Two themes that build on each other
Grade 11 Reading Worksheet
Circle the best answer.
Read this first
The Vat at Harrow Mill (story about an invented dye works)
[1] At Harrow Mill the indigo vat was older than the building around it, a stone-ringed pit that Hanneke Vos had inherited from her aunt together with eleven rules for its care, none of them written down. [2] The vat must be fed bran and lime on Thursdays, stirred from left to right and never after dusk, and tasted on a fingertip before any cloth went in, a habit that had stained the ends of her fingers a permanent blue. [3] Idris, who had come to the mill from a chemistry course at the technical college, copied every rule into a notebook and then, because he could not help himself, began to record what the vat did on each day the rules were obeyed. [4] Hanneke watched the notebook fill with the patience of a woman watching a child count stairs. [5] "The vat does not read," she told him once, and Idris, who had been about to ask why dusk mattered, closed the book instead.
[6] In February the vat turned dull, and the cloth that came out of it was a flat gray-blue that faded in the first wash. [7] Hanneke fed it, stirred it and tasted it exactly as she had been taught, and the gray only deepened. [8] The wholesale buyer, who had stood in the yard for three seasons admiring the vat, sent back two orders without a letter. [9] Idris laid his notebook on the rim and read it aloud, column by column, until Hanneke stopped him at the entry for the eleventh of January. [10] It recorded a stirring at half past four, an hour before dusk in a week when dusk fell early, while the vat was still giving up the last of its air. [11] Neither of them spoke of blame.
[12] That spring Hanneke began to say each rule aloud as Idris tested it, the rule first and the reading beside it, as though a hymn were being set against a ruler. [13] Six of the eleven proved to be exactly what the vat needed. [14] Four proved to be habits of her aunt's and could be dropped, and one, the fingertip, proved to be the only test that told them the vat's acidity within the hour. [15] When the buyer returned in June the cloth came out the deep blue of deep water, and Hanneke trained a second apprentice by handing her the notebook and the vat in the same week. [16] The eleven rules were still on the wall, but beside each of them hung a small slip of paper in Idris's hand.
The story builds two lines: keeping the craft as taught, and testing what was taught. Kira asks how the second line shapes the first. Which statement explains it?
- Testing wears keeping down: each reading Idris takes replaces a rule Hanneke was taught, until little of the inheritance is left.
- Keeping makes testing possible: Idris can measure the vat usefully because Hanneke's rules gave him something steady to watch.
- Testing replaces keeping: once the vat has been measured, the craft no longer needs the rules Hanneke inherited.
- Testing sorts what keeping must hold: once Idris learns which rules the vat needs, the craft is kept for its reasons.
Luz wants one statement for the fuller idea the two lines make together. Which statement gives it?
- Any tradition survives when the people who receive it are free to question every part of it, whatever the tradition.
- A craft needs both loyalty and measurement: Hanneke's rules shaped the vat, and Idris's notebook explained what the vat did.
- A craft is truly inherited when it is examined: the learner who finds why each rule exists keeps the craft best.
- An old dyer and a young chemist each have something to teach the other, so a mill does best when it has both of them.
Milo tests this claim: Idris's testing sorts the vat's rules into those it needs and those that are only habit. Which two sentences prove it, and not a rival reading?
- [1] and [2]
- [13] and [14]
- [8] and [15]
- [4] and [5]
The Coat Table (story about an invented church coat exchange)
[1] The coat exchange at Saint Brendan's ran from the first cold Saturday in November until the basement was empty, and for eleven years Adaeze Obi had run it from a card table beside the stairs. [2] She had a gift for sizing a stranger at a glance, and she kept the best coats on a rack behind her, wool and down and one camel-hair overcoat with its tags still on, so that families who arrived worried and early would leave warm. [3] She handed each coat across the table with the sleeves already turned out, as her mother had once handed her a coat at the door of a school she did not want to attend. [4] Most people thanked her and put the coat on. [5] A few stood a moment longer than thanks required.
[6] On the second Saturday an older man in a gray suit jacket too thin for the weather took the camel overcoat in both hands and laid it gently back on the table. [7] He said it was a fine coat, and that he would be happy to find his own. [8] Adaeze, who had not been refused in eleven years, heard in the remark an ingratitude he had surely not intended, and she spent most of the afternoon declining to think about it. [9] He went down the long tables of folded donations in no hurry, turning over cuffs, and returned with a plain brown parka a size too large and the expression of a man who had bought something.
[10] On the third Saturday Adaeze took the rack away. [11] She spread every coat across the tables, sleeves open and sizes marked in pen, and stood at the far end with a pot of coffee, answering only when someone asked. [12] The line moved more slowly, and by noon the tables were nearly bare, though the camel overcoat still hung beside the stairs. [13] A girl of about nine tried it on, vanished inside it, and was told by her mother in two languages that it was impossible. [14] She wore it out anyway, the cuffs rolled four times, and her mother followed her up the stairs carrying the parka she had picked for herself.
The story builds two lines: giving people what they need, and letting them choose. Zee asks how the second line shapes the first. Which statement explains it?
- Choosing completes giving: a coat is truly given only once the person taking it has been free to leave it.
- The exchange gives coats to families in need, and, as a separate point, one man prefers to pick his own coat.
- Choosing works against giving: once Adaeze lets people pick, the coats they most need are left unclaimed and the exchange fails.
- Choosing replaces giving: a coat people find alone is worth more than any coat that someone hands them.
Ari wants one statement for the fuller idea the two lines make together. Which statement gives it?
- Charity harms the people it helps unless they are consulted at every step, so organizers should hand out nothing without asking.
- A gift is complete only when it can be declined: generosity is measured by the receiver's freedom as well as the giver's supply.
- Generosity means matching people with what they need, which Adaeze does with her eye for sizes and her rack of the best coats.
- Adaeze learns that an organizer proud of her judgment can still grow humble when someone turns down what she offers.
Jun tests this claim: Adaeze's change makes her giving depend on the families' freedom to choose. Which two sentences prove it, and not a rival reading?
- [2] and [3]
- [11] and [14]
- [12] and [13]
- [7] and [8]
Number 14 (story about an invented bus depot)
[1] The depot kept its custom of holding a wake in the drivers' room, with the lockers shut, the coffee urn polished and a photograph of the driver they had lost propped against the schedule board. [2] Leopold Marsh had driven the number 14 for thirty-four years and had been known for two things, a laugh that arrived a second before his jokes did and a refusal, absolute and unexplained, to announce a stop aloud if the passenger was able to read. [3] His widow, Constance, had asked that nobody speak at the service, which lasted eleven minutes, and so the depot's mourning had been postponed to this room. [4] The first hour was quiet. [5] Men and women in uniform shirts held paper cups and addressed one another's shoes.
[6] Then Dariusz, who had trained under Leopold, remarked that the old man had once missed the airport stop on purpose because a woman at a window had looked so happy. [7] A dispatcher added that Leopold had once driven the whole route backward for a loop after an argument about the shortest way to the hospital, and had been right. [8] The room began to loosen; somebody laughed before the end of a sentence, then somebody else did, and Constance, who had stood by the door in her good coat, sat down on a bench and put a hand over her mouth. [9] Dariusz glanced at her and stopped. [10] "No," she said, "go on. He would have been so bored by now."
[11] The stories grew less careful. [12] A mechanic confessed that the heater on the number 14 had never worked and that Leopold had told every winter passenger it was a feature. [13] A driver recited, word for word, the announcement he made at the last stop each night, which was only "Everybody off who is going," and her voice broke on the final word, and no one corrected her. [14] By ten o'clock the urn was empty and the room was loud, and Constance, who had refused to speak at the service, was telling the airport story from the beginning, in a version where the woman at the window had been her.
Esme wants one statement for the fuller idea the two lines make together. Which statement gives it?
- Loss can be borne by laughing: comic stories about the lost keep the person present and let the grief be said.
- Constance, who would not speak at the service, shows that a widow may need others to begin before she can speak.
- A wake can hold sadness and amusement at once, as the drivers show by hushing at some moments and laughing at others.
- Mourning a colleague is a shared duty, and the depot honors it by gathering, by keeping quiet and by following Constance's wishes.
Kira tests this claim: the jokes at the wake are the way the depot grieves, not a break from grieving. Which two sentences prove it, and not a rival reading?
- [3] and [4]
- [2] and [12]
- [13] and [14]
- [4] and [8]
Open Strings (story about an invented violin lesson)
[1] Felix Aurand had played second violin in a symphony orchestra for thirty-nine years, and when his hands began to shake he accepted his granddaughter's request to teach her, on the condition that lessons be held on Tuesdays and that she never ask him to play. [2] Odette, who was seven, agreed to both terms and within the month broke the second by asking him to show her where the note was. [3] He lifted the violin as though it were a sleeping animal, played four measures of a folk melody with a tone so even that Odette forgot to be impressed, and set it down. [4] "Like that," he said, and then, reading her face, "No. Not like that. Like what you can do."
[5] Her bow arm was a rope, and her fingers landed a quarter tone flat on nearly every string. [6] He corrected her for six Tuesdays, standing behind her chair with his hand over hers, until her intonation was clean and her face had become the careful face of a person afraid of the next wrong note. [7] On the seventh Tuesday she played the melody correctly from beginning to end, and he found nothing to say, and she lowered the bow and asked whether it was supposed to feel like that. [8] The question hung in the kitchen with the smell of toast. [9] He told her to play it wrong.
[10] She laughed and played it wrong on purpose, sliding between the notes like a child on a banister, and halfway through the second phrase a sound came out of the instrument that neither of them had expected, thin and wavering and entirely alive. [11] Felix asked her to do it again. [12] She could not; the accident would not come twice, and she said so, with some annoyance. [13] He nodded as though she had said something wise, and took the violin from her, not to show her anything but to listen, and turned it over in his unsteady hands, and plucked the open strings, and asked the instrument a question in a very low voice.
Tala wants one statement for the fuller idea the two lines make together. Which statement gives it?
- Exactness alone can feel lifeless: a skill is complete only when its owner can still be surprised by a wrong note.
- Playing an instrument takes careful practice and also a willingness to play badly, as six corrected Tuesdays and one wrong note show.
- Exactness is a discipline built slowly, as Felix shows by standing behind Odette's chair and correcting her each Tuesday.
- Art made correctly is lifeless, and any worthwhile sound in music arrives by accident rather than by training.
Luz tests this claim: Odette's accident has meaning only against the exactness six Tuesdays of lessons built. Which two sentences prove it, and not a rival reading?
- [6] and [10]
- [3] and [4]
- [5] and [6]
- [7] and [9]