Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

Sample questions

1. The Watchmaker's Bench

   My grandfather's shop smelled of oil and brass, a smell I could still find on my own hands at dinner after an afternoon of sweeping his floor. The sign above the door read SAMIR HADDAD, CLOCKS & WATCHES, though the paint had faded so badly that most customers found the place by memory rather than by sight.

   That autumn, the summer I turned sixteen having just ended, I noticed that his hands had begun to shake. It was slight at first, a tremor that appeared only when he lifted the tweezers to set a tiny screw. He pretended not to notice, and so did I. But one afternoon a woman brought in a pocket watch that had belonged to her father, and when my grandfather opened the case, the tweezers slipped and the balance wheel skittered across the bench.

   He did not curse. He simply set the tweezers down, folded his hands, and looked at them as though they belonged to someone else.

   "Noor," he said. "Come here."

   I had watched him work for years, perched on the stool by the window, but I had never been allowed to touch anything more delicate than a wall clock. Now he slid the loupe across the bench to me. "Find the wheel first," he said. "Then we will see."

   I found it lodged against the leg of the lamp. My heart was pounding so loudly that I was sure the woman, waiting by the counter, could hear it. My grandfather talked me through each step in the same low voice he used to hum along to the radio: lift, turn, seat the pivot, do not force it, never force it. When the balance wheel finally caught and began its steady back-and-forth, he let out a breath I hadn't known he was holding.

   The woman wept a little when she heard it ticking. She paid, thanked us both, and left, the bell over the door jangling behind her.

   For a long time my grandfather said nothing. Then he reached under the bench and pulled out a wooden box I had never seen before. Inside was a set of tools, smaller than his own, the handles worn smooth.

   "These were mine," he said, "when I was your age. My teacher gave them to me the day my hands became steadier than his."

   I understood then that he was not giving me a gift so much as handing me a responsibility, and that he had been waiting, perhaps for a long time, for the right afternoon to do it.

   Question 1

   The description of the sign in the first paragraph mainly suggests that the shop:

   • A.

     had been in operation for a long time.

   • B.

     was new to the neighborhood.

   • C.

     was struggling to attract customers.

   • D.

     was about to be renamed.

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2. Question 2

   The grandfather's instructions to "never force it" most likely indicate that watch repair requires:

   • A.

     the help of more than one person.

   • B.

     speed above all else.

   • C.

     specialized electrical equipment.

   • D.

     patience and a delicate touch.

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3. Question 3

   The wooden box of tools is significant in the passage primarily because it:

   • A.

     symbolizes the passing of skill and responsibility from one generation to the next.

   • B.

     reveals that the grandfather had been planning to sell the shop.

   • C.

     shows that the narrator had secretly been practicing repairs.

   • D.

     explains why the grandfather's hands had begun to shake.

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4. The Translator's Dilemma

   Every translator of poetry eventually confronts the same uncomfortable truth: something will be lost. A poem is not merely a set of meanings arranged in lines. It is also a pattern of sounds, a rhythm, a set of associations that words carry in one language and not in another. When a translator carries a poem across a linguistic border, some of its baggage must be left behind.

   The question is what to leave. Some translators hold that fidelity to meaning is paramount. They produce versions that follow the original nearly word for word, often accompanied by notes explaining puns, allusions, and effects that could not survive the crossing. Readers of these translations can be confident that they are reading what the poet said, even if the result sounds stiff or flat in its new language.

   Others argue that such versions betray the poem in a deeper way. A poem that sings in its own language but plods in translation, they say, has lost the very quality that made it a poem. These translators take greater liberties. They may alter an image to preserve a rhyme or replace a culturally specific reference with one their readers will recognize. At their best, they produce works that feel alive; at their worst, they produce poems that belong more to the translator than to the poet.

   Between these positions lies a wide territory, and most working translators move across it depending on the poem in front of them. A short lyric that depends on a single, surprising image might be translated closely, because the image is what matters. A comic poem built on wordplay might demand a freer approach, since a literal version would leave readers puzzled about why anyone found it funny.

   Some translators have found a creative solution to the dilemma by publishing multiple versions of a single poem side by side: one literal, one freer, and sometimes the original as well. This practice invites readers into the translator's workshop, letting them see the choices that any translation requires. It also carries a quiet admission. No single version, it suggests, can be the poem; each is a reading of it, one perspective among many possible ones.

   Seen this way, the loss that haunts translation is also a kind of gift. Because no translation can be final, poems keep being translated, generation after generation, each version revealing something that the others missed.

   Question 4

   The practice of publishing multiple versions side by side is described as carrying a "quiet admission" that:

   • A.

     translators are often careless.

   • B.

     the original poem is unimportant.

   • C.

     literal translations are always superior.

   • D.

     no single translation can fully capture the poem.

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5. The Frog That Freezes

   Each winter in the forests of Alaska and northern Canada, a small brown amphibian does something that seems impossible. As temperatures plunge, the wood frog stops breathing. Its heart stops beating. Ice crystals form beneath its skin and in its body cavity, and by midwinter a large portion of the water in its body may be frozen solid. To an observer, the frog would appear dead. Yet when spring arrives, it thaws, its heart resumes beating, and it hops away to breed.

   For most animals, freezing is lethal. When ice forms inside cells, its sharp crystals rupture membranes, and as water freezes, the remaining fluid becomes dangerously concentrated with salts. The wood frog survives by controlling where and how ice forms.

   The process begins when ice first touches the frog's skin. Within minutes, the frog's liver begins converting stored starch into glucose, a sugar, and releasing it into the bloodstream in enormous quantities. Glucose levels in a freezing wood frog can climb to many times the normal level. This sugar acts as a cryoprotectant: it moves into the cells and lowers the temperature at which their contents freeze, keeping the fluid inside the cells from turning to ice. Meanwhile, water is drawn out of the cells and freezes in the spaces between them, where it does far less damage.

   Other adaptations help as well. Proteins in the frog's blood encourage ice to form slowly and in small crystals rather than large, damaging ones. And the frog's cells appear able to tolerate the lack of oxygen during the long weeks when its heart is still.

   Scientists study the wood frog for more than curiosity's sake. Donated human organs can be stored for only a short time before they deteriorate, which limits how far they can travel and how many can be used. Researchers hope that understanding how the frog protects its tissues could someday help extend the storage time of organs for transplantation.

   The wood frog's survival strategy also carries a warning. Because the frog depends on predictable cycles of freezing and thawing, some biologists worry that winters with repeated warm spells could force frogs to thaw and refreeze several times, draining the energy reserves they need to survive until spring.

   Question 5

   It can reasonably be inferred that repeated warm spells in winter could harm wood frogs because:

   • A.

     each freeze-thaw cycle uses energy the frogs need to survive.

   • B.

     thawing makes frogs visible to predators.

   • C.

     warm weather causes frogs to breed too early.

   • D.

     warm temperatures destroy frogs' glucose.

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