Which statement best traces the development of a
central idea from one paragraph to the next?
O
The first paragraph describes different groups of
Americans. The second paragraph discusses what
unifies them
The first paragraph describes ideals shared by most
Americans. The second paragraph describes how
these ideals sometimes differ.
The first paragraph describes immigrant groups. The
second paragraph discusses native-born Americans
The first paragraph describes America during peaceful
times. The second paragraph discusses America
during times of war.
O

Read the excerpt from "mother tongue." those tests were constructed around items like fill-in-the-blank sentence completion, such as “even though tom was mary thought he was ” and the correct answer always seemed to be the most bland combinations of thoughts, for example, “even though tom was foolish, mary thought he was ridiculous.” well, according to my mother, there were very few limitations as to what tom could have been and what mary might have thought of him. so i never did well on tests like that. how does tan build a central idea of her story in the excerpt? tan discusses the types of questions on achievement tests to support the idea that the tests limit students’ ability to write well. tan explains a question on a language achievement test to support the idea that the tests should include more interesting content. tan gives an example of her experience with achievement tests to support the idea that they are not always accurate measures of language ability. tan considers how her mother might answer a question on a test to support the idea that nonstandard english limits a person’s ability to communicate.