Rhetorical Synthesis Lv Medium (Part1)

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Organisms release cellular material into their environment by shedding substances such as hair or skin.
• The DNA in these substances is known as environmental DNA, or eDNA.
• Researchers collect and analyze eDNA to detect the presence of species that are difficult to observe.
• Geneticist Sara Oyler-McCance’s research team analyzed eDNA in water samples from the Florida Everglades to detect invasive constrictor snake species in the area.
• The study determined a 91% probability of detecting Burmese python eDNA in a given location.

The student wants to present the study to an audience already familiar with environmental DNA. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Sam Maloof (1916–2009) was an American woodworker and furniture designer.
• He was the son of Lebanese immigrants.
• He received a “genius grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1985.
• The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, owns a rocking chair that Maloof made from walnut wood.
• The armrests and the seat of the chair are sleek and contoured, and the back consists of seven spindle-like slats.

The student wants to describe the rocking chair to an audience unfamiliar with Sam Maloof. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Species belonging to the Orchidaceae (orchid) family can be found in both tropical and temperate environments.
• Orchidaceae species diversity has not been well studied in temperate forests, such as those in Oaxaca, Mexico.
• Arelee Estefanía Muñoz-Hernández led a study to determine how many different Orchidaceae species are present in the forests of Oaxaca.
• Muñoz-Hernández and her team collected orchids each month for a year at a site in Oaxaca.
• Seventy-four Orchidaceae species were present at the site.

The student wants to present the study and its findings. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Maika’i Tubbs is a Native Hawaiian sculptor and installation artist.
• His work has been shown in the United States, Canada, Japan, and Germany, among other places.
• Many of his sculptures feature discarded objects.
• His work Erasure (2008) includes discarded audiocassette tapes and magnets.
• His work Home Grown (2009) includes discarded pushpins, plastic plates and forks, and wood.

The student wants to emphasize a similarity between the two works. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Chemical leavening agents cause carbon dioxide to be released within a liquid batter, making the batter rise as it bakes.
• Baking soda and baking powder are chemical leavening agents.
• Baking soda is pure sodium bicarbonate.
• To produce carbon dioxide, baking soda needs to be mixed with liquid and an acidic ingredient such as honey.
• Baking powder is a mixture of sodium bicarbonate and an acid.
• To produce carbon dioxide, baking powder needs to be mixed with liquid but not with an acidic ingredient.

The student wants to emphasize a difference between baking soda and baking powder. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Minnesota defines a lake as an inland body of water of at least 10 acres.
• Wisconsin’s definition of a lake doesn’t take size into account.
• By its own definition, Wisconsin has over 15,000 lakes, many smaller than 10 acres.
• By Minnesota’s definition, Wisconsin has only about 6,000 lakes.

The student wants to contrast Minnesota’s definition of a lake with Wisconsin’s. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Just like states have state flags, some cities have city flags.
• Over one hundred US cities have redesigned their flags since 2015.
• The city of Pocatello, Idaho, redesigned its flag after it was named the most poorly designed flag in North America.
• Pocatello’s new flag better represents the city’s mountainous geography and civic priorities.
• Residents consider the new flag to be a meaningful symbol of civic pride.

The student wants to make and support a generalization about the effect of redesigning a city flag. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Some sandstone arches in Utah’s Arches National Park have been defaced by tourists’ carvings.
• Park rangers can smooth away some carvings using power grinders.
• For deep carvings, power grinding is not always feasible because it can greatly alter or damage the rock.
• Park rangers can use an infilling technique, which involves filling in carvings with ground sandstone and a bonding agent.
• This technique is minimally invasive.

The student wants to explain an advantage of the infilling technique. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Las sergas de Esplandián was a novel popular in sixteenth-century Spain.
• The novel featured a fictional island inhabited solely by Black women and known as California.
• That same century, Spanish explorers learned of an “island” off the west coast of Mexico.
• They called it California after the island in the novel.
• The “island” was actually the peninsula now known as Baja California (“Lower California”), which lies to the south of the US state of California.

The student wants to emphasize the role a misconception played in the naming of a place. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Abdulrazak Gurnah was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature.
• Gurnah was born in Zanzibar in East Africa and currently lives in the United Kingdom.
• Many readers have singled out Gurnah’s 1994 book Paradise for praise.
• Paradise is a historical novel about events that occurred in colonial East Africa.

The student wants to introduce Paradise to an audience unfamiliar with the novel and its author. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Started in 1925, the Scripps National Spelling Bee is a US-based spelling competition.
• The words used in the competition have diverse linguistic origins.
• In 2008, Sameer Mishra won by correctly spelling the word “guerdon.”
• “Guerdon” derives from the Anglo-French word “guerdun.”
• In 2009, Kavya Shivashankar won by correctly spelling the word “Laodicean.”
• “Laodicean” derives from the ancient Greek word “Laodíkeia.”

The student wants to emphasize a difference in the origins of the two words. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

- In the late 1890s, over 14,000 unique varieties of apples were grown in the US.

- The rise of industrial agriculture in the mid-1900s narrowed the range of commercially grown crops.

- Thousands of apple varieties considered less suitable for commercial growth were lost.

- Today, only 15 apple varieties dominate the market, making up 90% of apples purchased in the US.

- The Lost Apple Project, based in Washington State, attempts to find and grow lost apple varieties.

The student wants to emphasize the decline in unique apple varieties in the US and specify why this decline occurred.

Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish these goals?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Most, but not all, of the Moon’s oxygen comes from the Sun, via solar wind.
• Cosmochemist Kentaro Terada from Osaka University wondered if some of the unaccounted-for oxygen could be coming from Earth.
• In 2008, he analyzed data from the Japanese satellite Kaguya.
• Kaguya gathered data about gases and particles it encountered while orbiting the Moon.
• Based on the Kaguya data, Terada confirmed his suspicion that Earth is sending oxygen to the Moon.

The student wants to emphasize the aim of the research study. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Gravitational waves are powerful ripples that originate in deep space and eventually pass through Earth.
• The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a physics study that began in 2002.
• LIGO’s goal is to detect and analyze gravitational waves.
• LIGO uses a pair of massive gravitational wave detectors called interferometers that are thousands of miles apart.
• In 2015, for the first time in history, LIGO researchers detected a gravitational wave passing through Earth.

The student wants to present LIGO’s aim and methodology. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Seven species of sea turtle exist today.
• Five sea turtle species can be found in the Atlantic Ocean.
• One of those species is the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle.
• Its scientific name is Lepidochelys kempii.
• Another of those species is the olive ridley sea turtle.
• Its scientific name is Lepidochelys olivacea.

The student wants to emphasize a similarity between the two sea turtle species. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Samuel Selvon was a Trinidadian author.
• The Lonely Londoners is one of his most celebrated novels.
• Selvon published the novel in 1956.
• It is about a group of men who emigrate from the Caribbean to Great Britain after World War II.
• Some of The Lonely Londoners’ characters also appear in Selvon’s later novel Moses Ascending.

The student wants to introduce Samuel Selvon and his novel The Lonely Londoners to a new audience. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• The Pueblo of Zuni is located about 150 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
• It is the traditional home of the A:shiwi (Zuni) people.
• The A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center was established by tribal members in 1992.
• Its mission is stated on its website: “As a tribal museum and heritage center for the Zuni people and by the Zuni people we work to provide learning experiences that emphasize A:shiwi ways of knowing, as well as exploring modern concepts of knowledge and the transfer of knowledge.”

The student wants to emphasize how long the museum has existed. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Ancient Native American and Australian Aboriginal cultures described the Pleiades star cluster as having seven stars.
• It was referred to as the Seven Sisters in the mythology of ancient Greece.
• Today, the cluster appears to have only six stars.
• Two of the stars have moved so close together that they now appear as one.

The student wants to specify the reason the Pleiades’ appearance changed. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

• Pinnipeds, which include seals, sea lions, and walruses, live in and around water.
• Pinnipeds are descended not from sea animals but from four-legged, land-dwelling carnivores.
• Canadian paleobiologist Natalia Rybczynski recently found a fossil with four legs, webbed toes, and the skull and teeth of a seal.
• Rybczynski refers to her rare find as a “transitional fossil.”
• The fossil illustrates an early stage in the evolution of pinnipeds from their land-dwelling ancestors.

The student wants to emphasize the fossil’s significance. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes: J.R.R.

• Tolkien’s 1937 novel The Hobbit features two maps.

• The novel opens with a reproduction of the map that the characters use on their quest.
• This map introduces readers to the fictional world they are about to enter.
• The novel closes with a map depicting every stop on the characters’ journey.
• That map allows readers to reconstruct the story they have just read.

The student wants to contrast the purposes of the two maps in The Hobbit. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?