Take this Quiz: PSAT Reading — what the passage forces, and what it merely suggests | Zestly

Question 1

"The Halden bus company ran two services last year. In January the hill route carried three hundred passengers a week and the coast route fifty. By June the coast route was carrying two hundred a week and the hill route was unchanged. No service was added or withdrawn in between, and the fare stayed where it was. Taken together the two counts show that ____" Which choice most logically completes the writer's last sentence?

Accepted Answer

the company was carrying a hundred and fifty more passengers a week in June

Answer

the coast route had been given extra buses during the spring

Answer

passengers from the hill route had moved across to the coast

Answer

the coast route had become the busier of the two services

Question 2

"The Ferrand Street company staged four plays last season. Each of its two comedies was seen by five hundred people and each of its two tragedies by two hundred, and every seat in the house, whatever was on, cost the same twenty. Setting one kind of play against the other, the treasurer noted that ____" Which choice most logically completes the writer's last sentence?

Accepted Answer

the comedies took two and a half times what the tragedies took

Answer

the company would drop tragedy from next season's programme

Answer

the tragedies were sold at a lower price than the comedies

Answer

the town has no appetite at all for serious drama

Question 3

"A single dose of the compound R-9 was given to three hundred seedlings, with three hundred untreated seedlings kept alongside them. After one week two hundred of the treated seedlings were measurably taller than the controls, a hundred were no different, and not one seedling in the trial died. On the evidence of this one week the most that can be said is that ____" Which choice most logically completes the writer's last sentence?

Accepted Answer

R-9 helped a majority of the seedlings and harmed none of them

Answer

R-9 is toxic to seedlings at the dose used here

Answer

R-9 works by increasing the water a seedling can draw up

Answer

R-9 makes any plant grow faster than it otherwise would

Question 4

"The Ferris Lane plant turned out five thousand units in January and six thousand in February. It employed a hundred people in each of the two months, and neither month lost a working day to a holiday. From the two figures alone it follows that ____" Which choice most logically completes the writer's last sentence?

Answer

the workforce put in longer hours in February than in January

Answer

the plant was working at the limit of its capacity by February

Answer

the plant employed more people in February than in January

Answer

output for each person employed was higher in February than in January

Question 5

"Ten thousand walkers used the northern trails of the regional park last summer and five thousand the southern. A survey at the trailheads put the share of walkers from outside the county at eight in ten in the north and two in ten in the south. Setting the two counts against the two shares, the warden concluded that ____" Which choice most logically completes the writer's last sentence?

Answer

more local walkers used the northern trails than the southern

Answer

the northern trails drew eight times as many walkers from outside the county

Answer

the northern trails are the more attractive of the two

Answer

the southern trails will be closed for want of use

Question 6

"Two plots in the same wood were compared over two years. Compost was dug into Plot A each spring, and by the end it held forty percent more nitrogen than Plot B, which had none. The trees in the two plots grew at the same rate, to within the error of the measurement. What these two years show is that ____" Which choice most logically completes the writer's last sentence?

Answer

the extra nitrogen made no measurable difference to growth here

Answer

the trees in Plot A grew faster than those in Plot B

Answer

nitrogen has nothing to do with how a tree grows

Answer

Plot B is short of the nitrogen its trees need