Does the structure make the point clear and convincing?

Grade 11 Reading Worksheet - Challenge Me

Circle the best answer.

1. Read this first

   Planting Against the Wind (history essay)

   [1] In March 1935, as Hugh Bennett testified to Congress about soil erosion, a dust storm from the plains darkened the sky over Washington, and the senators needed no further exhibit. [2] Bennett has been remembered for that timing ever since, and so have the long rows of trees the government planted across the plains in the years that followed. [3] I will argue that the trees were the memorable remedy and not the effective one, and that the plains were saved mainly by far less photogenic policies that changed what a farmer found worth doing.

   The Plow Did It
   [4] The dust did not come from drought alone. In the 1910s and 1920s, high wheat prices and cheap tractors led farmers to plow millions of acres of native grass, whose roots had held the soil for centuries. [5] When the dry years arrived in the 1930s, the wheat failed, the bare fields lay open, and the wind did the rest.

   The Famous Remedy
   [6] The Prairie States Forestry Project, begun in 1934, planted more than two hundred million trees in belts across the plains, designed to slow the wind and shelter the fields behind them. [7] The effort employed thousands of workers during the Depression and gave the country a picture of recovery: green lines on a brown landscape. [8] A fair reading must grant that the belts did good where they survived, cutting wind speed over the fields beside them.

   The Trees That Failed
   [9] Yet many of the belts failed. Seedlings withered in the continuing drought, and others were planted in soils or climates unsuited to the chosen species. [10] Even a healthy belt protects only a strip of land a few times as wide as the trees are tall, which is small against a plain of millions of acres.

   What Actually Held the Soil
   [11] The Soil Conservation Service, created in 1935, worked through local districts to promote contour plowing, strip cropping and leaving fields in grass, and from 1936 federal programs paid farmers to adopt them. [12] Those payments changed what it cost a farmer to protect the land, and the practices covered the whole field, not a strip beside it. [13] When the rains returned in the early 1940s, the land held, and the wind-blown soil that had darkened Washington became a memory. [14] The lesson of the Dust Bowl is less about planting than about paying.

2. 1.

   Four edits are proposed for the essay. Ren must find the one that would most weaken it for readers. Which edit is it?

   • Print the figure of two hundred million trees in sentence 6 in bold type so it stands out to readers.
   • Rename “The Plow Did It” as “How the Plains Were Plowed,” and change nothing else in that section.
   • Replace “the senators needed no further exhibit” in sentence 1 with a plainer clause saying the storm made the senators listen.
   • Cut sentence 8, which grants that the belts did good where they survived, to keep the section on the famous remedy short.
3. 2.

   A county farm newsletter wants a 150-word version for farmers deciding whether to join a conservation program. Tala must choose the structure. Which is best?

   • Open with Bennett's dust storm over Washington, since a dramatic scene holds attention, and give the rest in a single line.
   • Cut the failed belts altogether, so the newsletter stays positive about conservation and does not discourage farmers.
   • Open with what held the soil, give the failed belts in one sentence as the contrast, and end on the plowing that began the problem.
   • Keep the essay's order, from the plow through the famous remedy to the failures, because farmers need the whole history before they trust the conclusion.

4. The Concrete That Mended Itself (science essay)

   [1] Under its great dome in Rome, the Pantheon has stood since the second century, unreinforced and still intact. [2] Nearly two thousand years of rain, earthquakes and traffic have cracked stone far younger, and engineers have long asked what its builders knew. [3] This essay compares the old answer with a recent one, and asks what either permits us to conclude about concrete today.

   The Old Answer
   [4] The Romans mixed lime with volcanic ash from the region near Naples, and the ash reacted with the lime and water to form a hard, durable binder. [5] That reaction, called pozzolanic, explains why the concrete set even underwater, which is why Roman harbors still stand in places.

   The New Finding
   [6] In 2023, a team led by Admir Masic reported that white chunks of lime, long dismissed as sloppy mixing, may be the secret. [7] If the Romans mixed quicklime into the dry ingredients, the chunks would be left in the concrete, and a crack, as it formed, would pass through them. [8] Water entering the crack would dissolve some of the lime, which would then harden again, sealing the gap. [9] The researchers reproduced the effect in the laboratory, where a cracked sample of the hot-mixed concrete healed within weeks.

   How Far the Finding Goes
   [10] That experiment supports the finding without settling it: a laboratory sample is not a standing dome, and the Pantheon's survival had other causes, including its walls, which are thick and unreinforced, and a climate with little frost. [11] Roman concrete, moreover, was weak in tension, which is why the Romans built domes and arches that squeezed it, and why modern builders add steel.

   What It Means for Builders
   [12] The practical question is therefore narrower than the legend suggests. Modern concrete need not be copied, but a binder that repairs its own cracks could extend the life of a bridge or a seawall.

   Caption
   [13] The coffered dome of the Pantheon in Rome.

5. 3.

   Ari judges the whole essay against its question in sentence 3. Which judgment is best supported?

   • It works, and it shows that hot-mixed lime explains the Pantheon's survival better than the old pozzolanic reaction ever could, as its title implies.
   • It has five parts, moving from the dome to the old answer, the new finding, its limits and the builders, as sentence 3 plans.
   • It fails: it spends two sections on the new finding and then undercuts it, so a reader is left with no answer to the question.
   • It answers: it sets an old answer beside a new one, tests the new one's reach in sentences 10 and 11, then states a narrow conclusion.
6. 4.

   Four edits are proposed. Bo must find the one that would most weaken the essay's answer to the question in sentence 3. Which is it?

   • Rename “The Old Answer” as “The Familiar Explanation,” and change nothing else in that section.
   • Print the word “pozzolanic” in sentence 5 in italic type so readers see that it is a technical term.
   • Cut sentence 10, which says the experiment does not settle the finding, so that the section ends on the laboratory result.
   • Replace “may be the secret” in sentence 6 with “could be part of the secret,” so that the claim matches the caution of the later sections.
7. 5.

   Four more edits are proposed. Esme must find the one that would most weaken the essay's closing section. Which is it?

   • Cut sentence 11, on Roman concrete's weakness in tension, since the limits are about the finding and not about domes.
   • Print the heading “What It Means for Builders” in a larger type size than the other headings.
   • Swap the two examples in sentence 12, so that it names the seawall before the bridge.
   • Add to sentence 12 that a bridge or a seawall is one possible use of a self-healing binder, since the essay does not rank the uses.
8. 6.

   A teacher wants a 120-word version for ninth graders who have not read the essay. Jun must choose the structure. Which is best?

   • Open with the dome's survival, give the two explanations in a line each, and end on the experiment's limits so students stay cautious.
   • Open with the 2023 team's names and affiliations, then give the finding, since students should know who did the science.
   • Open with the laboratory result, since it is the newest and most surprising, and mention the old answer if room remains.
   • Drop the section on how far the finding goes, since students need the result, not the arguments about it.

9. A Planet Voted Out (argument essay)

   [1] When the International Astronomical Union voted in Prague in August 2006 to define a planet, it demoted Pluto, and the public reaction was a mixture of grief and fury. [2] Pluto had been found in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh and had been taught to schoolchildren as the ninth planet for three generations. [3] I will argue that the vote reached the right result by a flawed route, and that the flaw matters more than the result.

   Why the Question Came Up
   [4] The pressure came from discovery. By the early 2000s astronomers had found hundreds of icy bodies beyond Neptune, in the region called the Kuiper belt. [5] In 2005 they announced one, Eris, that was about as large as Pluto and more massive. If Pluto was a planet, then Eris was one too, and so, possibly, were dozens more.

   The Three Tests
   [6] The union's answer was a three-part definition. A planet must orbit the Sun, it must be massive enough to pull itself into a round shape, and it must have cleared the neighborhood around its orbit of other bodies. [7] Pluto passes the first two tests and fails the third, since it shares its orbital zone with many other icy bodies, and so it became a dwarf planet.

   The Objection
   [8] Critics, among them the planetary scientist Alan Stern, object that the third test is vague. Earth shares its neighborhood with thousands of asteroids, and Jupiter with the Trojan asteroids, and no one proposes to demote them. [9] The union's defenders reply that the test is about dominance, not emptiness: Earth and Jupiter hold nearly all the mass in their zones, while Pluto holds only a fraction of the mass in its own. [10] That reply is reasonable, but the definition does not say it.

   A Fairer Verdict
   [11] The test is better read as a question of whether a body shapes its orbital neighborhood or is merely one member of it. [12] On that reading, Pluto is not a planet, and the vote's critics are right only that it should have said so in its text. [13] The public's sense of loss was understandable, but the loss belongs to the old definition, which no longer fit the sky.

10. 7.

    Kira judges the whole essay against the thesis in sentence 3: the vote was right, but its route was flawed. Which judgment is best supported?

    • It is weak: the objection section agrees with the critics, so the essay contradicts the thesis it announces in sentence 3.
    • It supports both halves: the tests justify the result, and the objection shows the flaw, which the last section locates in the wording.
    • It moves from the vote to its cause, the tests, an objection and a verdict, which is the order of a standard argument.
    • It establishes that the vote was right: the three tests are stated, applied to Pluto, and shown to be the one fair way to define a planet for good.
11. 8.

    Luz judges only “The Objection” (sentences 8 to 10) against the thesis. What does that section do for the argument?

    • It sets up the flaw in the thesis: the critics' point, the defense, and then sentence 10, where the answer lives outside the text.
    • It weakens the thesis: by giving the critics' strongest case, it leaves the reader to think the vote was wrong.
    • It settles the question: the defenders' reply is accepted, so the third test is clear and the critics are answered.
    • It repeats the section before it: the three tests are restated and applied to Earth and Jupiter, just as that section applied them to Pluto.
12. 9.

    Four edits are proposed for the Pluto essay. Milo must find the one that would most weaken it. Which is it?

    • Replace “icy bodies” in sentence 4 with “frozen objects” and change nothing else in that section.
    • Print the five headings in a larger type size than the body text so that they are easier to find.
    • Cut sentence 10, “That reply is reasonable, but the definition does not say it,” to keep “The Objection” short and balanced.
    • Print the three tests of sentence 6 as a numbered list so readers can find each test and check it against Pluto, without changing a word.
13. 10.

    A museum label of 80 words must tell families why Pluto is a dwarf planet. Noah must choose the structure. Which is best?

    • Open with Tombaugh's 1930 discovery and the public's affection for the ninth planet, then state the demotion.
    • Open with the 2006 vote, give the three tests in a line each, and say plainly that Pluto fails the third because it shares its zone.
    • Open with the critics' objection, since it shows that scientists disagree, and give the three tests in the space that remains on the label.
    • Keep the essay's order of vote, pressure, tests, objection and verdict, trimmed to a sentence for each.