What a section or feature does for the whole article
Grade 9 Reading Worksheet
Circle the best answer.
Read this first
Who Owns Noon? (essay)
[1] For most of the nineteenth century, noon in an American town was the moment the sun stood highest over that town, so noon in Boston arrived several minutes before noon in New York. [2] Nobody found this strange, because a farmer, a shopkeeper and a schoolteacher needed only to agree with their neighbors, and the sun kept everyone in step. [3] The arrangement began to fail only when people and goods started to travel faster than the sun appeared to move.
[4] Railroads made the trouble visible, since each line ran on the time of its home city, and a single station might post the clocks of several companies at once. [5] A traveler changing trains could miss a connection without ever being late by any one clock, and dispatchers who kept trains apart on shared tracks needed every crew to read the same hour. [6] On November 18, 1883, the railroads of the United States and Canada adopted a handful of standard zones, and towns along the lines were expected to set their clocks to match.
[7] It would be easy to tell this as the story of order replacing chaos, and the new system certainly made schedules safer and simpler. [8] Yet the change was made by private companies rather than by any government, and Congress did not write time zones into law until 1918. [9] Some cities kept their own local time for years, and at least one newspaper grumbled that the sun was no longer in charge of the day.
[10] Those complaints sound quaint now, but they point to what the confusion really was. [11] Local time had never confused the people who lived by it; it confused only those who needed distant places to act as one. [12] Standard time is therefore less a discovery about clocks than an agreement about whose needs come first, and an agreement of that kind has winners as well as people who simply go along.
Ari reads sentences 4–6 as an argument that standard time fixed a real problem. Which part of the essay limits that argument, and how?
- Sentences 1–3: local time worked so well for towns that the railroads in sentences 4–6 simply invented a problem.
- Sentences 8–9: private companies made the change and some cities resisted, so it served some needs first.
- Sentence 6: it gives the exact date, November 18, 1883, when the railroads adopted the zones.
- Sentence 7: by admitting the system made schedules safer, it limits the case for standard time.
Sentence 7 grants that standard time "certainly made schedules safer and simpler." Why does Bo think the writer places this concession just before sentences 8–9?
- It shows that the writer has changed sides and now thinks the railroads were simply right.
- It shows that the cities and the newspaper in sentence 9 were wrong to resist the railroads.
- By granting the real benefit first, it makes the turn in sentences 8–9 read as fair rather than one-sided.
- It closes the account of the railroads, so readers know the history is finished before the complaints begin.
Esme notices that sentences 10–11 return to the confusion of sentences 4–5. How do they change the way those earlier sentences read?
- They show that the railroads made up the danger of trains meeting on shared tracks.
- They repeat that dispatchers needed every crew on shared tracks to read the same hour.
- The missed connections still read as proof that local time was confusing, even to people in town.
- The missed connections now read as one group's problem, not as proof that local time confused everyone.
Sentence 2 says townspeople "needed only to agree with their neighbors." Jun wonders how this early detail serves the claim in sentence 12. How does it?
- It explains why noon came a few minutes earlier in Boston than it did in New York.
- It names one group's needs early, so the railroads' needs can later be weighed against theirs.
- It shows that local time was better than standard time for Americans, both in town and on the railroads.
- It shows that farmers and shopkeepers were the first people to ask for standard zones.
The Right Idea, Too Soon (essay)
[1] In 1912 the German scientist Alfred Wegener proposed that the continents had once been joined and had slowly drifted apart. [2] The evidence he gathered was striking: the coasts of South America and Africa fit like torn halves of a page, and the same fossils turned up on lands now separated by oceans. [3] Most geologists rejected the idea for decades, and their rejection is often told as a warning about experts who refuse to see what is in front of them.
[4] That version is satisfying, but it leaves out what the critics actually said. [5] Wegener argued that the continents plowed through the solid ocean floor, and physicists showed that no force he named was nearly strong enough to move them that way. [6] The critics, in other words, were not denying the matching coastlines; they were refusing a cause that could not work. [7] Some critics did mock Wegener, who was trained in the study of weather rather than rocks, and their tone has not aged well. [8] Still, a scientist can be right about what happened and wrong about how, and a wrong "how" can sink a right "what."
[9] The idea returned only after the ocean floor was mapped in the 1950s, when the geologist Marie Tharp and her colleague Bruce Heezen traced a great rift valley down the middle of the Atlantic. [10] In the early 1960s, the geologist Harry Hess proposed that new crust forms at such ridges and spreads outward, carrying the continents along instead of letting them plow through anything. [11] Bands of magnetized rock on either side of the ridges, which recorded reversals of the planet's magnetic field, soon confirmed that the sea floor was spreading. [12] By the end of the decade, the theory of plate tectonics had become the foundation of modern geology.
[13] Seen this way, the long rejection looks less like stubbornness than like a fair demand, even though the demand delayed a true idea.
Sentence 7 admits that some critics "did mock Wegener." Kira asks why the writer puts this admission after sentences 5–6 rather than before them.
- It admits that the warning in sentence 3 about stubborn experts was right after all.
- With the critics' real reason already clear, the mockery reads as a flaw only in their tone, not in their case.
- It tells readers that Wegener was trained in the study of weather rather than rocks.
- It shows that the physics in sentence 5 was really only a cover for the scorn that some critics felt for Wegener.
Sentence 4 turns on "That version is satisfying." Noah asks why the writer tells the familiar version in sentence 3 before correcting it.
- To show that stories about stubborn experts are false, starting with this one.
- Readers likely hold the familiar version, so stating it first lets the correction meet it head-on.
- To show that the writer agrees the experts were stubborn, before admitting some doubts.
- To give the decades of rejection in their proper order, so that the timeline of the essay stays clear.
The Number That Stuck (essay)
[1] In 1993 the psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and two colleagues published a study of violin students at a music academy in Berlin. [2] They found that the students their teachers judged best had practiced alone about ten thousand hours, on average, by age twenty, clearly more than students judged merely good. [3] Fifteen years later, the writer Malcolm Gladwell turned that average into a "ten-thousand-hour rule" in a best-selling book, and the phrase spread to sports clubs, offices and schools.
[4] The rule has an obvious appeal, because it promises that greatness comes from effort that anyone can choose to spend. [5] Ericsson himself objected, however, pointing out that ten thousand was an average, not a threshold, and that many of the best violinists had practiced less. [6] He also said that the hours counted only as "deliberate practice," meaning focused work on weaknesses with a teacher's feedback, not just time spent playing.
[7] None of this means that practice is overrated, and none of the researchers has suggested that a violinist could skip it. [8] In 2014, though, a team that pooled dozens of studies found that practice explained only part of the gap between performers: roughly a fifth in music, and far less in many jobs. [9] The age when people started, the quality of their teaching, and traits that researchers still argue about all seemed to play a part.
[10] The original study looks different in this light. [11] Every student in it had already won a place at a selective academy, so the study compared people who had all practiced a lot and had all been chosen for their promise. [12] The ten thousand hours described a group that had cleared other hurdles first, which is why the number could never work as a promise to everyone else.
Sentence 4 says the rule promises greatness through "effort that anyone can choose to spend." Pia asks which part narrows what kind of effort counts. Which part, and how?
- Sentence 3: it shows the rule spreading into sports clubs, offices and schools.
- Sentence 7: it says practice is not overrated, so any kind of effort still counts.
- Sentence 8: practice explained only part of the gap between performers.
- Sentence 6: only focused work on weaknesses with feedback counts, not time spent playing.
Sentence 7 grants that "none of this means that practice is overrated." Ren asks why this comes just before the 2014 findings in sentence 8.
- It blocks the reading that practice is useless, so the findings limit the rule, not practice.
- It shows that the 2014 team was wrong about how much practice matters in many jobs.
- It explains when the team combined the studies and what the team found.
- It shows that the writer, after its doubts, now accepts the ten-thousand-hour rule as it was told.
Tala sees that sentences 10–12 return to the 1993 study. How do they change the way sentence 2 reads?
- The ten thousand hours now reads as the amount that any student needs to reach the top.
- They repeat that the top students practiced more than the students judged merely good.
- The average now reads as a fact about students already chosen, not a promise to anyone.
- They show that the 1993 study was badly done and should now be ignored.
Zee asks what the essay would lose if sentences 1–2 were cut and it began with Gladwell's rule in sentence 3.
- The original average, which the later parts need in order to show how the rule bent it.
- Ericsson's objection that ten thousand hours was an average rather than a threshold to reach.
- The detail that the academy was in Berlin, which sets the study in a real place.
- The proof that the rule was correct when it was first written down.