(9) Selecting Summary Information

 

Passage One 

 

ISLAND PLANT LIFE

 

 Islands are geographical formations that are completely surrounded by water, yet many islands are covered with a rich assortment of plant life. It may seem surprising that so much plant life exists on many islands, yet there are surprisingly simple explanations as to how the vegetation has been able to establish itself there. Some island were formerly attached to larger bodies of land, while others were created on their own. Islands that were created when flooding or rising water levels cut them off from their neighbors often still have the plant life that they had before they were cut off. In cases where islands formed out of the ocean, they may have plant life from neighboring lands even though they were never actually attached to the neighboring lands. Winds carry many seeds to islands; some plants produce extremely light seeds that can float thousands of feet above the Earth and then drift down to islands where they can sprout and develop. Birds also carry seeds to islands; as birds move over open stretches of water, they can serve as the transportation system to spread seeds from place to place.

 

This passage discusses  the ways that plant life is able to develop on islands.

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Answer Choices (choose 3 to complete the chart):

(1) Some seeds are able to float great distances in the air.

(2) Some plant life existed before islands were cut off from larger bodies of land.

(3) Some islands have many different varieties of plants.

(4) Birds sometimes carry seeds to islands.

(5) Some islands were created when rising water cut them off from larger bodies of land.

(6) Some plant seeds are carried to islands by the wind.

 

Passage Two

 

                                                                                       BEN AND JERRY

 

 All successful businesses are not established and run in the same way, with formal business plans, traditional organizational structures, and a strong focus on profits. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the entrepreneurs responsible for the highly successful ice cream business that bears their names, were businessmen with a rather unconventional approach.

 They were rather unconventional from the start, not choosing to begin their careers by attending one of the elite business schools but instead choosing to take a  five-dollar correspondence course from Pennsylvania State University. They had little financial backing to start their business, so they had to cut corners wherever they could; the only location they could; the only location they could afford for the startup of their business was a gas station that they converted to ice cream production. Though this start-up was rather unconventional, they were strongly committed to creating the best ice cream possible, and this commitment to the quality of their product eventually led to considerable success.

 Even though they became extremely successful, they did not convert to a more conventional style of doing business. In an era whether companies were measured on every penny of profit that they managed to squeeze out, Ben and Jerry had a strong belief that business should give back to the community; thus, they donate 7.5 percent of their pretax profit to social causes that they believed in. They lacked the emphasis on executive salary and benefits packages that so preoccupy other corporations, opting instead for a five-to-one policy in which the salary of the employee receiving the highest pay could never be more than five times the salary of the employee receiving the lowest pay.

 

This passage discusses Ben and Jerry’s unconventional company.

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Answer Choices (choose 3 to complete the chart):

(1) They each had a personal commitment to social causes.

(2) They began their business with little background and investment

(3) They believed strongly in producing a very high-quality product

(4) They had a salary structure that limits the salaries of high-level executives.

(5) They set aside a noteworthy portion of their profits for social causes.

(6) They borrowed several thousand dollars from friends to start their business.

 

 

Passage Three

 

   THE BALD EAGLE

 

 When the bald eagle became the national symbol of the United States in 1782, soon after the country was born, it is estimated that there were as many as 75,000 nesting pairs in North America. By the early 1960s, however, the number of nesting pairs had been reduced to only around 450.

 The demise of the bald eagle is generally attributed to the effects of the pesticide DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane). This pesticide was used to kill insects harmful to agriculture, thereby increasing agricultural production. One unintended negative result of the use of DDT was that, while it did get rid of the undesirable insects, it also made its way along the food chain into fish, a favorite food source of the bald eagle.

 The bald eagle is now protected by federal laws. It was originally protected by the Bald Eagle Act of 1940 and later by the Endangered Species Act of 1973. However, it is not just the laws directly related to endangered species that aided in the resurgence of the bald eagle; its resurgence has also been widely attributed to the banning of DDT in 1972. Today there are more than 5,000 pairs of bald eagles, a tenfold increase over the low point of 450 and the bird was removed from the list of endangered species in July, 1999.

 

This passage discusses radical shifts in population that the bald eagle has undergone.

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Answer Choices (choose 4 to complete the chart):

(1) The number of bald eagles were greatly reduced, at least in part due to the effects of a pesticide.

(2) The legislation has had a positive effect on the number of bald eagles.

(3) The bald eagle was named as the national symbol of the United States in the late eighteenth century.

(4) Early in the history of the United States, there were huge numbers of bald eagles.

(5) Two different pieces of legislation that affected the bald eagle were enacted 33 years apart.

(6) The federal government enacted legislation specifically designed to protect the bald eagle as well as to outlaw the pesticide DDT.

 

  

 

Passage Four

               MODERNISM IN ART

 

 A proliferation of varying styles characterized the world of American art and architecture in the period between 1880 and the outbreak of World War II in 1939. In spite of the fact that these various styles often had little in common with each other, they are traditionally clustered under the label of modernism. It is thus rather difficult to give a precise definition of modernism, one that encompasses all the characteristics of the artists and architects who are commonly grouped under this label. What modernists do have in common is that their work contains at least one of two characteristics of modernism.

 One fundamental characteristic of modernism is a demonstration of progressive innovation. In general, a modernist is someone who tries to develop and individual style by adding to or improving upon the style of immediate predecessors. The modernist belief was in starting with the ideas of the mainstream movement and then innovating from the mainstream to improve upon the ideas of predecessors rather than in breaking away from the mainstream to create something entirely new. However, because there were varying ideas on what constituted the mainstream and because the potential innovations emanating from the mainstream were infinite, modernism under this definition could take a myriad of directions.

 A second fundamental characteristic of modernism was the belief that art could and should reflect the reality of modern life and would not, for example, focus on the lives of society’s most privileged members or on otherworld entities such as angels and sprites. Though there  was agreement among modernists as to the need for art to reflect modern life, there was far less agreement on what actually constituted modern life. Thus, modern artists and architects reflect very different aspects of modern life in their works.

 

 

Though modernism in art shares certain characteristics, these characteristics can be difficult to define precisely.

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Answer Choices (choose 4 to complete the chart):

(1) A reflection of the reality of modern life is one aspect of modernism.

(2) There is no universal agreement as to exactly what makes up modern life.

(3) Modernism is a highly individualistic style of art.

(4) Modernism in art must improve upon the style of the mainstream.

(5) There were many different styles of American art in the early twentieth century.

(6) It can be difficult to define what the mainstream is.