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: 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: 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: fba5d8d1
In a 2016 study, Eastern Washington University psychologist Amani El-Alayli found that,
among the study participants who experienced frisson (a physiological response akin to
goosebumps or getting the chills) while listening to music, there was one personality trait that
they scored particularly ______ openness to experience.

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

A. high. On

B. high on;

C. high on

D. high on:
 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: 6ea8c23f
In 2018, a team of researchers led by Dr. Caitlin Whalen compiled every available
measurement of ocean mixing rates from the past two decades. With this novel data set, the
team was able to determine how current-driven mixing varies across ______ and what impact it
has on the distribution of heat and nutrients in the ocean.

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

A. regions,

B. regions:

C. regions;

D. regions
 ID: aab74a3b
Researcher Lin Zhi developed a process for increasing the tensile strength—measured in
gigapascals, or GPa—of silkworm ______ dissolving and reweaving the silk in a solution of iron
metal ions, zinc, and sugar, Zhi increased the amount of force required to stretch it from
approximately 0.5 GPa to 2 GPa.

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

A. silk, by

B. silk by

C. silk and by

D. silk. By
 ID: a9e5b788
In discussing Mary Shelley’s 1818 epistolary novel Frankenstein, literary theorist Gayatri
Spivak directs the reader’s attention to the character of Margaret Saville. As Spivak points out,
Saville is not the protagonist of Shelley’s ______ as the recipient of the letters that frame the
book’s narrative, she’s the “occasion” of it.

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

A. novel

B. novel,

C. novel; rather,

D. novel, rather,
 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

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

D. the focus of many critics has been on Kurosawa’s use of Western literary sources; they
 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 recent study’s estimate is that these crusts reduce global dust emissions by 60 percent
A. each year.

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

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

a recent study has estimated that these crusts reduce global dust emissions by 60 percent
D. each year.
 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: 790fc366
Using satellite remote sensing, Dr. Catherine Nakalembe, director of NASA’s Harvest Africa
initiative, gathers important data on crop health. Nakalembe doesn’t just compile the ______
she also shares her findings with African farmers, enabling them to make data-driven
decisions about managing critical food crops.

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

A. information, though;

B. information, though,

C. information; though

D. information though,
 ID: 62120607
From afar, African American fiber artist Bisa Butler’s portraits look like paintings, their
depictions of human faces, bodies, and clothing so intricate that it seems only a fine brush
could have rendered them. When viewed up close, however, the portraits reveal themselves to
be ______ stitching barely visible among the thousands of pieces of printed, microcut fabric.

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

A. quilts, and the

B. quilts, the

C. quilts; the

D. quilts. The
 ID: 2bb7416a
In paleontology, the term “Elvis taxon” gets applied to a newly identified living species that was
once presumed to be extinct. Like an Elvis impersonator who might bear a striking
resemblance to the late musical icon Elvis Presley himself, an Elvis taxon is not the real thing,
______ is a misidentified look-alike.

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

A. however but it

B. however it

C. however, it

D. however. It
 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?

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

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

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

published two years before Morocco gained its independence, Chraïbi wrote a debut novel
D. that
 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: 59094d87
The Tantaquidgeon Museum in Uncasville, Connecticut, was founded in 1931 with the goal of
showcasing the culture and history of the Mohegan ______ today, nearly a century later, it is the
oldest Native-owned and -operated museum in the country.

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

A. Tribe, and

B. Tribe

C. Tribe and

D. Tribe,
 ID: b15724fc
American writer Edwidge Danticat, who emigrated from Haiti in 1981, has won acclaim for her
powerful short stories, novels, and ______ her lyrical yet unflinching depictions of her native
country’s turbulent history, writer Robert Antoni has compared Danticat to Nobel Prize–
winning novelist Toni Morrison.

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

A. essays, praising

B. essays and praising

C. essays praising

D. essays. Praising
 ID: 594b4a94
The field of geological oceanography owes much to American ______ Marie Tharp, a
pioneering oceanographic cartographer whose detailed topographical maps of the ocean floor
and its multiple rift valleys helped garner acceptance for the theories of plate tectonics and
continental drift.

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

A. geologist,

B. geologist

C. geologist;

D. geologist:
 ID: fdb16e20
Quantum particles of light—photons—provide an unhackable means of transmitting encryption
keys over networks, as attempts to observe particles in quantum states will invariably alter the
particles ______ dismantle any information they transmit.

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

A. and in the process,

B. and, in the process,

C. and in the process—

D. and, in the process

 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: 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: 6d4b2e1e
The 1977 play And the Soul Shall Dance depicts two Japanese American farming families in
Depression-era Southern California. Critics have noted the way pioneering ______ compares
the experiences of issei (Japanese nationals who emigrated to America) and nisei (their
American-born children).

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

A. playwright, Wakako Yamauchi,

B. playwright, Wakako Yamauchi

C. playwright Wakako Yamauchi,

D. playwright Wakako Yamauchi

 ID: 109d5bbb
With some 16,000 in attendance, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and
______ or FESTAC ‘77, as the event was more commonly known—became the largest pan-
African event on record. FESTAC drew people from around the world to Lagos, Nigeria, for a
monthlong celebration of Black and African art, scholarship, and activism.

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

A. Culture:

B. Culture—

C. Culture,

D. Culture
 ID: c468db1c
A group of ecologists led by Axel Mithöfer at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in
Germany examined the defensive responses of two varieties of the sweet potato ______ TN57,
which is known for its insect resistance, and TN66, which is much more susceptible to pests.

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

A. plant.

B. plant;

C. plant

D. plant:
 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: 78b88c04
Joshua Hinson, director of the language revitalization program of the Chickasaw Nation in
Oklahoma, helped produce the world’s first Indigenous-language instructional app, Chickasaw
______ Chickasaw TV, in 2010; and a Rosetta Stone language course in Chickasaw, in 2015.

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

A. Basic; in 2009, an online television network;

B. Basic; in 2009, an online television network,

C. Basic, in 2009; an online television network,

D. Basic, in 2009, an online television network,