06/06/2021

Reading Comprehension Test

Passage 1
On March 25, 1911, one of the five hundred employees of the
Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York noticed that a rag bin near her
eighth-floor work station was on fire. Workers immediately tried to
extinguish the flames. Their efforts proved futile, as piles of fabric
5 ignited all over the eighth floor. The manager of the factory ordered
his employees to unroll the fire extinguisher hose, but they found it
rotted and useless.
The shirt factory occupied the top three floors of the ten-story
Asch Building. The seventy employees who worked on the tenth floor
10 escaped the fire by way of the staircases or climbed onto the roof,
where students from New York University, located cross the street,
stretched ladders over to the Asch Building. The 260 workers on the
ninth floor had the worst luck of all. Although the eighth floor workers
tried to warn them by telephone, the call did not reach them, and by
15 the time they learned about the fire, their routes of escape were
mostly blocked. Some managed to climb down the cables of the
freight elevator. Others crammed into the narrow stairway. Still
others climbed onto the single, inadequately constructed fire
escape. But that spindly structure could not support the weight of
20 hundreds of people, and it separated from the wall, falling to the
ground and carrying many people with it.
To combat the disaster, the New York Fire Department sent
thirty-five pieces of equipment, including a hook and ladder. The
young women trapped on the ninth-floor window ledge watched in
25 horror as the ladder, fully raised, stopped far below them, reaching
only as far as the sixth floor.
Within minutes, the factory, a fire trap typical of the period's
working conditions, was consumed by flame, killing 146 workers,
mostly immigrant women. City officials set up a temporary morgue on
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30 26th Street, and over the next few days streams of survivors filed
through the building to identify the dead.
The Triangle Shirtwaist fire brought a public outcry for laws to
regulate the safety of working conditions. The New York Factory
Investigating Commission was formed to examine the working
35 conditions in factories throughout the state. Their report introduced
many new regulations. The fire had occurred during an era of
progressive reform that was beginning to sweep the nation, as people
decided that government had a responsibility to ensure that private
industry protected the welfare of working people.

1. What does the passage mainly discuss?

(A) The causes of a fire in a shirt factory
(B) Working conditions in New York City
(C) Escaping from a fire in a shirt factory
(D) The events surrounding a tragic fire
2. The word "ignited" in line 5 could best be replaced by _____.
(A) became wet
(B) caught fire
(C) exploded
(D) spread
3. According to the passage, the fire began _____.
(A) on the ninth floor
(B) when a worker dropped a cigarette
(C) when some rags started burning
(D) when a pile of fabric rotted
4. Why does the author mention the fire extinguisher hose in lines 5-7?
(A) To emphasize the unsafe working conditions
(B) To show the manager's competence
(C) To illustrate the factory's modern technology
(D) To explain how the fire was eventually put out
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5. How did many workers on the top floor manage to escape?

(A) On the fire escape
(B) On the elevator
(C) On ladders
(D) On ropes
6. The phrase "Still others" in lines 17-18 refers to _____.
(A) the eighth floor workers
(B) the ninth floor workers
(C) the routes of escape
(D) the people in the freight elevator
7. The word "spindly" in line 19 is closest in meaning to _____.
(A) frail
(B) wooden
(C) ugly
(D) ancient
8. It can be inferred from paragraph 4 that _____.
(A) New York had a well-equipped fire department
(B) fire fighters were able to rescue the women on the ninth floor
(C) the women on the window ledge probably died
(D) the women probably took the stairs down to the sixth floor
9. According to the passage, most of the workers who died in the fire _____.
(A) were university students.
(B) had only worked there a short time.
(C) worked on the tenth floor.
(D) were immigrant women.
10. The phrase "beginning to sweep the nation" in line 37 means _____.
(A) changing politics
(B) becoming more popular
(C) investigating the government
(D) starting a controversy
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11. Which of the following could NOT be inferred from the passage?
(A) The Triangle Shirtwaist fire influenced public opinion.
(B) The Triangle Shirtwaist factory was rebuilt.
(C) After the fire, new regulations improved working conditions in factories.
(D) Disasters can lead to a demand for reform.

Passage 2
In the history of technology, computers and calculators were
innovative developments. They are essentially different from all other
machines because they have a memory. This memory stores instructions
and information. In a calculator, the instructions are the various
5 functions of arithmetic, which are permanently remembered by the
machine and cannot be altered or added to. The information consists of
the numbers keyed in.
An electronic pocket calculator can perform almost instant
arithmetic. A calculator requires an input unit to feed in numbers, a
10 processing unit to make the calculation, a memory unit, and an output
unit to display the result. The calculator is powered by a small battery or
by a panel of solar cells. Inside is a microchip that contains the memory
and processing units and also controls the input unit, which is the
keyboard, and the output unit, which is the display.
15 The input unit has keys for numbers and operations. Beneath the keys
is a printed circuit board containing a set of contacts for each key.
Pressing a key closes the contacts and sends a signal along a pair of lines
in the circuit board to the processing unit, in which the binary code for
that key is stored in the memory. The processing unit also sends the
20 code to the display. Each key is connected by a different pair of lines to
the processing unit, which repeatedly checks the lines to find out when
a pair is linked by a key.
The memory unit stores the arithmetic instructions for the
processing unit and holds the temporary results that occur during
25 calculation. Storage cells in the memory unit hold the binary codes for
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the keys that have been pressed. The number codes, together with the
operation code for the plus key, are held in temporary cells until the
processing unit requires them.
When the equals key is pressed, it sends a signal to the processing
30 unit. This takes the operation code--for example, addition-and the two
numbers being held in the memory unit and performs the operation on
the two numbers. A full adder does the addition, and the result goes to
the decoder in the calculator's microchip. This code is then sent to the
liquid crystal display unit, which shows the result, or output, of the
35 calculation.

12. What is the main purpose of the passage?

(A) To summarize the history of technology.
(B) To discuss innovative developments in technology.
(C) To explain how a calculator works.
(D) To compare computers and calculators with other machines.
13. The word "innovative" in line 2 could best be replaced by _____.
(A) revolutionary
(B) complicated
(C) important
(D) recent
14. What can be inferred about machines that are not calculators or computers?
(A) They are older than computers.
(B) They cannot store information in a memory.
(C) They have simple memory and processing units.
(D) They are less expensive than computers.
15. In what part of the calculator are the processing and memory units?
(A) The battery
(B) The solar cells
(C) The output unit
(D) The microchip
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16. The word "contacts" in line 16 is closest in meaning to _____.

(A) locations
(B) connections
(C) commands
(D) codes
17. According to the passage, one function of the memory unit is _____.
(A) to send codes to the display unit.
(B) to control the keyboard.
(C) to store temporary results during calculation.
(D) to alter basic arithmetic instructions.
18. The word "This" in line 30 refers to _____.
(A) the equals key
(B) the plus key
(C) the memory unit
(D) the processing unit
19. Which of-the following could NOT be said about calculators?
(A) Calculators require a lot of instructions to operate quickly.
(B) Calculators and computers are similar.
(C) The calculator's "thinking" takes place in the processing and memory units.
(D) Pressing a key activates a calculator.
20. Where in the passage does the author list all of the parts of a calculator?
(A) Paragraph 2
(B) Paragraph 3
(C) Paragraph 4
(D) Paragraph 5