Read across disciplines: passage pair 5

Read across disciplines: passage pair 5: original cases with explanations after your first response.

Paper packet. Every task here also exists on screen, where it is checked automatically; answers written on paper are not assessed by Nydus. When you are back at a device, enter your answers there.

1. What you will learn

Choose a method from the question's conditions before opening feedback. Work without notes first, then explain which restriction or evidence determined your answer. These are original instructional questions, not an adaptive test or a predictor of an official score.

2. Practice

Read the shared passage and answer every question. Each question is graded separately; select-all questions require the exact set.

An astronomer noticed a regular dimming in a star's light and proposed an orbiting planet. A colleague pointed out that a dark region rotating across the star's surface could also cause periodic dimming. The astronomer then measured the star's motion toward and away from the observer. Its rhythm matched the dimming cycle in a way predicted by an orbiting companion's gravitational pull. This additional evidence strengthens the planet hypothesis because it concerns a second predicted consequence, not simply another measurement of the original brightness pattern. It still leaves properties such as the planet's atmosphere unresolved.

Which statement best expresses the passage's main point?

Evidence for a separate predicted effect strengthens one explanation of an initially ambiguous observation.
Periodic dimming can only be caused by a planet.
The measurements determine the planet's atmospheric composition.
The colleague denied that dimming occurred.
Repeated brightness measurements and motion measurements are identical evidence.

Which conclusion is best supported by the passage?

The initial dimming observation alone did not distinguish the two proposed explanations.
The dark-region hypothesis predicted exactly the observed gravitational motion.
The planet's surface temperature was measured.
The star never moves relative to the observer.
The motion evidence makes all future observations unnecessary.

Select all statements supported by the passage.

Two explanations were proposed for periodic dimming.
The later measurement concerned stellar motion.
Atmospheric properties were established by the study.

3. Practice

Read the shared passage and answer every question. Each question is graded separately; select-all questions require the exact set.

A historian of theater cautions against judging an early play solely from its printed script. Stage directions are sparse, and several jokes appear puzzling on the page. Records of contemporary performance practices suggest that actors supplied gestures and familiar musical fragments that audiences would recognize. These records cannot reconstruct every performance, and a modern director's invention should not be mistaken for recovered fact. Nevertheless, they show why textual obscurity need not imply that the original audience found the scene incomprehensible.

Which statement best expresses the passage's main point?

Performance context can explain apparent textual obscurity without allowing complete reconstruction of an original staging.
Printed scripts contain no useful historical evidence.
Modern directors can recover every original gesture exactly.
The original audience necessarily misunderstood every joke.
The surviving play included detailed musical notation for every scene.

Which conclusion is best supported by the passage?

A puzzling joke on the page may once have depended on a recognizable nonverbal cue.
Every modern staging is historically accurate.
Sparse directions prove actors improvised the entire plot.
The records identify the same gesture in every performance.
Audience recognition never depends on shared conventions.

Select all statements supported by the passage.

The script contains sparse stage directions.
Contemporary records suggest gestures and musical references mattered.
The historian claims to reconstruct every performance.

4. What you can do now

Classify each error as interpretation, method, execution or response format. Revisit the relevant worked lesson, then retry after a study gap. A remembered item is review, not fresh assessment evidence.