Words in Context
Reading & Writing · Craft and Structure · 130 questions · every one comes with a full explanation.
- 1Artist Marilyn Dingle's intricate, coiled baskets are ______ sweetgrass and palmetto palm. Following a Gullah technique that originated in West Africa, Dingle skillfully winds a thEasy · Craft and Structure
- 2The following text is adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1837 story "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment." The main character, a physician, is experimenting with rehydrating a dried flower.Medium · Craft and Structure
- 3Rejecting the premise that the literary magazine Ebony and Topaz (1927) should present a unified vision of Black American identity, editor Charles S. Johnson fostered his contributHard · Craft and Structure
- 4Some economic historians ______ that late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century households in the United States experienced an economy of scale when it came to food purchases—theHard · Craft and Structure
- 5The following text is from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. The narrator is being driven in a carriage through a remote region at night. The baying of the wolves sounded nearer aEasy · Craft and Structure
- 6Economist Marco Castillo and colleagues showed that nuisance costs—the time and effort people must spend to make donations—reduce charitable giving. Charities can mitigate this effHard · Craft and Structure
- 7During a 2014 archaeological dig in Spain, Vicente Lull and his team uncovered the skeleton of a woman from El Algar, an Early Bronze Age society, buried with valuable objects signMedium · Craft and Structure
- 8Dance choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar aims to give people the opportunity to be ______ her creative process. For example, live performances of her dance HairStories, which debEasy · Craft and Structure
- 9The following text is adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1844 short story "Drowne's Wooden Image." Drowne, a young man, is carving a wooden figure to decorate the front of a ship. Medium · Craft and Structure
- 10Former astronaut Ellen Ochoa says that although she doesn't have a definite idea of when it might happen, she ______ that humans will someday need to be able to live in other envirEasy · Craft and Structure
- 11A musician and member of the Quechua of Peru, Renata Flores Rivera was eager to promote the Quechua language in her music, but she was ______ speaking it. She met this challenge byEasy · Craft and Structure
- 12Seminole/Muscogee director Sterlin Harjo ______ television's tendency to situate Native characters in the distant past: this rejection is evident in his series Reservation Dogs, whHard · Craft and Structure
- 13The following text is from Yann Martel's 2001 novel Life of Pi. The narrator's family owned a zoo when he was a child. It was a huge zoo, spread over numberless acres, big enoughEasy · Craft and Structure
- 14According to botanists, a viburnum plant experiencing insect damage may develop erineum—a discolored, felty growth—on its leaf blades. A ______ viburnum plant, on the other hand, wEasy · Craft and Structure
- 15Research conducted by planetary scientist Katarina Miljkovic suggests that the Moon's surface may not accurately ______ early impact events. When the Moon was still forming, its suEasy · Craft and Structure
- 16Charles "Teenie" Harris was a photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier from 1936 to 1975. During his career he took over 70,000 photographs documenting everyday life in Pittsburgh'sEasy · Craft and Structure
- 17The following text is adapted from George Eliot's 1871–72 novel Middlemarch. [Mr. Brooke] had travelled in his younger years, and was held in this part of the country to have contHard · Craft and Structure
- 18Although science fiction was dominated mostly by white male authors when Octavia Butler, a Black woman, began writing, she did not view the genre as ______: Butler broke into the fMedium · Craft and Structure
- 19In the 1970s, video cameras became increasingly affordable for ordinary consumers and gave Ulysses Jenkins and other artists capabilities that were previously unavailable except toEasy · Craft and Structure
- 20A brief book review cannot fully convey the ______ of Olga Tokarczuk's novel The Books of Jacob, with its enormous cast of characters, its complicated, wandering plot, and its pageEasy · Craft and Structure
- 21The following text is from Nella Larsen's 1928 novel Quicksand. The trees in their spring beauty sent through her restive mind a sharp thrill of pleasure. Seductive, charming, andEasy · Craft and Structure
- 22Biologist Jane Edgeloe and colleagues have located what is believed to be the largest individual plant in the world in the Shark Bay area of Australia. The plant is a type of seagrEasy · Craft and Structure
- 23In the early 1800s, the Cherokee scholar Sequoyah created the first script, or writing system, for an Indigenous language in the United States. Because it represented the sounds ofEasy · Craft and Structure
- 24In 1929 the Atlantic Monthly published several articles based on newly discovered letters allegedly exchanged between President Abraham Lincoln and a woman named Ann Rutledge. HistEasy · Craft and Structure
- 25Following the principles of community-based participatory research, tribal nations and research institutions are equal partners in health studies conducted on reservations. A collaEasy · Craft and Structure
- 26The process of mechanically recycling plastics is often considered ______ because of the environmental impact and the loss of material quality that often occurs. But chemist TakundEasy · Craft and Structure
- 27Bioluminescent beetles called fireflies may seem to create flashes of light randomly, but each species of firefly actually has its own special series of repeated flashes and pausesEasy · Craft and Structure
- 28According to Potawatomi ecologist Robin Wall Kimmerer, the Indigenous method of harvesting Hierochloe odorata, or sweetgrass, by snapping the plant off at the root actually ______ Easy · Craft and Structure
- 29The work of molecular biophysicist Enrique M. De La Cruz is known for ______ traditional boundaries between academic disciplines. The university laboratory that De La Cruz runs incMedium · Craft and Structure
- 30The güiro, a musical instrument traditionally made from a dried and hollowed gourd, is thought to have originated with the Taíno people of Puerto Rico. Players use a wooden stick tHard · Craft and Structure
- 31Visual artist Gabriela Alemán states that the bold colors of comics, pop art, and Latinx culture have always fascinated her. This passion for the rich history and colors of her LatEasy · Craft and Structure
- 32In studying the use of external stimuli to reduce the itching sensation caused by an allergic histamine response, Louise Ward and colleagues found that while harmless applications Hard · Craft and Structure
- 33Beginning in the 1950s, Navajo Nation legislator Annie Dodge Wauneka continuously worked to promote public health; this ______ effort involved traveling throughout the vast Navajo Easy · Craft and Structure
- 34In Nature Poem (2017), Kumeyaay poet Tommy Pico portrays his ______ the natural world by honoring the centrality of nature within his tribe's traditional beliefs while simultaneousMedium · Craft and Structure
- 35Particle physicists like Ayana Holloway Arce and Aida El-Khadra spend much of their time ______ what is invisible to the naked eye: using sophisticated technology, they closely exaEasy · Craft and Structure
- 36In recommending Bao Phi's collection Sông I Sing, a librarian noted that pieces by the spoken-word poet don't lose their ______ nature when printed: the language has the same pleasEasy · Craft and Structure
- 37The recent discovery of a carved wooden figure dating to around 2,000 years ago in a ditch in England was truly surprising. Wooden objects ______ survive for so long due to their hEasy · Craft and Structure
- 38Due to their often strange images, highly experimental syntax, and opaque subject matter, many of John Ashbery's poems can be quite difficult to ______ and thus are the object of hEasy · Craft and Structure
- 39The Appalachian Trail is a hiking path in the eastern United States. Much of the 2,000 mile trail passes through wilderness areas. In order to ______ those areas, the United StatesEasy · Craft and Structure
- 40While scholars believe many Mesoamerican cities influenced each other, direct evidence of such influence is difficult to ascertain. However, recent excavations in a sector of TikalHard · Craft and Structure
- 41The following text is adapted from Sui Sin Far's 1912 short story "Mrs. Spring Fragrance." Mr. and Mrs. Spring Fragrance immigrated to the United States from China. Mrs. Spring FrEasy · Craft and Structure
- 42While we can infer information about climate activity in Earth's distant past from physical evidence, we of course cannot observe past climates directly. To study early Earth's cliEasy · Craft and Structure
- 43The following text is from F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. [Jay Gatsby] was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement Medium · Craft and Structure
- 44In 1877, 85% of California's railways were already controlled by the Southern Pacific Railroad. The company further solidified its ______ in rail access to the state's Pacific coasEasy · Craft and Structure
- 45Mônica Lopes-Ferreira and others at Brazil's Butantan Institute are studying the freshwater stingray species Potamotrygon rex to determine whether biological characteristics such aEasy · Craft and Structure
- 46Cucurbits, a group of plants that includes squash and melons, relied on mastodons to spread their seeds in the Ice Age. When these animals died out, cucurbits faced extinction in tEasy · Craft and Structure
- 47To develop a method for measuring snow depth with laser beams, NASA physicist Yongxiang Hu relied on ______; identifying broad similarities between two seemingly different phenomenMedium · Craft and Structure
- 48Whether the reign of a French monarch such as Hugh Capet or Henry I was historically consequential or relatively uneventful, its trajectory was shaped by questions of legitimacy anHard · Craft and Structure
- 49According to statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the best way to predict the amount of time a nonperishable entity (such as a building or a technology) will continue to exist is toEasy · Craft and Structure
- 50In the mid-nineteenth century, some abolitionist newspapers ______ westward migration in the United States; by printing a letter that described the easy fortunes and high salaries Easy · Craft and Structure
- 51Like other tribal nations, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation is self-governing; its National Council generates laws regulating aspects of community life such as land use and healthcare, Easy · Craft and Structure
- 52A journalist and well-respected art critic of nineteenth-century Britain, Lady Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake did not hesitate to publish reviews that went against popular opinion. One oMedium · Craft and Structure
- 53Artificially delivering biomolecules to plant cells is an important component of protecting plants from pathogens, but it is difficult to transmit biomolecules through the layers oEasy · Craft and Structure
- 54Critics have asserted that fine art and fashion rarely ______ in a world where artists create timeless works for exhibition and designers periodically produce new styles for the puHard · Craft and Structure
- 55Nigerian American author Teju Cole's ______ his two passions—photography and the written word—culminates in his 2017 book, Blind Spot, which evocatively combines his original photoEasy · Craft and Structure
- 56The following text is from Claude McKay's 1922 poem "Morning Joy." The speaker is looking out a window and observing a wold, or large area of land. At night the wide and level Easy · Craft and Structure
- 57The work of Kiowa painter T.C. Cannon derives its power in part from the tension among his ______ influences: classic European portraiture, with its realistic treatment of faces; tHard · Craft and Structure
- 58New and interesting research conducted by Suleiman A. Al-Sweedan and Moath Alhaj is inspired by their observation that though there have been many studies of the effect of high altHard · Craft and Structure
- 59In habitats with limited nutrients, certain fungus species grow on the roots of trees, engaging in mutually beneficial relationships known as ectomycorrhizae: in this symbiotic excEasy · Craft and Structure
- 60Although critics believed that customers would never agree to pay to pick their own produce on farms, such concerns didn't ______ Booker T. Whatley's efforts to promote the practicEasy · Craft and Structure