Reading Comprehension · Social Science
PrepTest 152 · Section 3 · Passage 1
Questions 1–6
Before you start
Open PrepTest 152, Section 3 in your official copy from LSAC and read the passage for Questions 1–6, using the structure guide below. The passage is not reprinted here.
Structure guide
- P1: introduces the subject, mentions an old dismissive view of it, then announces that new evidence shows it was remarkable
- P2: lists several features as support for the new view
- P3: adds more features as further support
- P4: raises an open question, presents a long-standing explanation, knocks it down with several pieces of evidence, and offers more likely alternatives in a cautious voice
Step 2 · The kid passage
The Quiet Corner Club
The Quiet Corner Club. For years, everyone at our school thought the old Quiet Corner Club was boring. It never won a trophy, and it never hung a banner. But last month Ms. Rivera found the club's lost notebooks in a closet, and they show the club was one of a kind. It did things no other club ever did all at once.
The members took turns being leader, so nobody was the boss. The notebooks show no arguments over who sat where, and the club never once kept a list of punishments.
The club also invented the first book swap at our school, and it shipped books back and forth with three other schools. Thank-you cards from those schools prove the swaps happened.
So why did the club stop meeting? Nobody is sure, and the big kids argue about it. The old story, which Marcus still tells at lunch, says the Kickball Crew chased the club out of its corner. But no notebook mentions any fight, and the corner shows no scuffs or broken chairs. Better yet, the notebooks prove the Kickball Crew did not even exist back then. The notebooks also show the club started up again later, at the library across town. That suggests the members simply moved because the corner became hard to use. Maybe the roof leaked, and there are water stains on the ceiling tiles. Or maybe loud construction next door made reading impossible.
Step 4 · The courtroom tale
The Case of the Empty Garden
Your Honor, said Mr. Whitfield, snapping his suspenders, the town says my client, Mr. Pell, trampled the community garden years ago, and that is why it closed. That story is in every town newsletter. But look at the facts. No one ever reported a single footprint. Mr. Pell's train ticket shows he was three states away that summer. And the same gardeners started a new garden a mile south the next spring. Gardeners do not move because of a ghost. They move because their soil dries up or the creek changes course. The judge peered over her glasses. So the old story falls apart, and a plainer cause fits better? Exactly, Your Honor. Case dismissed.