Entry Exam Category: College Admission Exams
Course: Accuplacer
Exam: Accuplacer Reading Comprehension Practice Test
Practice Question
Extract
The formerly supercharged Houston space complex aged through the 1980s, developing the outward ambience of a quiet, rural college campus, where the outrageous swamp climate and the surreal routines of human space flight were gentled with a landscaping of duck ponds and shade trees. Out along the approach road reclined the symbol of NASA's faded glory a giant Saturn moon rocket dismantled into pieces for tourists to inspect, like lengths of fossilized bone from a mythic biotech dragon. Rimming the campus were strip malls and tidy residential neighborhoods. A nearby hamburger stand sported a supersized, fiberglass astronaut thirteen feet tall, whose outstretched left arm beckoned with an order of fries.
In the second sentence of the passage ('a giant Saturn moon rocket dismantled into pieces for tourists to inspect, like lengths of fossilized bone from a mythic biotech dragon'), the simile primarily emphasizes the rocket's:
Answer Choices
- A: dominance
- B: obsolescence
- C: superior engineering
- D: appeal to newcomers
Correct Answer: B
Rationale: The rocket is described as dismantled into pieces and compared to fossilized bone from a mythic biotech dragon. This imagery evokes something powerful that once was—but is now a relic, admired only in pieces by tourists. The comparison emphasizes that the rocket is no longer in use and has become a symbol of the past, highlighting its obsolescence rather than its current utility or appeal.