Read this excerpt from H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds:No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.Which words best describe the tone of this passage?A.Excited and emotionalB.SatiricalC.Calm and matter-of-factD.Light-hearted

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, 1898How does H. G. Wells create suspense in the opening paragraph of The War of the Worlds?A.By explaining how ruthless the Martians are and telling the reader exactly what they will doB.By allowing the reader to believe that all of the characters in the story will die at the endC.By informing the reader that the narrator will survive the terrifying events of the storyD.By having the narrator recall the story's past events and giving hints about what happenedSUBMITarrow_backPREVIOUS

The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas.H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, 1898What can you infer about the narrator from this passage in The War of the Worlds?A.That he doesn't care about the MartiansB.That he is angry that the Martians cameC.That he is shy and doesn't have friendsD.That he is intelligent and well educatedSUBMITarrow_backPREVIOUS

Read the following passage:And before we judge them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals such as the vanquished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior races.H. G. Wells, The War of the WorldsThis passage is from a science fiction story about an alien invasion of Earth that was written in 1898. What historical theme might create a strong emotional response in readers during that time?A.The tendency of religions of the time to judge othersB.The brutality of the experience of colonialismC.The experience of world warsD.The beginning of cloning experiments with animalsSUBMITarrow_backPREVIOUS

Read this passage:And invisible to me because it was so remote and small, flying swiftly and steadily toward me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles, came the Thing they were sending us, the Thing that was to bring so much struggle and calamity and death to the earth.H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, 1898Which word in the passage helps create a sense of fear and anxiety?A.smallB.earthC.thousandsD.deathSUBMITarrow_backPREVIOUS

The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.Twentieth-century scholarship, advancing the modern human conceit, conspired against our ability to notice the divergent, layered, and conjoined projects that make up worlds. Entranced by the expansion of certain ways of life over others, scholars ignored questions of what else was going on. As progress tales lose traction, however, it becomes possible to look differently.The concept of assemblage is helpful. Ecologists turned to assemblages to get around the sometimes fixed and bounded connotations of ecological “community.” The question of how the varied species in a species assemblage influence each other—if at all—is never settled: some thwart each other; others work together to make life possible; still others just happen to find themselves in the same place. Assemblages are open-ended gatherings. They allow us to ask about communal effects without assuming them…Patterns of unintentional coordination develop in assemblages. To notice such patterns means watching the interplay of temporal rhythms and scales in the divergent lifeways that gather. Other authors use “assemblage” with other meanings. The qualifier “polyphonic” may help explain my variant. Polyphony is music in which autonomous melodies intertwine. When I first learned polyphony, it was a revelation in listening; I was forced to pick out separate, simultaneous melodies and to listen for the moments of harmony and dissonance they created together. This kind of noticing is just what is needed to appreciate the multiple temporal rhythms and trajectories of the assemblage.Imagine the polyphonic assemblage in relation to agriculture. Since the time of the plantation, commercial agriculture has aimed to segregate a single crop and work toward its simultaneous ripening for a coordinated harvest. But other kinds of farming have multiple rhythms. In the shifting cultivation in Indonesian Borneo, many crops grew together in the same field, and they had quite different schedules. Rice, bananas, taro, sweet potatoes, sugarcane, palms, and fruit trees mingled; farmers needed to attend to the varied schedules of maturation of each of these crops. These rhythms were their relation to human harvests; if we add other relations, for example, to pollinators or other plants, rhythms multiply…The polyphonic assemblage also moves us into the unexplored territory of the modern political economy. Factory labor is an exemplar of coordinated progress time. Yet the supply chain is infused with polyphonic rhythms. Consider the tiny Chinese garment factory; like its many competitors, it served multiple supply lines, constantly switching among orders for local boutique brands, knock-off international brands, and generic to-be-branded-later production. Each required different standards, materials, and kinds of labor. The factory’s job was to match industrial coordination to the complex rhythms of supply chains. The farther we stray into the peripheries of capitalist production, the more coordination between polyphonic assemblages and industrial processes becomes central to making a profit.As the last examples suggest, abandoning progress rhythms to watch polyphonic assemblages is not a matter of virtuous desire. Progress felt great; there was always something better ahead. The problem is that progress stopped making sense. More and more of us looked up one day and realized that the emperor had no clothes. It is in this dilemma that new tools for noticing seem so important. Indeed, life on earth seems at stake.Question 5Which of the following groups of words/phrases best encapsulates the key ideas in the passage?Interconnectedness, Polyphonic Assemblages, Unintentional Coordination, Diverse Rhythms.Twentieth-Century Scholarship, Assemblage, Progress Narratives, Political Economy.Twentieth-Century Scholarship, Polyphonic Assemblages, Monoculture Farming, Supply Chain Uniformity.Interconnectedness, Ecological communities, Assemblages, Progress-Driven Development.