What a phrase means beyond its words

Grade 9 Reading Worksheet - Challenge Me

Circle the best answer.

1. Read this first

   Airtight (story)

   [1] All winter, Esme's cousin Dario prepared eight minutes of cello music for a conservatory audition, calling the piece a wall built one perfect brick at a time. [2] Each evening the sound came through the guest-room door in short, exact courses, the same four bars again and again, until each sat level on the one below. [3] Their grandmother praised Dario's discipline, and at dinner the family agreed that the playing had become spotless, precise and admirably controlled. [4] By March there was not a crack in the wall, and Dario announced, with some pride, that nothing could get through it now.

   [5] Ms. Varga, Dario's teacher, heard the whole piece without interrupting, and the silence afterward lasted so long that Esme, waiting in the hall, wondered if the lesson was over. [6] "It is a very good wall," Ms. Varga said at last, "but I have stood on the other side of it for eight minutes, and I would like to be let in." [7] Dario argued that a wall with gaps would fall, and Ms. Varga answered that a wall with no door was not a house, only a very careful fence. [8] In the last two weeks the practicing changed: slower in places, then suddenly faster, with breaths between phrases that had not been there before.

   [9] Twice Esme heard a wrong note left uncorrected, hanging in the hall like a window someone forgot to close, while the music went on past it. [10] At the audition one judge wrote that the first page was "controlled to the point of being sealed," and another that the slow middle "finally let some air into the room." [11] Dario was offered a place for the autumn, and at dinner the family praised the playing again, though nobody used the word spotless. [12] Esme decided that Ms. Varga had never asked Dario to tear the wall down, only to build a door into it and leave the door unlatched.

2. 1.

   Ari traces the wall from sentences 1–4 to Ms. Varga's words in sentences 6 and 7. How does that turn change what the earlier stages mean?

   • It shows the wall was weak and full of gaps, so Dario must build it stronger.
   • It confirms them: a flawless wall is exactly what an audition needs, and Ms. Varga admires it.
   • Shutting out every mistake now looks like shutting out the listener as well.
   • It shows the months of careful practice were wasted, since precision itself was the problem.
3. 2.

   Milo sets the family's words in sentence 3 beside the judge's words in sentence 10. How does the second set change our judgment of the first?

   • They show the family was mistaken, since the playing had been poor from the start.
   • Control that sounded admirable now sounds shut in, careful at the cost of feeling.
   • They show the judge praised the first page's control and faulted the looser middle section.
   • Both sets praise the same strength, so the judge agrees with the family about the first page.
4. 3.

   Tala reads sentence 12 after the turn in sentences 6 and 7. What does the door that is left “unlatched” add to the wall?

   • The door gives Dario a way to retreat from listeners whenever a hard passage starts to go wrong.
   • The careful craft stays standing; the change is an opening listeners can always come through.
   • Dario had to tear down the careful playing and start over with no plan at all.
   • The wall is finished at last, with no crack where a mistake could get through.

5. What the Lake Gives Back (story)

   [1] Grandpa Arturo had spent every August at Lake Merrow for fifty summers, and he liked to say the lake was a mirror: it never changed, and it only gave back whatever you brought to it. [2] This year Milo came too, and so did Aunt Celia, a water scientist who spoke of the same lake, with equal affection, as a patient under ten years of careful watch. [3] On the first morning the water lay flat and silver, and Grandpa Arturo pointed to the clouds in it, as perfect as ever. [4] Aunt Celia held a sample tube against the light and said only that the patient looked a little flushed.

   [5] By the third day a green film had spread along the shallows, so thick that Milo's paddle came up dripping something like pea soup. [6] Grandpa Arturo called it a bit of summer scum and said the mirror needed polishing now and then, the way any glass does. [7] Aunt Celia explained that the film was algae feeding on fertilizer washed down from new lawns and fields upstream, and that a bloom this thick could use up the oxygen fish need. [8] She called it a fever, not a stain, and said a fever is how a body reports what has been done to it.

   [9] Grandpa Arturo did not answer, but that evening he sat on the dock longer than usual, looking at water where the clouds no longer showed. [10] The next morning he asked Aunt Celia how a lake gets well and wrote her answers on a grocery receipt: grass strips along the banks, less fertilizer upstream, and time. [11] On the drive home he told a neighbor at the gas station that the lake was running a fever and that the county ought to send it a doctor. [12] Milo said nothing, but all the way past the bright new lawns along the river, Milo kept turning over the old saying.

6. 4.

   Kira compares Grandpa Arturo's “mirror” (sentences 1 and 6) with the “fever” in sentence 11. What does the change in figures show about Grandpa Arturo?

   • Grandpa Arturo moves from treating the lake as sick to seeing it as a perfect, unchanging glass again.
   • A lake that only reflects becomes, in Grandpa Arturo's eyes, one that can be harmed and healed.
   • Both figures hold one view: a timeless lake that needs only a little cleaning now and then.
   • Grandpa Arturo gives up on the lake, deciding it is ruined and not worth visiting.
7. 5.

   Grandpa Arturo says the lake “only gave back whatever you brought to it.” Luz rereads the saying after sentences 7 and 12. What second meaning does it take on?

   • Meant as calm, it also names the bloom: the lake returned the fertilizer brought to it.
   • It keeps Grandpa Arturo's meaning: the calm lake reflects the sky and whoever stands beside it.
   • It comes to mean the lake can wash away whatever harm people bring to it, given time.
   • It comes to mean the lake rewards families who return each summer with a good visit.
8. 6.

   Esme compares Grandpa Arturo's “summer scum” and “polishing” (sentence 6) with Aunt Celia's “flushed” and “a fever, not a stain.” What does the contrast do?

   • His words make the film a sign of illness in the lake, while hers make it dirt on clean glass.
   • Both sets of words treat the film as a small problem that will clear up on its own.
   • His words make the film a smudge on the surface; hers make it a sign of harm from elsewhere.
   • Her words show the lake is past saving and that the family should leave at once.
9. 7.

   Noah reads sentence 11, where Grandpa Arturo says the county “ought to send it a doctor.” Given sentences 8 and 10, what does the line mean?

   • Half a joke, it is also a real demand that the county act on the causes upstream.
   • It is just a joke: no doctor treats lakes, so it teases Aunt Celia's way of talking.
   • It shows Grandpa Arturo still thinks a bit of polishing will set the lake right.
   • It asks the county to pay Aunt Celia to keep watching the lake each August.

10. Make Yourself at Home (story)

    [1] When Hana arrived from Osaka in September, Tala's family said "Make yourself at home," the kind of thing families say without expecting anyone to take it seriously. [2] Hana took it seriously: within a week the shoes stood in a line, the towels hung folded in thirds, and keys lived in a small dish on the counter. [3] Tala, who had not been consulted, described the new habits to friends as fussy, stiff and a little bossy, the rules of a hotel nobody had asked to check into. [4] Dinner felt to Tala like a stage where everyone suddenly had to remember lines, and passing dishes to the left became a small performance nobody could skip.

    [5] In October Tala lost the house key a third time and waited an hour on the rainy porch, while the little dish sat inside, empty and, it seemed, smug. [6] The next week Tala quietly began dropping the key in the dish and lining up the shoes, first to avoid the porch and later for no reason at all. [7] Hana noticed and said nothing, which Tala later decided was the most polite thing anyone in the house had ever done. [8] By December dinner had stopped feeling like a performance; the dishes went left as naturally as breathing, and nobody, Tala included, could remember learning the steps.

    [9] When Hana left in June, the family said at the same door, meaning it now, that the house would always be a home to return to. [10] Through the summer the shoes stayed in their line, the dish kept the keys, and the towels kept their thirds. [11] In August a visiting cousin asked why the house was so particular, and Tala, a little surprised, explained that the house was just being careful with the people in it. [12] Then Tala handed the cousin a towel folded in thirds, said "Make yourself at home," and for the first time meant something particular by it.

11. 8.

    Pia traces the stage comparison from sentence 4 to sentence 8. How does sentence 8 turn it?

    • Tala has given up and now pretends to enjoy the dinners to please Hana.
    • Dinner is still a performance, but now the family knows its lines and acts them better.
    • Learned lines become steps no one remembers learning, so the strain of a show turns to ease.
    • The easy rhythm of the early dinners hardens into a stiff show that no one may skip.
12. 9.

    Ren compares “Make yourself at home” in sentence 1 with the same words in sentence 12. What does the phrase mean the second time?

    • It warns the cousin to follow the house's rules or find somewhere else to stay.
    • Not empty courtesy now: it invites the cousin into the careful ways Hana brought.
    • It tells the cousin to relax and ignore the house's ways, just as at home.
    • The same as in sentence 1: a friendly greeting that no one expects a guest to act on.
13. 10.

    In sentence 11 the cousin asks why the house is “so particular.” Zee sets this beside sentence 3. What does the cousin's word show?

    • The cousin now holds Tala's old view, so Tala answers the doubt Tala once voiced.
    • The cousin and Tala both praise the habits, in different words for the same care.
    • The cousin will stay on and learn the habits, just as Hana once did.
    • The cousin admires the habits that Tala, by August, has come to find fussy.