Exam 1: Acquiring the Keys to Academic Success

Effective and Ineffective Paraphrasing Directions: Read each passage.Then select the letter of the best paraphrase. Dean Kamen, award-winning inventor, has created a new battery-powered personal transportation device called the Segway Human Transporter.This device averages eight miles an hour, which is three times faster than walking pace, weighs only sixty-five pounds, and runs about fifteen miles for the cost of about ten cents' worth of electricity.Mr.Kamen says that the Segway could cause cities to be redesigned, help wean the world from oil dependence, compress time and space for pedestrians, and raise productivity for corporations and government agencies. (Adapted from Amy Harmon, "An Inventor Unveils His Mysterious Personal Transportation Device,"  The New York Times, Dec.3, 2001, www.nytimes.com.) Paraphrase

Effective and Ineffective Paraphrasing Directions: Read each passage.Then select the letter of the best paraphrase. The first American flag flown by the patriots of the Revolutionary War was not the Stars and Stripes.It was a banner created by South Carolina Colonel Christopher Gadsden, a bright yellow flag that featured an ominous coiled rattlesnake and the words "Don't Tread On Me." Gadsden's flag symbolized the spirit of the American Revolution and became the banner of the militia* that fought and died for liberty. * militias: armies composed of ordinary citizens, rather than soldiers Paraphrase

Effective and Ineffective Paraphrasing Directions: Read each passage.Then select the letter of the best paraphrase. Jet travel has altered the way Americans lived and thought more than anything else, including the Internet.By enhancing mobility, jets-like railroads in the nineteenth century-advanced a truly national market.They made it possible for Disney World and Las Vegas to become national destinations, and they allowed Harvard to recruit from the West Coast and Stanford from the East. (Adapted from Robert J.Samuelson, "Requiem for the Jet Age?" Newsweek, November 26, 2001, p.61.) Paraphrase

Effective and Ineffective Paraphrasing Directions: Read each passage.Then select the letter of the best paraphrase. University of Memphis professor David Hildebrand says that the current furor over Harvard University's tendency to inflate students' grades reveals the educational community's unhealthy preoccupation with carrot-and-stick motivators.According to Hildebrand, true excellence is never the result of competition for high grades.Therefore, colleges and universities should abandon their debate about grade inflation and figure out how to inspire students to achieve for achievement's sake. (Adapted from Hildebrand's letter to The New York Times, December 7, 2001.) Paraphrase

Selection A Copernicus (1473-1543): An Unintentional Heretic * The first fruit of the new concern with mathematics and experimentation in the sixteenth century was the work of the Polish priest and astronomer Nicholas Copernicus , who in fact had no intention of making an aggressive attack on the received ideas of his day.In his On the Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies , published in 1543 and dedicated to the pope, Copernicus generally accepted the traditional conception of a finite universe characterized by a series of heavens, the moon, the planets, and the fixed stars.Copernicus' innovation was to substitute the sun for the earth at the center of the universe .For him the earth became one of the planets and, like other bodies, circulated around the center .Copernicus' primary reason for switching the position of the sun and earth was that this conception furnished a better explanation of the observed motions of the heavens , reducing the need to ascribe exceptional movements to individual bodies as in the earth-centered theory.According to the deeply religious Copernicus , the ability of his sun-centered theory to explain the appearances and to show heavenly motion to be simple and regular magnified the perfection of the divine creator .Copernicus presented his ideas as a hypothesis ; but over succeeding decades, as new observations were recorded and found to support it, some thinkers came to insist that the theory was proved .The ancient picture of the universe gradually disintegrated . Adapted from Mary Ann Frese Witt et al., The Humanities. Vol.II, 5th ed.Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997, p.131. * heretic: person who challenges religious law or tradition Selection B Copernicus (1473-1543): An Unintentional Heretic The first fruit of the new concern with mathematics and experimentation in the sixteenth century was the work of the Polish priest and astronomer Nicholas Copernicus , who in fact had no intention of making an aggressive attack on the received ideas of his day.In his On the Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies, published in 1543 and dedicated to the pope, Copernicus generally accepted the traditional conception of a finite universe characterized by a series of heavens, the moon, the planets, and the fixed stars.Copernicus' innovation was to substitute the sun for the earth at the center of the universe .For him the earth became one of the planets and, like other bodies, circulated around the center .Copernicus' primary reason for switching the position of the sun and earth was that this conception furnished a better explanation of the observed motions of the heavens, reducing the need to ascribe exceptional movements to individual bodies as in the earth-centered theory.According to the deeply religious Copernicus, the ability of his sun-centered theory to explain the appearances and to show heavenly motion to be simple and regular magnified the perfection of the divine creator .Copernicus presented his ideas as a hypothesis ; but over succeeding decades, as new observations were recorded and found to support it, some thinkers came to insist that the theory was proved.The ancient picture of the universe gradually disintegrated . Selection C Copernicus (1473-1543): An Unintentional Heretic The first fruit of the new concern with mathematics and experimentation in the sixteenth century was the work of the Polish priest and astronomer Nicholas Copernicus , who in fact had no intention of making an aggressive attack on the received ideas of his day.In his On the Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies , published in 1543 and dedicated to the pope, Copernicus generally accepted the traditional conception of a finite universe characterized by a series of heavens, the moon, the planets, and the fixed stars.Copernicus' innovation was to substitute the sun for the earth at the center of the universe .For him the earth became one of the planets and, like other bodies, circulated around the center.Copernicus' primary reason for switching the position of the sun and earth was that this conception furnished a better explanation of the observed motions of the heavens , reducing the need to ascribe exceptional movements to individual bodies as in the earth-centered theory.According to the deeply religious Copernicus, the ability of his sun-centered theory to explain the appearances and to show heavenly motion to be simple and regular magnified the perfection of the divine creator .Copernicus presented his ideas as a hypothesis ; but over succeeding decades, as new observations were recorded and found to support it, some thinkers came to insist that the theory was proved.The ancient picture of the universe gradually disintegrated . Selection _______ _ is effectively underlined. Selection _______ _ is underlined too much. Selection _______ _ is not underlined enough.

Effective and Ineffective Paraphrasing Directions: Read each passage.Then select the letter of the best paraphrase. In 1899, the sociologist Thorstein Veblen took three previously published articles and combined them into a book titled The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions .In doing so , Veblen introduced to the American reading public the now famous term "conspicuous consumption." While many of Veblen's readers at the time prided themselves on having climbed the ladder of financial success and proved it to themselves and others by acquiring clothing, habits, and objects that carried a significant price tag, Veblen did not pat them on the back for it.Instead his book castigated readers, announcing that taking obvious pride in prosperity was nothing more than an indication of personal snobbery and deep insecurity. What Veblen did was make one of the very first arguments against believing that consumerism was the key to happiness. Paraphrase