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Choosing The Topic Sentence
Choosing The Topic Sentence
Reading Skills I
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Reading Skills I
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Reading Skills I
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Reading Skills I
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12.)__________________________________________.Latelyparentsandcriticsacrossthecountryhave
beenmakingabiggerfussaboutthenumberandcontentofcommercialsaimedatchildren,anditseemsasthough
themediahasbecomeascapegoatforadultswhohavesetquestionablehealthguidelinesfortheirchildren.Itis
bothlogicalandfactualtostatethatparentsarethe numberoneauthorityformosteverythingintheirchildslife,
whichofcourseincludesfood choices.RecentstudiesfromtheInstituteofMedicinefoundthattheeasiestand
mostreliablemeasureofunderstandingachildshealthanddietistolookatthehealthanddietoftheparents.It is
verylikelythatachildsobesitydidnotcomefromthemedia,butfrombehaviorswithinthe family.Evenif
advertisementsbecamerestrictedormorelimited,ifparentsdonotenforcehealthydietsorteachnutrition,the
childrenwillhavelearnednothing.TimothyJ.MurisofTheWall StreetJournalrealizesthatwithoutaddressingthe
issuesofparentalcontrol,thebanonchild foodadvertisementsareappealingonthesurface,butultimately
useless.
a) Despiteincreasingratesofchildhoodobesity,weshouldnotbanjunkfoodadsaimedat children.
b) AccordingtoAndrewMartinoftheChicagoTribune,theratesofobesityamong6to 11yearoldsmorethan
triplingduringthelastthreedecades,doublingforchildrenages2to5 andincreasingeven morefor adolescents
12to19yearsold.
c) Thestaggeringfiguresregardingchildhoodobesityalonearealarmingenoughtogenerateastir.
d) Althoughjunkfoodadvertisementsarebeingblamedforchildrenspoordietaryhabits,regulating these ads
wouldnotaddresstherealsourceoftheproblem:lackofparentalguidance.
13.) _______________________________________. When I was seventeen years old, I applied to be
an American Field Service exchange student. I was very proud and excited when I was chosen, but I
never realized how much that year would influence the rest of my life. From the moment I got off the
plane in Rio de Janeiro, I felt like a new person. At first I was nervous about speaking Portuguese, but
the Brazilians soon helped me to feel at ease. Before I left my home, I had been shy and quiet. In Brazil I
became much more confident and outgoing. Most importantly, I had thought I would become an
engineer. In Brazil I learned to love music and realized I wanted to become a professional musician.
a) Brazil is a great place to spend a year as an exchange student.
b) Spending a year as an exchange student changed my whole life.
c) Every student should visit another country.
14.) ____________________________ I have traveled to Mexico, England, Germany, and Japan. I must
admit that I am nervous all of the time while I am away. I cannot relax until the airplane lands in Chicago,
where I live. It's not that I don't like foreigners. I have several friends from other countries. And it's not
that I hate foreign food. My husband and I often eat out at ethnic restaurants at home. However, I just do
not feel comfortable on foreign soil. I am always afraid of making mistakes and offending people. Even
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when I know the language, as I did in England, I still get confused with the money, the transportation
system, and all the different ways of doing things. My husband is a great traveler. He loves every minute
he spends out of the country, but I'm afraid from now on he'll have to go alone.
a) Traveling abroad can be very stressful if you aren't used to it.
b) Many people enjoy foreign travel and go away every chance that they get.
c) Although many people find traveling to foreign countries exciting, people like me should never leave
home.
15.) ___________________________________________. I saw around Velva a release from what was
like slavery to the tyrannical soil, release from the ignorance that darkens the soul and from the
loneliness that corrodes it. In this generation my Velva friends have rejoined the general American
society that their pioneering fathers left behind when they first made the barren trek in the days of the
wheat rush. As I sit here in Washington writing this, I can feel their nearness.
a) Family-sized farms are not productive.
b) I grew up on a family-sized farm, near a town called Velva.
c) Many politicians deplore the passing of the old family-sized farm, but I'm not so sure.
d) People moved away from the cities in the late nineteenth century, in search of fertile land for farming.
16.) ___________________________________________. The first is the wear-and-tear hypothesis that
suggests the body eventually succumbs to the environmental insults of life. The second is the notion that
we have an internal clock which is genetically programmed to run down. Supporters of the wear-and-tear
theory maintain that the very practice of breathing causes us to age because inhaled oxygen produces
toxic by-products. Advocates of the internal clock theory believe that individual cells are told to stop
dividing and thus eventually to die by, for example, hormones produced by the brain or by their own
genes.
a) There are two broad theories concerning what triggers a human's inevitable decline to death.
b) Some scientists believe that humans contain an "internal time clock" which forces them eventually to
die.
c) We all must die some day.
d) My biology professor gave an interesting lecture Thursday
17.) ___________________________________________. The strictest military discipline imaginable is
still looser than that prevailing in the average assembly-line. The soldier, at worst, is still able to exercise
the highest conceivable functions of freedom -- that is, he or she is permitted to steal and to kill. No
discipline prevailing in peace gives him or her anything remotely resembling this. The soldier is, in war, in
the position of a free adult; in peace he or she is almost always in the position of a child. In war all things
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are excused by success, even violations of discipline. In peace, speaking generally, success is
inconceivable except as a function of discipline
a) Soldiers need discipline.
b) We commonly look on the discipline of war as vastly more rigid than any discipline necessary in time
of peace, but this is an error.
c) Although soldiers are not always disciplined, they serve an important social function in wartime.
d) In times of peace, soldiers often convert easily from wartime pursuits to the discipline necessary
successfully to compete in even the most competitive marketplace.
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4. Vitamin B12 (cyanocobalamin) is found in mollusks, clams, beef liver, rainbow trout, and fortified
cereals. Vitamin B12 is needed for healthy nerve cells, to make DNA, and for the formation of red
blood cells. Vitamin B12 is bound to the protein in food, and hydrochloric acid in the stomach
releases B12 from the protein during digestion. Once released, B12 combines with a substance
called intrinsic factor (IF) before it is absorbed into the bloodstream. Deficiency is a very serious
problem, ultimately leading to irreversible nerve damage signified by numbness and tingling in the
hands and feet. Signs and symptoms include fatigue, weakness, nausea, constipation, flatulence,
loss of appetite, weight loss, and difficulty in maintaining balance, depression, confusion, poor
memory, and soreness of the mouth or tongue. The RDI is 2.4 mg/day for both males and
females.
5. The star system has been the backbone of the American film industry since the mid 1910s. Stars
are the creation of the public, its reigning favorites. Their influence in the fields of fashion, values,
and public behavior has been enormous. The social history of a nation can be written in terms of
its film stars, Raymond Durgnat has observed. Stars confer instant consequence to any film they
appear in. Their fees have staggered the public. In the 1920s, Mary Pickford and Charles Chaplin
were the two highest paid employees in the world. Contemporary stars such as Julia Roberts and
Tom Cruise command salaries of many millions per film, so popular are these box-office giants.
Some stars had careers that spanned five decades: Bette Davis and John Wayne, to name just
two.
6. For decades, we have looked at our steadily increasing life expectancy rate and proudly
proclaimed that Americans health has never been better. Recently, however, health organizations
and international groups have attempted to quantify the number of years a person lives with a
disability or illness, compared with the number of healthy years. The World Health Organization
summarizes this concept as healthy life expectancy. Simply stated, healthy life expectancy refers
to the number of years a newborn can expect to live in full health, based on current rates of
illness and mortality and also on the quality of their lives. For example, if we could delay the onset
of diabetes so that a person didnt develop the disease until he or she was 60 years old, rather
than developing it at 30, there would be a dramatic increase in this individuals healthy life
expectancy.
7. The functions of desktop publishing software are similar to those of word processing programs,
except that some capabilities are more sophisticated. A user can enter text using the desktop
publishing program in the same way that he or she can enter text with a word processing
program. In addition, the user can retrieve text from a file created by another program. For
example, the user may enter, edit, and save text using a word processing program and then
retrieve the saved text using the desktop publishing program.
8. Are you twittered out? Is all that texting causing your thumbs to seize up in protest? If so, youre
not alone. Like millions of others, you may find that all of the pressure for contact is more than
enough stress for you! Known as technostress, the bombardment is defined as stress created by
a dependence on technology and the constant state of being plugged in or wirelessly connected,
which can include a perceived obligation to respond, chat, or tweet.
9. In the past, exposure to liability made many doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals
reluctant to stop and render aid to victims in emergency situations, such as highway accidents.
Almost all states have enacted a Good Samaritan law that relieves medical professionals from
liability for injury caused by their ordinary negligence in such circumstances. Good Samaritan
laws protect medical professionals only from liability for their ordinary negligence, not for injuries
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caused by their gross negligence or reckless or intentional conduct. Most Good Samaritan laws
protect licensed doctors and nurses and laypersons that have been certified in C PR. Good
Samaritan statutes generally do not protect laypersons who are not trained in CPRthat is, they
are liable for injuries caused by their ordinary negligence in rendering aid.
10. At some time or another, many close relationships go through a conflict phase. Were always
fighting, complains a newlywed. But if she were to analyze these fights, she would discover
important differences among them. According to communication researchers Miller and
Steinberg, most conflicts fit into three different categories. There is (1) pseudoconflicttriggered
by a lack of understanding. There is (2) simple conflictstemming from different ideas,
definitions, perceptions, or goals. Finally there is (3) ego conflictwhich occurs when conflict gets
personal.