ASVAB Paragraph Comprehension Practice Test 359472 Results

Your Results Global Average
Questions 5 5
Correct 0 3.07
Score 0% 61%

Review

1
Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and gas). Heating a gas may ionize its molecules or atoms (reducing or increasing the number of electrons in them), thus turning it into a plasma, which contains charged particles: positive ions and negative electrons or ions.
What does the word "state" most closely mean in the context of this paragraph?
73% Answer Correctly
territory
form
category
condition

Solution
Although each of these words are synonyms for "state", form is the most appropriate given the context of this paragraph.

2
"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." - Desiderius Erasmus
What does this proverb mean?
61% Answer Correctly
Someone who can see will be able to take advantage of others who cannot see.
It would be easy for someone who can see to become king in a land of people who cannot see.
Even someone with minor ability is considered special by those with no ability at all.
It is more advantageous to be able to see, even a little bit, than to be blind.

3
Volunteer hosts went to the airport, picked up assigned students, fed them dinner, took them to the opening lecture at the Clay Center, put them in spare bedrooms for the night, then fed them breakfast this morning and will deliver the outstanding teens to buses that convey them to the mountain retreat where they undergo a month of intensive science training and outdoor fun.

Luckily, this year, enough local families volunteered to host all the brilliant youths. In the past, the number of guest homes sometimes fell short, and some of the visitors slept on cots and sleeping bags at local churches. They're adventurous teens and don't mind this makeshift camp-in but it's better if friendly hosts give them a more personal welcome for their stay.

Which of the following topics would the next paragraph in this passage most likely cover?
60% Answer Correctly
The story of a time when one of the students stole from his host family.
Instructions for how local families can volunteer to become hosts.
An overview of what the student's science training will cover.
Instructions for how local families can enroll their children in a similar program.

Solution
The author of this passage is painting a positive picture of the students and outlining their need for local host families. Although the next paragraph could be about the student's training, history of crime, or how local children can attend camps overseas the most likely next topic would be instructions for how local families can volunteer to become hosts.

4
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor, as opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which analyzes the internal development of a single language over time.
Which of the following would be the most useful for someone using the comparative method in linguistics when studying a particular language?
66% Answer Correctly
Two editions of the same text written one-hundred years apart.
Old folk songs that have been passed down among generations of speakers of the language.
The same text written in two different dialects of the language.
An ancient text written in the language.

Solution
The wrong answers all provide insight into how a single language has changed over time while the text written in two different dialects offers an opportunity to compare languages that share a common ancestor.

5
Endemism is the ecological state of being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation or other defined zone, or habitat type; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. The extreme opposite of endemism is cosmopolitan distribution.
Based on this passage, which of the following statements is false?
47% Answer Correctly
An organism that is indigenous to Australia can be found in India.
Endemism requires an organism be unique to a defined geographic location.
An organism that is endemic cannot have a cosmopolitan distribution.
An organism that is endemic to Australia can be found in India.

Solution
You don't necessarily need to know the definitions of the words in a paragraph to figure out the correct answer. Just go through the answers one by one and logically compare the answer to the the paragraph and eliminate the answers that aren't supported by the facts.