CBEST Practice Exam - Question List

The U.S. Congress (Government and Civics 3­)

Did you ever wonder where federal laws come from? For example, who proposed that it be illegal to (1) operate a vehicle without a driver’s license? Who is responsible for making decisions about war? In the United States rules and decisions that affect its citizens (and visitors) are proposed and put into effect by what is known as the U.S. Congress.

The U.S. Congress is made of up two (2) bodies: the Senate and the House of Representatives. Both representatives and senators are elected by voters. Congress has 535 members: 435 members in the House of Representatives and 100 members in the Senate. Each member of the House of Representatives serves two-year terms and each state in the union has at least one representative. Each of the 50 states has two senators; therefore, there are 100 senators in Congress, and each member of the Senate serves a six-year (3) term.

Congress works together to create (4) bills that are then later signed into law by the President of the United States. It also has power over financial concerns. It is the Congress who has the authority to make and collect taxes. Congress also plays an important role in the decisions of the national defense. It alone has the power to (5) wage war on another country.

So, next time your hear someone say they dislike a President’s decision to go to war with another country, you can tell them that Congress has the ultimate say, and not the President, in how the country is run.

According to the passage, all of the following statements are false EXCEPT:

The U.S. Congress (Government and Civics 3­)

Did you ever wonder where federal laws come from? For example, who proposed that it be illegal to (1) operate a vehicle without a driver’s license? Who is responsible for making decisions about war? In the United States rules and decisions that affect its citizens (and visitors) are proposed and put into effect by what is known as the U.S. Congress.

The U.S. Congress is made of up two (2) bodies: the Senate and the House of Representatives. Both representatives and senators are elected by voters. Congress has 535 members: 435 members in the House of Representatives and 100 members in the Senate. Each member of the House of Representatives serves two-year terms and each state in the union has at least one representative. Each of the 50 states has two senators; therefore, there are 100 senators in Congress, and each member of the Senate serves a six-year (3) term.

Congress works together to create (4) bills that are then later signed into law by the President of the United States. It also has power over financial concerns. It is the Congress who has the authority to make and collect taxes. Congress also plays an important role in the decisions of the national defense. It alone has the power to (5) wage war on another country.

So, next time your hear someone say they dislike a President’s decision to go to war with another country, you can tell them that Congress has the ultimate say, and not the President, in how the country is run.

The word “operate”, bolded after the (1) in paragraph 1, can best be described as

Tomato Fights as Tradition in One Spanish Town

Have you ever heard of people throwing rotten tomatoes at actors who perform poorly on stage? Well, in Spain they take the tomato throwing one step further. Each year in the village of Buñol, located in the eastern region near the Mediterranean, there is a tomato throwing festival known as the Tomatina. It is a food fight in which over 400,000 pounds (200,000 kilograms) of tomatoes are smashed and juiced over the bodies of more than 40,000 people each year.

This festival began in 1945 and there are several different (1) theories about where it got its start. According to one theory, once a group of teenagers were attending a religious procession in the main (2) plaza or town square. It is said that one person aggressively pushed another, and everyone started fighting. There just happened to be a vegetable stand in the street and the teens began throwing the tomatoes at each other until the police came and broke the fights up. The same teens decided to repeat the fighting match the next year, for fun, with tomatoes that they took from home. Since then people meet up the same day, on the last Wednesday of August, at the same plaza, to participate in this unique tomato fight.

During the Tomatina the (3) participants, dressed in old clothing, throw tomatoes at each other from balconies, trucks, throughout the streets…there is no way to escape it. The streets and the participants all end up covered in tomato sauce. The tomatoes have to be (4) ripe. One of the rules of this battle is that before throwing the tomatoes you must crush them in your hands to prevent hurting someone. The fight only lasts an hour. Trucks full of tomatoes arrive at the plaza and everyone gets prepared. A (5) rocket signals the beginning and the end of the fun battle. When the second rocket is heard, the fight stops, but the party continues.

Apart from having a great time at this celebration, all that tomato juice is apparently good for your skin. It’s an excellent treatment that helps with cleansing and toning.

According to the author, which of the following was not a way to describe the Tomatina in the passage?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also known as (1) NOAA (pronounced “Noah”), (2) descends from President Thomas Jefferson’s Survey of the Coast, which was established in the early 1800’s in efforts to promote safe (3) maritime commerce, or coastal trade. NOAA is therefore often considered the oldest scientific government (4) agency in the United States.

It was officially established in 1970 by President Richard Nixon, who thought it was necessary to (5) consolidate a number of agencies into one. Today, NOAA consists of multiple offices, where scientists explore the atmosphere and oceans using tools ranging from satellites that orbit Earth, to submarines that scrape the far depths of the oceans’ floor.

NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) is the organization responsible for weather forecasting and providing important storm warnings and advisories. It’s National Ocean Service (NOS) is in charge of mapping the country’s coastal waterways and promoting the conservation of the national marine sanctuaries; the marine equivalent of national parks. NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) is tasked with managing fisheries around the country. The National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) is NOAA’s office that oversees the environmental satellite programs and manages the data collected from the NWS.

Few people know that NOAA plays such an important role in our daily lives, yet it does none-the-less. It’s thanks to NOAA that we know when to take an umbrella with us to avoid getting soaking wet while walking to work, and to take refuge when an unexpected tornado strikes. Not only is it one of the oldest institutions, but also some will argue that it is also one of the most essential resources for the American people.

The acronym “NOAA”, in bold after the (1) in the first paragraph, stands for

The Northern Cities Vowel Shift and Speakers That Adopt It

“The Northern Cities Vowel Shift” is not adopted by all speakers that live in the geographic regions where it is in progress. Studies (1) illustrate that it is mostly European Americans who show evidence of taking on the shift; however, there is little to no research indicating that speakers of African American Vernacular English employ the shift in their speech. Canadians that share proximity to the Great Lakes with speakers that live in the United States also show no evidence of adopting the shift.

This shift, also called “The Northern Cities Shift” (NCS), is a (2) linguistic phenomenon that occurs in the northern geographic area of the United States known as the Inland North, which includes such cities as Rochester, Buffalo, Detroit, and Chicago. Although prominent among some urban inhabitants of the region, NCS is not considered the standard. (3) Linguists describe one change that occurs in speakers of NCS in which the vowel in milk (4) “shifts” down and back (the tongue is lowered and travels back) from a short “i” to a short “e” that could be represented as melk.

William Labov, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is one of the largest contributors to research on the subject of the NCS. His theory is that the shift possibly started when speakers from different (5) language varieties were brought together in the early 1800’s when the Erie Canal was being constructed. People from the East Coast moved to the Great Lakes region, and their dialects mixed resulting in an ongoing shift. However, not all speakers of the Great Lakes region participate in this linguistic variation.

Which of following is true according to the passage?