PARCC Advanced Reading Practice Questions Story 8
38. The village is located on the island of...
38. C: Heimaey is the island where the village of Vestmannaeyjar (A) is located. The Hebrides (B) are islands off the west coast of Scotland, not Iceland. Helgafell (D) is the name of the volcano that erupted in Vestmannaeyjar on Heimaey Island. Heima (E) means "home" or "at home" in Icelandic, and is the title of a documentary released in 2007 about the 2006 tour of Icelandic band Sigur R�s.
39. The color of the hot liquid was...
39. D: The passage describes the lava as "red-hot liquid" in the first paragraph. The colors orange (A), yellow (C), and gray (E) are not used in this passage. The cinders and ash, not the hot liquid, are described as black (B).
40. This liquid was coming from the...
40. B: The liquid, i.e. lava, was coming from the ground-specifically, from underground. Magma exerts pressure underground until it erupts on the surface as lava. Volcanoes are mountains (A); however, lava does not come from the mountains but from beneath them. The lava came from under the ground, not from the sea (C), the sky (D), or the ocean (E). (There are volcanoes under seas and oceans, but the one described in this passage was not.)
41. The island's volcano had been inactive for...
41. B: The introductory paragraph indicates in its last sentence that the volcano had been inactive for 7,000 years, not 70 years (A), 7,000 months (C), 700 years (D), or 70 decades (E), which also equals 700 years (D).
42. Black cinders fell that were the size of...
42. A: The passage describes the black cinders as "baseball-size" (second paragraph). It does not liken their size to that of pebbles (B) or golf balls (C), which are both smaller than baseballs; or to footballs (D), which are bigger than baseballs; or to hailstones (E), which vary in size but to which the cinders are not compared in this passage.
43. Despite the eruption...
43. D: The passage describes the street lamps still burning (third paragraph) as part of the weird aspect of the village blanketed by cinder drifts and lit by continuing fire. It never mentions buses continuing to run (A), radio broadcasts continuing (B), police continuing to work (C), or television stations continuing to broadcast (E).
44. This volcanic eruption lasted for six...
44. C: The last paragraph's first sentence indicates that the eruption continued for six months, not six weeks (A), six hours (B), six days (D), or six years (E).