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12th grade reading comprehension
12th grade (Year 13 in England) · 16 questions · Common Core: RL.11-12.2, RL.11-12.3, RL.11-12.5, RI.11-12.8 · England: GCSE English Language Paper 1 Q4, A-level English Literature, GCSE English Language Paper 2 Q4
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Date
Score/ 16
Question 1
Type the part of the Toulmin model (in English) that matches this description. The position the arguer wants the audience to accept.
Answer
The Quiet Infrastructure
When we speak of infrastructure, we tend to picture concrete and steel: bridges, railways, power lines. We rarely think of the public library. Yet libraries are a form of infrastructure as essential, in their way, as any road – and, because their work is quiet, they are easier to neglect.
Consider what a library actually provides. It offers free access not only to books but to the internet, to printers, to warm and safe space, to help with forms and applications, to activities for toddlers and to company for the isolated elderly. For a student without a quiet room at home, it is a study hall. For a job-seeker without a computer, it is an office. For a newly arrived family, it may be the first public institution that welcomes them without asking anything in return.
Critics argue that, in an age of smartphones, these functions are obsolete. Information is everywhere; why fund buildings full of paper? But the argument confuses access to information with access to opportunity. A phone cannot print a CV, provide a warm room on a winter afternoon or offer the patient guidance of a librarian who can tell a reliable source from a persuasive fake. Moreover, millions of people still lack reliable internet at home. To assume that everyone is connected is to design policy for the comfortable and forget the rest.
None of this means libraries should stand still. The best have already transformed themselves into community hubs, hosting coding clubs, repair cafés and citizenship classes. But transformation requires investment, and investment requires us to recognise libraries for what they are: not a nostalgic luxury, but part of the foundation on which a fair society is built.
A bridge that collapses makes headlines. A library that closes rarely does. Its users simply scatter, each a little more alone than before. That silence is precisely why we should pay attention.
Question 2
Read "The Quiet Infrastructure". According to the writer, what mistake do critics make?
- A. They confuse access to information with access to opportunity.
- B. They ignore the needs of bridges.
- C. They overestimate the cost of books.
- D. They think libraries are too modern.
Question 3
Type the fallacy (in English) that matches this description. Continuing with something because of what has already been invested, even when it no longer makes sense.
Answer
The Quiet Infrastructure
When we speak of infrastructure, we tend to picture concrete and steel: bridges, railways, power lines. We rarely think of the public library. Yet libraries are a form of infrastructure as essential, in their way, as any road – and, because their work is quiet, they are easier to neglect.
Consider what a library actually provides. It offers free access not only to books but to the internet, to printers, to warm and safe space, to help with forms and applications, to activities for toddlers and to company for the isolated elderly. For a student without a quiet room at home, it is a study hall. For a job-seeker without a computer, it is an office. For a newly arrived family, it may be the first public institution that welcomes them without asking anything in return.
Critics argue that, in an age of smartphones, these functions are obsolete. Information is everywhere; why fund buildings full of paper? But the argument confuses access to information with access to opportunity. A phone cannot print a CV, provide a warm room on a winter afternoon or offer the patient guidance of a librarian who can tell a reliable source from a persuasive fake. Moreover, millions of people still lack reliable internet at home. To assume that everyone is connected is to design policy for the comfortable and forget the rest.
None of this means libraries should stand still. The best have already transformed themselves into community hubs, hosting coding clubs, repair cafés and citizenship classes. But transformation requires investment, and investment requires us to recognise libraries for what they are: not a nostalgic luxury, but part of the foundation on which a fair society is built.
A bridge that collapses makes headlines. A library that closes rarely does. Its users simply scatter, each a little more alone than before. That silence is precisely why we should pay attention.
Question 4
Read "The Quiet Infrastructure". How does the writer strengthen the rebuttal in paragraph 3?
- A. by quoting a famous author
- B. by changing the subject to transport
- C. by giving concrete examples of what a phone cannot do and noting many lack internet
- D. by admitting the critics are entirely right
Question 5
Type the comic or satirical technique (in English) that matches this description. Delivering something absurd or funny in a completely serious, expressionless way.
Answer
Question 6
Which literary movement matches this description? Mid–late 19th century: ordinary people and everyday life shown accurately and in detail.
- A. Romanticism
- B. Harlem Renaissance
- C. Realism
- D. Transcendentalism
Question 7
Is the proposed answer correct? Why is 'it looks real' no longer good evidence that a photo is genuine? → real photos look blurry
- A. yes, it is correct
- B. no, it is not correct
The Gettysburg Address (Abraham Lincoln, 1863)
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Question 8
Read "The Gettysburg Address (Abraham Lincoln, 1863)". Lincoln says the speakers 'can not' dedicate the ground. What claim does this support?
- A. that the ceremony should be cancelled
- B. that the war was not important
- C. that the battlefield should be sold
- D. that the soldiers' actions matter more than any words, so the living must continue their work
Question 9
Which metrical term matches this description? A foot with two unstressed syllables then one stressed: da-da-DUM.
- A. anapest
- B. dactyl
- C. spondee
- D. iamb
The Quiet Infrastructure
When we speak of infrastructure, we tend to picture concrete and steel: bridges, railways, power lines. We rarely think of the public library. Yet libraries are a form of infrastructure as essential, in their way, as any road – and, because their work is quiet, they are easier to neglect.
Consider what a library actually provides. It offers free access not only to books but to the internet, to printers, to warm and safe space, to help with forms and applications, to activities for toddlers and to company for the isolated elderly. For a student without a quiet room at home, it is a study hall. For a job-seeker without a computer, it is an office. For a newly arrived family, it may be the first public institution that welcomes them without asking anything in return.
Critics argue that, in an age of smartphones, these functions are obsolete. Information is everywhere; why fund buildings full of paper? But the argument confuses access to information with access to opportunity. A phone cannot print a CV, provide a warm room on a winter afternoon or offer the patient guidance of a librarian who can tell a reliable source from a persuasive fake. Moreover, millions of people still lack reliable internet at home. To assume that everyone is connected is to design policy for the comfortable and forget the rest.
None of this means libraries should stand still. The best have already transformed themselves into community hubs, hosting coding clubs, repair cafés and citizenship classes. But transformation requires investment, and investment requires us to recognise libraries for what they are: not a nostalgic luxury, but part of the foundation on which a fair society is built.
A bridge that collapses makes headlines. A library that closes rarely does. Its users simply scatter, each a little more alone than before. That silence is precisely why we should pay attention.
Question 10
Read "The Quiet Infrastructure". What is the writer's central claim?
- A. Libraries should be replaced by smartphones.
- B. Libraries are essential infrastructure that deserve investment.
- C. Libraries should never change.
- D. Bridges are more important than libraries.
Question 11
"Our town's crime fell by 10% the year we installed new streetlights. Clearly, streetlights cut crime." What is the main weakness in this reasoning?
- A. It considers other causes too carefully.
- B. It uses too many statistics.
- C. It quotes an expert.
- D. It assumes that because one thing followed another, it caused it.
Question 12
Which literary movement does this description most closely match? A poem celebrates a solitary walk among mountains and lakes, valuing feeling and imagination over logic.
- A. Realism
- B. Modernism
- C. Gothic
- D. Romanticism
Question 13
Which fallacy is used here? The sign said 'fine for parking here', so I thought parking there was fine.
- A. appeal to tradition
- B. moving the goalposts
- C. equivocation
- D. false analogy
Inheritance
When my aunt died she left me her piano, which was the one thing in her house I had never wanted. It was an upright of dark, scarred wood, too large for any room it had ever stood in, and it had been out of tune for as long as I could remember. As a child, I had been made to sit at it every Thursday while she counted the beats aloud in a voice like a ruler rapping a desk. I had hated it with the pure, uncomplicated hatred of a nine-year-old.
The removal men groaned it up the three flights to my flat and left it in the hall, where it blocked the light from the only window. For a month I edged around it sideways, as one edges around a guest who has outstayed their welcome. I told friends I would sell it. I photographed it twice for the listing and deleted the pictures both times.
It was during a power cut in February that I finally lifted the lid. I could not have said why. The flat was cold and dark and silent, and perhaps I simply wanted to hear something. I pressed middle C. It was flat, of course – everything about that piano was slightly flat – but the note hung in the hall far longer than I expected, and something in the slowness of its fading undid me.
I played the only piece I still knew, a dull exercise in C major that my aunt had made me repeat a hundred times. My fingers found it before my mind did. Halfway through, I realised I was counting under my breath, in her rhythm, in her voice.
I have not had the piano tuned. People ask me why, and I tell them I haven't got round to it, which is true in the way that most convenient answers are true. The other reason is harder to explain. Every flat note is exactly as she left it. I am not ready to correct her yet.
Question 14
Read "Inheritance". What does the narrator's realisation that he is counting "in her voice" reveal?
- A. He is imitating her to mock her.
- B. He has hired a teacher.
- C. His aunt's influence has become part of him, despite his earlier resentment.
- D. He has forgotten the piece.
Question 15
Which part of a Toulmin argument is this sentence? Studies from cities in several countries show that protected lanes cut cycling injuries.
- A. grounds
- B. backing
- C. rebuttal
- D. warrant
Question 16
Type the literary movement (in English) that matches this description. From the mid 18th century: mystery, terror, the supernatural and gloomy settings such as ruined castles.
Answer
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