Read the selection and respond to the questions that follow by choosing the letter of the correct
answer.
Television Transforms Daily Life
It's not surprising that the effects of such a pervasive medium have attracted so much attention from
parents, educators, social scientists, religious leaders, public officials and anyone else who wants to
understand society's habits and values. TV has been blamed for everything from declines in literacy to
rises in violent crime to the trivialization of national politics. Every once in a while it is praised, too, for
giving viewers instant access to world events and uniting audiences in times of national crisis.
An industry with this much presence in American life is bound to affect the way we live.
Someone who is watching television is not doing other things: playing basketball, visiting a museum, or
looking through telescope at the planets, for instance. Television can, however, bring you to a museum
you might never visit or to a basketball game you cannot attend or to the surface of a planet you can only
see through a telescope.
Television technology, by adding pictures to the sounds of radio, truly transformed Americans'
living and learning patterns. The word television, which once meant programs delivered by antennas
through over-the-air signals, now means a television screen, where several different types of delivery
systems bring viewers a diversity of programs.
The programs Americans watch today are delivered by antennas, cables, and satellites, but they
all appear on the same television screen, and as a viewer, you can't tell how the program arrived at your
television set and probably don't care. What you do know is that television gives you access to all types
of programs—drama, comedy, sports, news, game shows, and talk shows. You can see all types of
people—murderers, public officials, foreign leaders, reporters, soldiers, entertainers, athletes, detectives
and doctors. The television screen is truly, as scholar Erik Barnouw observed, "a tube of plenty."
About 1,600 television stations operate in the United States. Three out of four of these are
commercial stations, and the others are noncommercial stations. About half the commercial stations are
affiliated with a network.
How many television stations are commercial stations?
a. 3 out of 4
b. 1 out of 4
c. 2 out of 4
d. 3 out of 5
b
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Read each sentence carefully. If the sentence is correct, write C in the space provided. If the sentence
contains a misplaced modifier, write MM and correct the sentence. If the sentence contains a dangling modifier, write DM and correct the sentence. Many churches that are made of stained glass have beautiful windows. What will be an ideal response?
All of these words are adjectives except:
a) definite b) different c) conservative d) power
?De vacaciones. Juanita is on vacation in the Dominican Republic. She is talking on the phone with her boyfriend in the United States and she tells him what gifts she bought. Complete the sentences with the appropriate indirect object pronoun according to the context. A mi padre ______ compré un cinturón y a mis hermanos ______ compré unas camisetas.
Fill in the blank(s) with the appropriate word(s).
Shaney and Tannie seem alike in many ways, both earn good grades and have quick, zany senses of humor. Tannie, however, loves sports and the outdoors, while Shaney prefers lying on the couch to read novels or to watch videos.
Edit the passages for comma splices, sentence fragments, and run-ons only. Each entry may have more than one error.