Which of the following sentences uses correct punctuation?

I enjoy reading, writing, and hiking.

I enjoy reading; writing; and hiking.

I enjoy reading, writing and hiking.

I enjoy reading writing and hiking.

What is the main purpose of a thesis statement in an essay?

To present the main argument or point of the essay.

To provide background information.

To summarize the conclusion of the essay.

To list all topics to be discussed.

Which sentence is an example of a compound sentence?

I wanted to go for a walk, but it started to rain.

Which of the following sentences contains a misplaced modifier?

I saw the dog walking down the street with a broken leg.

The man with the hat is my uncle.

The student finished the exam with confidence.

Running quickly, she caught the bus.

Which of the following sentences is an example of active voice?

The mouse was chased by the cat.

The cat has been chased by the mouse.

Which sentence correctly uses a semicolon?

I have a big exam tomorrow; I can't go out tonight.

I have a big exam tomorrow; and I can't go out tonight.

I have a big exam tomorrow, I can't go out tonight.

I have a big exam tomorrow; I can go out tonight.

Which of the following sentences demonstrates correct subject-verb agreement?

The team wins every game they play.

The team win every game they play.

The teams wins every game they play.

The team winning every game they plays.

Which of the following sentences contains a spelling error?

She received a compliment on her new dress.

She received a compliment on her new adress.

She received a compliament on her new dress.

She recived a compliment on her new dress.

Which sentence is written in the past tense?

She walked to the store yesterday.

She is walking to the store now.

She walks to the store every day.

She will walk to the store tomorrow.

What is the primary function of the roots of a plant?

To absorb water and nutrients from the soil

During a chemical reaction, which of the following occurs when energy is absorbed?

The reaction reaches equilibrium

What does the pH scale measure?

The acidity or basicity of a solution

The concentration of salt in a solution

In a food chain, what role do producers play?

They convert energy from sunlight into food

What is the main effect of increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on global temperature?

It leads to an increase in global temperatures

It decreases global temperatures

It has no effect on global temperatures

It causes fluctuations in global temperatures

What is the primary role of chlorophyll in plants?

To absorb light energy for photosynthesis

In the passage, how does the author illustrate the theme of perseverance?

By describing the main character's struggles and determination

By contrasting with other characters

Through the use of vivid imagery

What is the primary purpose of the passage?

To inform readers about the effects of climate change

To entertain readers with a fictional story

To persuade readers to take action

What is the main conflict faced by the protagonist in the story?

Struggling to choose between personal desires and social responsibilities

Fighting against an external enemy

Navigating a romantic relationship

Dealing with a natural disaster

What conclusion can be drawn about the author's view on technology based on the passage?

The author believes technology has both benefits and drawbacks

The author opposes all forms of technology

The author completely supports technology

The author is indifferent to technology

What does the author imply about friendship in the passage?

That true friendship requires trust and support

That friendship is not necessary for happiness

That friends should always agree with each other

That all friendships are based on convenience

How does the author convey the setting of the story?

Through detailed descriptions of the environment and atmosphere

By presenting statistics and facts about the location

By using flashbacks to past events

By focusing solely on the characters' dialogues

What is a significant theme explored in the passage?

The impact of isolation on personal growth

The simplicity of childhood joys

The importance of wealth in society

ACT Practice Questions

Personality development means developing positive characteristics among individuals. Positive characteristics of an individual include:  Obedience – Learn how to follow family as well as school regulations and decisions made for your own good. If young children like Something to read: Home Economics and Livelihood Education 7 Seibo College 5 you, can learn how to obey your elders then there will always be peaceful and happy relationship around.  CourtesyBeing courteous means to be respectful. Polite behavior must be something you must observe anywhere, every time.  Cleanliness and Orderliness – It means practicing good health and good grooming habits everyday.  Understanding – To be in another’s shoes is to be in the same place as what others are experiencing through life. One must be very careful about what others may feel so be tactful and develop sensitivity towards their needs.  Friendly – It is necessary that growing child like you to possess a good attitude in dealing with others. Develop a fine character and talk in such a manner that others will realize what admirable qualities you do possess. Home Economics and Livelihood Education 7 Seibo College 6 Becoming friendly means getting along well with each other. As you grow up, it is important to be able to meet and be acquainted other people. Sometimes. you will meet people who for some reason won’t like you. Understanding other’s feeling and emotion will make it possible to become the kind of person whom most people enjoy being with. It will help you become good natured and considerate to others. The following are guidelines for you to follow in order to develop your positive characteristics.  be sensitive of other’s need.  be genuinely concern with others.  be thoughtful and pleasant.  listen when others are talking.  make them feel important. More effective way of being likeable can be summed up by the Golden Rule which says “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” Do you want to be treated kindly? Then, follow the golden rule so that your relationship with others will be at its best. Your personality is influenced by many factors; however the most influential are heredity and environment. What is heredity? Heredity is the transmission of physical and mental traits from parents to offspring. The table below will identify your inherited traits and abilities: Home Economics and Livelihood Education 7 Seibo College 7 Here are some inherited physical features and traits from your mother and father. Physical Features Intelligence and mental ability Personal disposition - blood type - power to think - manner of thinking - body structure - power to learn - manner of feeling - color of skin/eyes - power to understand - manner of acting - color and texture of hair - power to do something What is environment? Home Economics and Livelihood Education 7 Seibo College 8 Your environment provides you with experiences, conditions, and influences that mold your personality. These are the people around you, your school, community, as well as the things that surround you that affect your personality. The people who will most likely affect your personality ,are your friends or peers, their manner of thinking and behaving will be sooner or later, the same as your manner and behavior as well. The things you use everyday like your personal computer, cell phone will also have an impact on your personality. Always remember to be yourself and do not pretend to be somebody you are not. Act according to your age and do not copy the identity of other person. Otherwise, you may become an individual that you and other person may not like. Understand yourself and do something to improve your personality. It is always necessary to practice good health habits as follows:  eat the right kind of food.  have a regular exercise.  have enough sleep and rest. Observe good grooming habits as well:  maintain cleanliness and neatness.  wear appropriate clothes.  observe good posture. Home Economics and Livelihood Education 7 Seibo College 9 If you understand our lesson well, you can now proceed to the next activities But if you have any questions, you can ask your le

“There’s No Such Thing as Sound Science” by By Christie Aschwanden was a lead science writer for FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight, Science, Dec. 6, 2017 Science is being turned against itself. For decades, its twin ideals of transparency and rigor have been weaponized by those who disagree with results produced by the scientific method. Under the Trump administration, that fight has ramped up again. In a move ostensibly meant to reduce conflicts of interest, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has removed a number of scientists from advisory panels and replaced some of them with representatives from industries that the agency regulates. Like many in the Trump administration, Pruitt has also cast doubt on the reliability of climate science. For instance, in an interview with CNBC, Pruitt said that “measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do.” Similarly, Trump’s pick to head NASA, an agency that oversees a large portion the nation’s climate research, has insisted that research into human influence on climate lacks certainty, and he falsely claimed that “global temperatures stopped rising 10 years ago.” Kathleen Hartnett White, Trump’s nominee to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a Senate hearing last month that she thinks we “need to have more precise explanations of the human role and the natural role” in climate change. The same entreaties crop up again and again: We need to root out conflicts. We need more precise evidence. What makes these arguments so powerful is that they sound quite similar to the points raised by proponents of a very different call for change that’s coming from within science. This other movement strives to produce more robust, reproducible findings. Despite having dissimilar goals, the two forces espouse principles that look surprisingly alike: Science needs to be transparent. Results and methods should be openly shared so that outside researchers can independently reproduce and validate them. The methods used to collect and analyze data should be rigorous and clear, and conclusions must be supported by evidence. These are the arguments underlying an “open science” reform movement that was created, in part, as a response to a “reproducibility crisis” that has struck some fields of science.1 But they’re also used as talking points by politicians who are working to make it more difficult for the EPA and other federal agencies to use science in their regulatory decision-making, under the guise of basing policy on “sound science.” Science’s virtues are being wielded against it. What distinguishes the two calls for transparency is intent: Whereas the “open science” movement aims to make science more reliable, reproducible and robust, proponents of “sound science” have historically worked to amplify uncertainty, create doubt and undermine scientific discoveries that threaten their interests. “Our criticisms are founded in a confidence in science,” said Steven Goodman, co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford and a proponent of open science. “That’s a fundamental difference — we’re critiquing science to make it better. Others are critiquing it to devalue the approach itself.” Calls to base public policy on “sound science” seem unassailable if you don’t know the term’s history. The phrase was adopted by the tobacco industry in the 1990s to counteract mounting evidence linking secondhand smoke to cancer. A 1992 Environmental Protection Agency report identified secondhand smoke as a human carcinogen, and Philip Morris responded by launching an initiative to promote what it called “sound science.” In an internal memo, Philip Morris vice president of corporate affairs Ellen Merlo wrote that the program was designed to “discredit the EPA report,” “prevent states and cities, as well as businesses from passing smoking bans” and “proactively” pass legislation to help their cause. The sound science tactic exploits a fundamental feature of the scientific process: Science does not produce absolute certainty. Contrary to how it’s sometimes represented to the public, science is not a magic wand that turns everything it touches to truth. Instead, it’s a process of uncertainty reduction, much like a game of 20 Questions. Any given study can rarely answer more than one question at a time, and each study usually raises a bunch of new questions in the process of answering old ones. “Science is a process rather than an answer,” said psychologist Alison Ledgerwood of the University of California, Davis. Every answer is provisional and subject to change in the face of new evidence. It’s not entirely correct to say that “this study proves this fact,” Ledgerwood said. “We should be talking instead about how science increases or decreases our confidence in something.” The tobacco industry’s brilliant tactic was to turn this baked-in uncertainty against the scientific enterprise itself. While insisting that they merely wanted to ensure that public policy was based on sound science, tobacco companies defined the term in a way that ensured that no science could ever be sound enough. The only sound science was certain science, which is an impossible standard to achieve. “Doubt is our product,” wrote one employee of the Brown & Williamson tobacco company in a 1969 internal memo. The note went on to say that doubt “is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’” and “establishing a controversy.” These strategies for undermining inconvenient science were so effective that they’ve served as a sort of playbook for industry interests ever since, said Stanford University science historian Robert Proctor. The sound science push is no longer just Philip Morris sowing doubt about the links between cigarettes and cancer. It’s also a 1998 action plan by the American Petroleum Institute, Chevron and Exxon Mobil to “install uncertainty” about the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. It’s industry-funded groups’ late-1990s effort to question the science the EPA was using to set fine-particle-pollution air-quality standards that the industry didn’t want. And then there was the more recent effort by Dow Chemical to insist on more scientific certainty before banning a pesticide that the EPA’s scientists had deemed risky to children. Now comes a move by the Trump administration’s EPA to repeal a 2015 rule on wetlands protection by disregarding particular studies. (To name just a few examples.) Doubt merchants aren’t pushing for knowledge, they’re practicing what Proctor has dubbed “agnogenesis” — the intentional manufacture of ignorance. This ignorance isn’t simply the absence of knowing something; it’s a lack of comprehension deliberately created by agents who don’t want you to know, Proctor said.2 In the hands of doubt-makers, transparency becomes a rhetorical move. “It’s really difficult as a scientist or policy maker to make a stand against transparency and openness, because well, who would be against it?” said Karen Levy, researcher on information science at Cornell University. But at the same time, “you can couch everything in the language of transparency and it becomes a powerful weapon.” For instance, when the EPA was preparing to set new limits on particulate pollution in the 1990s, industry groups pushed back against the research and demanded access to primary data (including records that researchers had promised participants would remain confidential) and a reanalysis of the evidence. Their calls succeeded and a new analysis was performed. The reanalysis essentially confirmed the original conclusions, but the process of conducting it delayed the implementation of regulations and cost researchers time and money. Delay is a time-tested strategy. “Gridlock is the greatest friend a global warming skeptic has,” said Marc Morano, a prominent critic of global warming research and the executive director of ClimateDepot.com, in the documentary “Merchants of Doubt” (based on the book by the same name). Morano’s site is a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which has received funding from the oil and gas industry. “We’re the negative force. We’re just trying to stop stuff.” Some of these ploys are getting a fresh boost from Congress. The Data Quality Act (also known as the Information Quality Act) was reportedly written by an industry lobbyist and quietly passed as part of an appropriations bill in 2000. The rule mandates that federal agencies ensure the “quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information” that they disseminate, though it does little to define what these terms mean. The law also provides a mechanism for citizens and groups to challenge information that they deem inaccurate, including science that they disagree with. “It was passed in this very quiet way with no explicit debate about it — that should tell you a lot about the real goals,” Levy said. But what’s most telling about the Data Quality Act is how it’s been used, Levy said. A 2004 Washington Post analysis found that in the 20 months following its implementation, the act was repeatedly used by industry groups to push back against proposed regulations and bog down the decision-making process. Instead of deploying transparency as a fundamental principle that applies to all science, these interests have used transparency as a weapon to attack very particular findings that they would like to eradicate. Now Congress is considering another way to legislate how science is used. The Honest Act, a bill sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas,3 is another example of what Levy calls a “Trojan horse” law that uses the language of transparency as a cover to achieve other political goals. Smith’s legislation would severely limit the kind of evidence the EPA could use for decision-making. Only studies whose raw data and computer codes were publicly available would be allowed for consideration. That might sound perfectly reasonable, and in many cases it is, Goodman said. But sometimes there are good reasons why researchers can’t conform to these rules, like when the data contains confidential or sensitive medical information.4 Critics, which include more than a dozen scientific organizations, argue that, in practice, the rules would prevent many studies from being considered in EPA reviews.5 It might seem like an easy task to sort good science from bad, but in reality it’s not so simple. “There’s a misplaced idea that we can definitively distinguish the good from the not-good science, but it’s all a matter of degree,” said Brian Nosek, executive director of the Center for Open Science. “There is no perfect study.” Requiring regulators to wait until they have (nonexistent) perfect evidence is essentially “a way of saying, ‘We don’t want to use evidence for our decision-making,’” Nosek said. Most scientific controversies aren’t about science at all, and once the sides are drawn, more data is unlikely to bring opponents into agreement. Michael Carolan, who researches the sociology of technology and scientific knowledge at Colorado State University, wrote in a 2008 paper about why objective knowledge is not enough to resolve environmental controversies. “While these controversies may appear on the surface to rest on disputed questions of fact, beneath often reside differing positions of value; values that can give shape to differing understandings of what ‘the facts’ are.” What’s needed in these cases isn’t more or better science, but mechanisms to bring those hidden values to the forefront of the discussion so that they can be debated transparently. “As long as we continue down this unabashedly naive road about what science is, and what it is capable of doing, we will continue to fail to reach any sort of meaningful consensus on these matters,” Carolan writes. The dispute over tobacco was never about the science of cigarettes’ link to cancer. It was about whether companies have the right to sell dangerous products and, if so, what obligations they have to the consumers who purchased them. Similarly, the debate over climate change isn’t about whether our planet is heating, but about how much responsibility each country and person bears for stopping it. While researching her book “Merchants of Doubt,” science historian Naomi Oreskes found that some of the same people who were defending the tobacco industry as scientific experts were also receiving industry money to deny the role of human activity in global warming. What these issues had in common, she realized, was that they all involved the need for government action. “None of this is about the science. All of this is a political debate about the role of government,” she said in the documentary. These controversies are really about values, not scientific facts, and acknowledging that would allow us to have more truthful and productive debates. What would that look like in practice? Instead of cherry-picking evidence to support a particular view (and insisting that the science points to a desired action), the various sides could lay out the values they are using to assess the evidence. For instance, in Europe, many decisions are guided by the precautionary principle — a system that values caution in the face of uncertainty and says that when the risks are unclear, it should be up to industries to show that their products and processes are not harmful, rather than requiring the government to prove that they are harmful before they can be regulated. By contrast, U.S. agencies tend to wait for strong evidence of harm before issuing regulations. Both approaches have critics, but the difference between them comes down to priorities: Is it better to exercise caution at the risk of burdening companies and perhaps the economy, or is it more important to avoid potential economic downsides even if it means that sometimes a harmful product or industrial process goes unregulated? In other words, under what circumstances do we agree to act on a risk? How certain do we need to be that the risk is real, and how many people would need to be at risk, and how costly is it to reduce that risk? Those are moral questions, not scientific ones, and openly discussing and identifying these kinds of judgment calls would lead to a more honest debate. Science matters, and we need to do it as rigorously as possible. But science can’t tell us how risky is too risky to allow products like cigarettes or potentially harmful pesticides to be sold — those are value judgements that only humans can make.

THE STRATEGIC PLAN OF RICHARD BLAND COLLEGE OF WILLIAM & MARY 2020-2025 “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.” – Abraham Lincoln What is the role of a selective, two-year, residential, liberal arts transfer institution within the higher education landscape of the Commonwealth of Virginia? This is a key question that must be answered to ensure the success of Richard Bland College (RBC) and the constituency that the College serves. The 2020 RBC strategic plan’s primary objective is to answer that very question so that the College, the community and the Commonwealth can engage successfully within this identity and purpose to the benefit of all. RBC has long been identified as the hidden gem of higher education in Virginia. The hidden adjective is based both on its relative obscurity—few are aware of RBC outside the Tri-Cities region—and its rural setting featuring 750+ acres of wetlands, bucolic forest, and the state’s oldest and largest pecan grove. Additionally, on average, a student of Richard Bland College travels a mere 36 miles to campus. This keeps the knowledge of RBC in a tightly focused radius. The gem moniker refers both to the College’s reputation for excellence and the undeniable sensation that the campus often elicits in its students, visitors, faculty and staff, the feeling of a warm and palpable embrace of care, compassion and support. That sensation is where we start. According the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV), 99% of the 11.5 million new jobs created since the great recession require workers to have more than a high-school education. Students with a bachelor’s degree have an earning potential almost double that of people with only a high school education, and yet only 17% of residents in the Petersburg area have a bachelor’s degree, 15% below the national average. The obstacles in the way of education have been exhaustively researched and include financial challenges, academic under-preparedness, low self-esteem, slow college assimilation and immature levels of self-efficacy. To combat this growing problem, Richard Bland College initiated a pilot program to determine the viability of a data-driven approach to improve retention and graduation rates. The program ultimately effected a cultural, organizational and operational shift at RBC, resulting in a personalized model of student support, the Exceptional Student Experience (ESE@RBC). Originally many of the practices that RBC used as the basis of ESE@RBC were adapted from the four key principles found in the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) Pathways Project: 1) map pathways to student end goals; 2) help students choose and enter a program pathway; 3) keep students on path; and 4) ensure that students are learning. Unfortunately, limited resources made it necessary to skip some primary elements of guided pathways and instead to focus on a specific, high-priority project that was immediately available for implementation, dedicated student support. This strategic framework reimagines the way that RBC serves students, faculty and staff within the context of our existing culture, the principles of guided pathways and a hybrid work-college experience. Rather than thinking of a two-year college as a pipeline to a four-year university, this vision describes a more expansive menu of well-defined pathways to high-demand fields, all radiating from a curriculum constructed around the development of soft skills that define the liberal arts experience: critical thinking, written communication, analytical reasoning, civic engagement and oral communication. Furthermore, the impact of meaningful work is a resonating theme, providing avenues to participate in career-focused internships and jobs that develop important life & work skills, confidence, and character. Richard Bland has tested its entrepreneurial mettle and its capacity for transformation in recent years. The College was among a select few Competency-Based Education sites established by the U.S. Department of Education. We were ahead of the curve using predictive analytics to improve student retention and success rates, and online enrollment now makes up nearly 20 percent of course offerings. It may be counter-intuitive, but these and other deep-level institutional changes still to come will ensure that Richard Bland College remains true to its original mission. We prepare our students for a lifetime of endless potential.

ACT Practice

ACT Practice 2

ACT Practice Test 2-2

Related quizzes

Related quizzes