. they

B. one

C. you

D. it
 ID: db4e3819
Midway through her 1968 jazz album A Monastic Trio, Alice Coltrane switches instruments, swapping the piano for the harp.
With the same fluid style that Coltrane was famous for on piano, she ______ her fingers across the harp strings and creates a
radiant sound.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. sweep

B. are sweeping

C. were sweeping

D. sweeps
 ID: 512f0ac9
Working from an earlier discovery of Charpentier’s, chemists Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna—winners of the
2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry—re-created and then reprogrammed the so-called “genetic scissors” of a species of DNA-
cleaving bacteria ______ a tool that is revolutionizing the field of gene technology.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. to forge

B. forging

C. forged

D. and forging
 ID: d47bb0a4
Objects ranging from the Kikkoman soy sauce bottle to the Yamaha VMAX motorcycle to the Komachi bullet train ______
designed by twentieth-century industrial designer Kenji Ekuan.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. was

B. is

C. has been

D. were
 ID: e3b72630
In the historical novel The Surrender Tree, Cuban American author Margarita Engle uses poetry rather than prose ______ the
true story of Cuban folk hero Rosa La Bayamesa.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. tells

B. told

C. is telling

D. to tell
 ID: d2b81427
In assessing the films of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, ______ have missed his equally deep engagement with Japanese
artistic traditions such as Noh theater.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. many critics have focused on Kurosawa’s use of Western literary sources but

B. Kurosawa’s use of Western literary sources has been the focus of many critics, who

C. there are many critics who have focused on Kurosawa’s use of Western literary sources, but they

D. the focus of many critics has been on Kurosawa’s use of Western literary sources; they
 ID: b74f676f
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
 ID: 3a35ddd1
Like other amphibians, the wood frog (Rana sylvatica) is unable to generate its own heat, so during periods of subfreezing
temperatures, it ______ by producing large amounts of glucose, a sugar that helps prevent damaging ice from forming inside
its cells.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. had survived

B. survived

C. would survive

D. survives
 ID: 69f031ab
While exploring Nevada’s Gypsum Cave in 1930, Seneca and Abenaki archaeologist Bertha Parker made her most famous
discovery: the skull of a now-extinct ground sloth (Nothrotheriops shastensis) alongside human-made tools. Parker’s crucial
finding was the first ______ humans in North America as far back as 10,000 years ago.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. places

B. placed

C. place

D. to place
 ID: 843f92af
The sun never sets during the Arctic summer in the Far North. In response, reindeer in this region must change their sleep
habits. Instead of resting when it gets dark, they rest when they need ______ their food.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. digest

B. will digest

C. to digest

D. digesting
 ID: 430d929a
British scientists James Watson and Francis Crick won the Nobel Prize in part for their 1953 paper announcing the double
helix structure of DNA, but it is misleading to say that Watson and Crick discovered the double helix. ______ findings were
based on a famous X-ray image of DNA fibers, “Photo 51,” developed by X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin and her
graduate student Raymond Gosling.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. They’re

B. It’s

C. Their

D. Its
 ID: 1f8cd95f
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
 ID: 3bceeb93
When they were first discovered in Australia in 1798, duck-billed, beaver-tailed platypuses so defied categorization that one
scientist assigned them the name Ornithorhynchus paradoxus: “paradoxical bird-snout.” The animal, which lays eggs but also
nurses ______ young with milk, has since been classified as belonging to the monotremes group.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. they’re

B. their

C. its

D. it’s
 ID: dab8b8ee
Known as Earth’s “living skin,” biocrusts are thin layers of soil held together by surface-dwelling microorganisms such as
fungi, lichens, and cyanobacteria. Fortifying soil in arid ecosystems against erosion, ______

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. a recent study’s estimate is that these crusts reduce global dust emissions by 60 percent each year.

B. an estimated 60 percent reduction in global dust emissions each year is due to these crusts, according to a recent study.

C. these crusts reduce global dust emissions by an estimated 60 percent each year, according to a recent study.

D. a recent study has estimated that these crusts reduce global dust emissions by 60 percent each year.
 ID: 4bed4658
In order to prevent nonnative fish species from moving freely between the Mediterranean and Red Seas, marine biologist
Bella Galil has proposed that a saline lock system be installed along the Suez Canal in Egypt’s Great Bitter Lakes. The lock
would increase the salinity of the lakes and ______ a natural barrier of water most marine creatures would be unable to cross.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. creates

B. create

C. creating

D. created
 ID: f4fd123c
The African Games Co-production Market, one of over 180 annual international conferences supporting video game
development, ______ the growth of the African gaming industry by helping start-up studios in Africa find partners.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. promote

B. are promoting

C. promotes

D. have promoted
 ID: 7f1df833
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
 ID: 2ee50d41
The classic children’s board game Chutes and Ladders is a version of an ancient Nepalese game, Paramapada Sopanapata. In
both games, players encounter “good” or “bad” spaces while traveling along a path; landing on one of the good spaces
______ a player to skip ahead and arrive closer to the end goal.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. allows

B. are allowing

C. have allowed

D. allow
 ID: 15d6d837
Literary agents estimate that more than half of all nonfiction books credited to a celebrity or other public figure are in fact
written by ghostwriters, professional authors who are paid to write other ______ but whose names never appear on book
covers.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. people’s stories

B. peoples story’s

C. peoples stories

D. people’s story’s
 ID: 59209b6d
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

 ID: 856b495d
In the early twentieth century, Joseph Kekuku and other Hawaiian ______ in the mainland United States to the bright and
lilting sound of the kīkā kila, or Hawaiian steel guitar. The instrument soon became a fixture in American blues and country
music.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. musicians introduced audiences

B. musicians’ introduced audiences’

C. musician’s introduced audience’s

D. musicians’ introduced audiences

 ID: 0fe5ce68
Ten of William Shakespeare’s plays are classified as histories. Although each one of these plays, which include Henry V and
Richard III, ______ on a single historical figure (specifically, an English king), some, such as Henry VI Part One and Henry VI Part
Two, feature different episodes from the same monarch’s life.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. focuses

B. focus

C. are focused

D. were focused
 ID: 97b62fab
Smaller than poppy seeds, tardigrades are tiny, but they are tough. These minuscule animals can survive for thirty years
without food or water, and ______ can withstand extreme temperatures as low as minus 328 degrees and as high as 304
degrees Fahrenheit.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. that

B. it

C. they

D. he
 ID: dd6a0326
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

 ID: 35360da9
The US Geological Survey wants to map every human-made structure in the United States, and it is asking volunteers to help.
Cassie Tammy Wang and Ashish D’Souza are just two of the many volunteer map editors who ______ to the project since it
began in 2012.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. contribute

B. will contribute

C. have contributed

D. will be contributing
 ID: 684b8bd2
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

 ID: dd428136
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

 ID: 775f3eb9
In his groundbreaking book Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America, Vivek Bald uses newspaper articles,
census records, ships’ logs, and memoirs to tell the ______ who made New York City their home in the early twentieth century.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. story’s of the South Asian immigrants

B. story’s of the South Asian immigrants’

C. stories of the South Asian immigrants

D. stories’ of the South Asian immigrant’s

 ID: 5b8f9cf2
In the canon of North African literature, Moroccan author Driss Chraïbi’s 1954 novel The Simple Past (Le Passé simple) looms
large. A coming-of-age story, a social meditation, and a sober gaze into the dark maw of French colonialism, ______
interrogates systemic power with memorable intensity.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. Morocco gained its independence two years before the publication of Chraïbi’s debut novel, which

B. Chraïbi’s debut novel, published two years before Morocco gained its independence,

C. Chraïbi wrote a debut novel that, published two years before Morocco gained its independence,

D. published two years before Morocco gained its independence, Chraïbi wrote a debut novel that
 ID: b5b74c3f
When writing The Other Black Girl (2021), novelist Zakiya Dalila Harris drew on her own experiences working at a publishing
office. The award-winning book is Harris’s first novel, but her writing ______ honored before. At the age of twelve, she entered
a contest to have a story published in American Girl magazine—and won.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. were

B. have been

C. has been

D. are
 ID: 50445680
In winter, the diets of Japanese macaques, also known as snow monkeys, are influenced more by food availability than by
food preference. Although the monkeys prefer to eat vegetation and land-dwelling invertebrates, those food sources may
become unavailable because of extensive snow and ice cover, ______ the monkeys to hunt for marine animals in any streams
that have not frozen over.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. forces

B. to force

C. forcing

D. forced
 ID: de3dd17d
Planetary scientist Briony Horgan and her colleagues have determined that as much as 25 percent of the sand on Mars is
composed of impact spherules. These spherical bits of glass form when asteroids collide with the planet, ejecting bits of
molten rock into the atmosphere that, after cooling and solidifying into glass, ______ back onto Mars’s surface.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. to rain

B. raining

C. having rained

D. rain
 ID: 2dd1b8bf
Compared to that of alumina glass, ______ silica glass atoms are so far apart that they are unable to re-form bonds after being
separated.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. silica glass is at a significant disadvantage due to its more dispersed atomic arrangement:

B. silica glass has a more dispersed atomic arrangement, resulting in a significant disadvantage:

C. a significant disadvantage of silica glass is that its atomic arrangement is more dispersed:

D. silica glass’s atomic arrangement is more dispersed, resulting in a significant disadvantage:

 ID: 0ff8477b
Food and the sensation of taste are central to Monique Truong’s novels. In The Book of Salt, for example, the exiled character
of Bình connects to his native Saigon through the food he prepares, while in Bitter in the Mouth, the character of Linda ______
a form of synesthesia whereby the words she hears evoke tastes.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. experienced

B. had experienced

C. experiences

D. will be experiencing
 ID: b260c65a
Earth is not a perfect sphere. Due to the ______ gravitational pull, Earth bulges out on the sides closest to and farthest from
the Moon. This distorting pull is known as a tidal force, and it is responsible for the changes in water levels that are called
high and low tides.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. Moon’s

B. Moons

C. Moons’

D. Moon
 ID: 9f737b2a
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’

 ID: c52652c9
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
 ID: 188f7e3c
In 2016, engineer Vanessa Galvez oversaw the installation of 164 bioswales, vegetated channels designed to absorb and
divert stormwater, along the streets of Queens, New York. By reducing the runoff flowing into city sewers, ______

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. the mitigation of both street flooding and the resulting pollution of nearby waterways has been achieved by bioswales.

B. the bioswales have mitigated both street flooding and the resulting pollution of nearby waterways.

C. the bioswales’ mitigation of both street flooding and the resulting pollution of nearby waterways has been achieved.

D. both street flooding and the resulting pollution of nearby waterways have been mitigated by bioswales.
 ID: 36944347
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
 ID: 898f182c
Richard Spikes was a prolific African American inventor known for his contributions to automotive engineering. Between
1907 and 1946, he patented many inventions, ______ an automobile turn signal, a safety brake, and—most famously—the first
automatic gearshift.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. included

B. includes

C. including

D. will include
 ID: 6e5bf3a8
Even though bats prefer very sweet nectar, the plants that attract them have evolved to produce nectar that is only
moderately sweet. A recent study ______ why: making sugar is energy-intensive, and it is more advantageous for plants to
make a large amount of low-sugar nectar than a small amount of high-sugar nectar.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. explains

B. explaining

C. having explained

D. to explain
 ID: 7c48a6dd
In the late 1960s, inspired in part by the sight of laundry hanging on a clothesline, African American abstract painter Sam
Gilliam began to create his iconic “Drape” paintings. He applied bold, saturated hues to large canvases and ______ them from
ceilings or walls, causing the drooping fabric to cascade in dramatic loops and curves.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. to have suspended

B. suspending

C. to suspend

D. suspended
 ID: 8d53e7a0
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’

 ID: 61160f0a
Author Madeline L’Engle, ______ to create a suspenseful tone that draws the reader in, begins her novel A Wrinkle in Time
with descriptions of “wraithlike shadows” and “the frenzied lashing of the wind.”

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. looked

B. looks

C. is looking

D. looking
 ID: 75f49353
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
 ID: fff4c7f4
American poet Emily Dickinson wrote many of her poems on scraps of paper, but she also took steps to collect these works.
From 1858 to around 1864, for example, she copied more than 800 of ______ into forty homemade booklets (known as
fascicles).

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. them

B. this

C. that

D. it
 ID: c5d39bc7
Scientists believe that, unlike most other species of barnacle, turtle barnacles (Chelonibia testudinari) can dissolve the
cement-like secretions they use to attach ______ to a sea turtle shell, enabling the barnacles to move short distances across
the shell’s surface.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. it

B. themselves

C. them

D. itself
 ID: e2759b92
Occupying a significant part of modern-day Nigeria, the Kingdom of Benin was one of the major powers in West Africa
between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries. It ______ ruled by Oba Ewuare I from 1440 to 1473.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. is

B. will be

C. has been

D. was
 ID: 175df826
In the 2011 documentary The Barber of Birmingham, civil rights activist James Armstrong recounts how his barbershop in
Birmingham, Alabama, ______ as a political hub for members of the Black community during the 1950s.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. serving

B. having served

C. served

D. to serve
 ID: 988c78eb
Former First Lady of the United States Eleanor Roosevelt and Indian activist and educator Hansa Mehta were instrumental in
drafting the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that ______ the basic freedoms to which all
people are entitled.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. have outlined

B. were outlining

C. outlines

D. outline
 ID: 7a0d9031
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
 ID: d46ac7e7
A second-generation Japanese American, Wataru Misaka ______ in World War II (1941-45) and won two amateur national
basketball championships at the University of Utah when he joined the New York Knicks for the 1947-48 season, becoming
the first non-white basketball player in the US’s top professional league.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. already served

B. was already serving

C. already serves

D. had already served

 ID: 3595a991
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
 ID: 31362d2d
If simple sugars such as ribose and glycolaldehyde ______ Earth from elsewhere and survived impact—a possibility
astrophysicist Nicolle Zellner outlined in a 2020 study—the sugars could have reacted with other molecules that were already
present on the planet to form the nucleotides that are the structural components of RNA and DNA.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. reach

B. had reached

C. will reach

D. are reaching
 ID: d2cf0e11
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’.
 ID: 1d971f75
Photographer Ansel Adams’s landscape portraits are iconic pieces of American art. However, many of the ______ of
landscapes were intended not as art but as marketing; a concessions company at Yosemite National Park had hired Adams to
take pictures of the park for restaurant menus and brochures.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. photographer’s early photo’s

B. photographers early photo’s

C. photographer’s early photos

D. photographers early photos

 ID: f40ca576
Each year in the fall, when the weather starts to cool in the northern hemisphere, millions of North American monarch
butterflies journey south. Searching for food and warmer habitats, they ______ thousands of miles—from as far north as
Canada all the way down to Mexico—on this annual migration.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. flew

B. were flying

C. had flown

D. fly
 ID: 0bcb4417
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
 ID: c8607bdf
“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
 ID: db2e480a
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
 ID: 4c9a2aee
Wanda Diaz-Merced is an astrophysicist who lost her sight when she was young. Diaz-Merced’s condition inspired her to
develop software that can translate scientific data into sound. Sound-based tools ______ scientists to detect subtle patterns in
data. Such patterns may not be evident in traditional graphs.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. has enabled

B. enable

C. is enabling

D. enables
 ID: a30567fd
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
 ID: 329255db
Bengali author Toru Dutt’s A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876), a volume of English translations of French poems, ______
scholars’ understanding of the transnational and multilingual contexts in which Dutt lived and worked.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. has enhanced

B. are enhancing

C. have enhanced

D. enhance
 ID: 42cc9236
If you try on one of artist Nick Cave’s signature Soundsuits, you can expect to swish, rustle, or clang every time you move.
Cave makes his suits out of found objects, everything from ceramic birds to broken record players. He carefully considers the
sound an object makes before using ______ in a suit.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. this

B. that

C. these

D. it
 ID: 81ac953e
In 1899, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius developed an equation to answer a long-standing question: why do chemical
reactions speed up at higher temperatures? The Arrhenius equation, named for its creator, ______ an important concept in
modern chemistry.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. have remained

B. remain

C. remains

D. are remaining
 ID: 50801257
In 1994, almost 200 years after the death of Wang Zhenyi, the International Astronomical ______ the contributions of the
barrier-breaking 18th-century astronomer and author of “Dispute of the Procession of the Equinoxes,” naming a crater on
Venus after her.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. Union would finally acknowledge

B. Union to finally acknowledge

C. Union, having finally acknowledged

D. Union, finally acknowledging

 ID: a14eef71
In 2015, a team led by materials scientists Anirudha Sumant and Diana Berman succeeded in reducing the coefficient of
friction (COF) between two surfaces to the lowest possible level—superlubricity. A nearly frictionless (and, as its name
suggests, extremely slippery) state, ______

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. when their COF drops below 0.01, two surfaces reach superlubricity.

B. two surfaces, when their COF drops below 0.01, reach superlubricity.

C. reaching superlubricity occurs when two surfaces’ COF drops below 0.01.

D. superlubricity is reached when two surfaces’ COF drops below 0.01.

 ID: b85c19ed
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
 ID: 56770dda
In his 1963 exhibition Exposition of Music—Electronic Television, Korean American artist Nam June Paik showed how television
images could be manipulated to express an artist’s perspective. Today, Paik ______ considered the first video artist.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. will be

B. had been

C. was

D. is
 ID: d073983d
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
 ID: 8a9d2f4e
Researchers studying the “terra-cotta army,” the thousands of life-size statues of warriors found interred near the tomb of
Emperor Qin Shi Huang of China, were shocked to realize that the shape of each statue’s ears, like the shape of each person’s
ears, ______ unique.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. are

B. is

C. were

D. have been
 ID: 576b2c70
A member of the Cherokee Nation, Mary Golda Ross is renowned for her contributions to NASA’s Planetary Flight Handbook,
which ______ detailed mathematical guidance for missions to Mars and Venus.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. provided

B. having provided

C. to provide

D. providing
 ID: dfbf5d33
In 1453, English King Henry VI became unfit to rule after falling gravely ill. As a result, Parliament appointed Richard, Third
Duke of York, who had a strong claim to the English throne, to rule as Lord Protector. Upon recovering two years later, ______
forcing an angered Richard from the royal court and precipitating a series of battles later known as the Wars of the Roses.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. Henry resumed his reign,

B. the reign of Henry resumed,

C. Henry’s reign resumed,

D. it was Henry who resumed his reign,

 ID: ec08463d
Botanists recognize over fifty different species of sunflower. One species, the silverleaf sunflower, ______ both an early-
flowering ecotype that tends to grow in coastal areas and a late-flowering ecotype that grows inland.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. having included

B. including

C. to include

D. includes
 ID: 4a90a978
In 1990, California native and researcher Ellen Ochoa left her position as chief of the Intelligent Systems Technology Branch at
a NASA research center ______ the space agency’s astronaut training program.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. to join

B. is joining

C. joined

D. joins
 ID: 59e41600
Why are Rome’s famous concrete structures, such as the Colosseum, still standing after 2,000-plus years, when modern
concrete may not even last for fifty? Scientists ______ that the secret to Roman concrete’s durability was its unique blend of
ingredients, which included volcanic ash and seawater.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. explain

B. having explained

C. explaining

D. to explain
 ID: 3daf126e
A model created by biologist Luis Valente predicts that the rate of speciation—the rate at which new species form—on an
isolated island located approximately 5,000 kilometers from the nearest mainland ______ triple the rate of speciation on an
island only 500 kilometers from the mainland.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. being

B. to be

C. to have been

D. will be
 ID: 975eda7c
For thousands of years, people in the Americas ______ the bottle gourd, a large bitter fruit with a thick rind, to make bottles,
other types of containers, and even musical instruments. Oddly, there is no evidence that any type of bottle gourd is native
to the Western Hemisphere; either the fruit or its seeds must have somehow been carried from Asia or Africa.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. to use

B. have used

C. having used

D. using
 ID: 588887b9
In 1881, French chemist Camille Faure redesigned the rechargeable lead-acid battery. Faure’s design greatly increased the
amount of electricity that the original battery, which the French physicist Gaston Planté ______ fifteen years earlier, could hold.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. is inventing

B. will invent

C. invents

D. had invented
 ID: cd2443c0
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

 ID: e44db0a0
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
 ID: 96e5da01
The alga species Chlorella vulgaris is very efficient at making oxygen. For this reason, scientists are currently exploring ways
to use this species in space. C. vulgaris might be used, for example, to build future biological air exchange systems that ______
oxygen for astronauts.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. are producing

B. produced

C. produce

D. have produced
 ID: 12bd5b75
With its towering, six-spired exterior of granitelike quartz monzonite, the Salt Lake Temple is one of the most instantly
recognizable structures in the state of Utah. However, many people do not know that ______ built over the course of forty
years, with construction beginning in 1853 and ending in 1893.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. it was

B. one was

C. they were

D. both were
 ID: 67614549
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
 ID: bd11fe93
Dr. Rocío Paola Caballero-Gill is a paleoceanographer. This means that Dr. Caballero-Gill doesn’t just study oceans as they are
today. She uses chemistry and fossil evidence ______ oceans as they were in the past.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

A. has studied

B. to study

C. studied

D. studies