Read the passage, then answer the question.
Passage A: Recorded Museum Guides
[A1] Recorded museum guides are often criticized for isolating visitors behind headphones. That criticism overlooks what a well-designed guide can do. It can translate labels, describe details for visitors with limited vision, and let each person spend more time with an object that captures attention. A group tour necessarily moves at a shared pace; a recording permits detours. Museums should still create places for conversation, but enabling solitary attention does not eliminate social experience. It gives visitors more ways to enter it.
Passage B
[B1] Personal audio guides promise freedom but can quietly choreograph attention. When a recording identifies three features of a painting, visitors may stop looking once they have found those three. They hear an expert interpretation before forming their own questions. This problem is not solved merely by adding more tracks or languages. Museums should experiment with recordings that ask visitors to observe first, compare objects, or pause the device to discuss an uncertainty. The issue is not the presence of headphones; it is whether the guide treats visitors as receivers of conclusions or participants in inquiry.
Passage A's central claim is that recorded guides
A. should replace museum labels and group tours
B. are useful only to visitors with limited vision
C. prevent visitors from discussing objects with one another
D. broaden access and allow pacing without social cost
Source: Study Companion, Content Topics, page 5, section I — Key Ideas and Details
Read the passage, then answer the question.
[P1] When a theater company stages a translated play, the script may look finished before rehearsal begins. Yet actors quickly expose decisions that were invisible on the page. A sentence that reads elegantly may take too long to speak during a rapid exchange. A joke may depend on a sound pattern that disappears in the new language. Even a formal form of address can alter how close two characters seem.
[P2] For its recent production, the Harbor Players invited the translator to rehearsals. She did not rewrite every line that an actor found difficult. Sometimes difficulty revealed a character's hesitation and needed to remain. In other cases, she replaced a phrase after hearing that it interrupted the pace without adding meaning.
[P3] This process does not make actors the final authorities on translation. They judge what can be spoken and heard in performance; the translator remains responsible for meaning, register, and the structure of the whole work. Rehearsal is valuable because it brings those forms of expertise into contact. It turns translation from a document delivered to a company into a set of choices tested in the medium for which they were made.
It can reasonably be inferred that a line difficult to speak should be retained when
A. neither author explains why protected time helps everyone
B. the actor dislikes every alternative phrase
C. the translator has not attended rehearsal
D. the line is longer than all other lines
Source: Study Companion, Content Topics, page 5, section I — Key Ideas and Details
Read the passage, then answer the question.
[P1] When a theater company stages a translated play, the script may look finished before rehearsal begins. Yet actors quickly expose decisions that were invisible on the page. A sentence that reads elegantly may take too long to speak during a rapid exchange. A joke may depend on a sound pattern that disappears in the new language. Even a formal form of address can alter how close two characters seem.
[P2] For its recent production, the Harbor Players invited the translator to rehearsals. She did not rewrite every line that an actor found difficult. Sometimes difficulty revealed a character's hesitation and needed to remain. In other cases, she replaced a phrase after hearing that it interrupted the pace without adding meaning.
[P3] This process does not make actors the final authorities on translation. They judge what can be spoken and heard in performance; the translator remains responsible for meaning, register, and the structure of the whole work. Rehearsal is valuable because it brings those forms of expertise into contact. It turns translation from a document delivered to a company into a set of choices tested in the medium for which they were made.
As used in paragraph 3, “medium” most nearly refers to
A. an average level of difficulty
B. a person who claims to communicate with spirits
C. a material used to preserve printed pages
D. schools adopting the pairing could eliminate conflicts entirely
Source: Study Companion, Content Topics, page 5, section II — Craft, Structure, and Language Skills
Read the passage, then answer the question.
[P1] The North Loop bus currently makes its final Friday departure from the community college at 8:10 p.m. Student government has asked the transit agency to add a 9:10 p.m. trip, arguing that evening laboratory sections and campus events often end after the last bus. To test likely demand, the agency operated the later trip on four Fridays in October.
[P2] Trial ridership rose each week. Agency staff caution, however, that the college advertised the trial more heavily during its final two weeks. In addition, a theater festival occurred during Week 4. The pilot therefore shows that some demand exists, but it does not by itself establish typical year-round ridership.
[P3] The later trip cost $180 to operate each Friday. Fares covered only a portion of that amount. Supporters reply that immediate fare revenue is not the only relevant measure: students without cars may otherwise leave evening programs early or avoid them. The agency is considering a full-semester trial so that it can compare ordinary weeks, event weeks, and examination periods.
Late-trip boardings during October pilot
Week | Boardings
----------------
1 | 11
2 | 14
3 | 22
4 | 31
According to the passage, why does the October pilot not establish typical year-round ridership?
A. Final weeks got heavier promotion; Week 4 had a festival.
B. The agency did not record any boarding totals.
C. Students were prohibited from using the trial bus after laboratories.
D. The pilot cost less than the regular route.
Source: Study Companion, Content Topics, page 5, section I — Key Ideas and Details
Read the passage, then answer the question.
[P1] When Riverton's public library began lending electric drills, sewing machines, and cake pans, some residents argued that the program wandered beyond a library's proper mission. Books, they said, transmit knowledge; tools merely perform tasks. Yet the distinction is less tidy than it appears. A repair manual is useful only if a reader can act on its instructions, and many people hesitate to attempt a repair when buying a tool would cost more than replacing the broken item.
[P2] During the program's first year, borrowers checked out 1,800 objects. Library surveys found that nearly two-thirds of borrowers used an item to learn a skill they had not tried before. Demand was highest for tools paired with free workshops, suggesting that access and instruction reinforced each other. The collection did create new work: staff had to inspect returned equipment, replace missing parts, and explain safe operation.
[P3] Those costs deserve scrutiny, but they do not prove that lending objects is a distraction. Libraries have long adapted their collections to the forms in which communities encounter information. Recordings, computer terminals, and internet access once seemed unconventional too. Riverton's experiment is best understood not as abandoning literacy, but as extending literacy from understanding directions to using them capably.
The primary purpose of the passage is to
A. argue that lending tools extends a library's mission
B. show that libraries should replace printed manuals with workshops
C. prove that tool-lending programs always recover their operating costs
D. describe why Riverton residents no longer borrow books
Source: Study Companion, Content Topics, page 5, section I — Key Ideas and Details
