SAT PRACTICE ANSWER SHEET

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Bernice Nicholson
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1 ENGL HW 16 Name: I#: ST PRTIE NSWER SHEET OMPLETE MRK It is recommended that you use a No. 2 pencil. It is very important that you fill in the entire circle darkly and completely. If you change your response, erase as completely as possible. Incomplete marks or erasures may affect your score. EXMPLES OF INOMPLETE MRKS RE - hoking Under Pressure

3 Reading Practice hoking Under Pressure 13 MINUTES, QUESTIONS Use your answer sheet to answer the questions in this section. IRETIONS Each passage or pair of passages below is followed by a number of questions. fter reading each passage or pair, choose the best answer to each question based on what is stated or implied in the passage or passages and in any accompanying graphics (such as a table or graph). Line Questions 1- are based on the following passage. This passage is adapted from bigail Tucker, The Science of hoking Under Pressure by Smithsonian Magazine. Thanks to Reebok commercials that aired before the 1992 Summer Olympics, merica knew that an O rien could sprint 0 meters in.3 seconds and fling a discus 172 feet. ut when the decathlete missed his three pole vault attempts at the trials, he became more famous for something else: choking. For half an hour, I walked around with my hands on my head, saying, What just happened? Was that really my third attempt? says O rien, He searched for his mom in the stands; he cried. Somebody had to explain it to me: an, you re not going to the Olympics. University of hicago psychologist Sian eilock has recently defined choking as not simply poor performance: it is worse performance than you are capable of precisely because there is a considerable result on the line. The paradigm of pressure is made evident in sports like basketball and football with the term goat. The word is a double entendre, or term that is devised to be understood in one of two possible ways. On one hand, being the goat in a basketball game might mean that a player has an opportunity to take the final shot with time running out and missing it. Here, goat suggests that the player has made a grave and shameful error. On the other hand, a player who has had an entire career of championships and a high winning record can be referred to as the GOT, which is an acronym for Greatest of ll Time. Indeed, the word goat shows how choking under pressure is the precise inverse of positive success. Non-athletes choke, too, though whether in the middle of a wedding toast or while parallel parking before a watchful spouse. ut choking may be most painful in sports, where athletes bungle moves they ve spent a lifetime perfecting. Perhaps one reason that sports are demonstrably more prone to people choking is because athletes get only one attempt at succeeding, as evinced in the Olympics. Seldomtelevised sports like handball and canoe slalom are thrust before huge audiences, with medals and endorsement money at stake. Unlike big-ticket sports that generate seasonal revenue like baseball, football, or soccer (all of which, incidentally, are not featured in the Olympics), these small sports gain much of their major viewership and money at the Olympics which only occur every four years! To compound the financial pressure, the atmosphere of international goodwill only worsens the predicament: studies show that the friendlier the audience, the more self-conscious players get. Not only is success predicated on one attempt, but much more than mere pride is on the line. To better understand the nature of choking, eilock held a controlled experiment that simulated the major triggers of choking. She lined a room in her lab with stroturf and asked golfers ENGL HW RE - hoking Under Pressure

4 to swing on the makeshift green, creating pressure by offering money for good performance and introducing an audience, which pushes people to scrutinize their movements. Experts were about 20 percent less accurate on three- to five-foot putts. Golfers often choke when they think too much, eilock says. Skilled athletes use streamlined brain circuitry that largely bypasses the prefrontal cortex, the seat of awareness. When outside stresses shift attention, the prefrontal cortex stops working the way it should. We focus on aspects of what we are doing that should be out of consciousness. eilock recommends distracting the mind with meaningless details, like the dimples on a golf ball, or speeding up movements so the brain doesn t have time to overthink. Under lab testing, golfers who moved more quickly improved their performance by a third. eilock s account of the choking under pressure phenomenon exemplifies how psychological stress in the prefrontal cortex can profoundly shape human behavior. Other recent neuroimaging studies have shown that several brain regions beyond the prefrontal cortex can be implicated in motivation and top-down control of attention. These other regions play a key role in stress-induced choking, though more research needs to be done to show their interrelation. s used in line 17, considerable most nearly means ) substantial. ) concentrated. ) lavish. ) titanic What function does the second paragraph (lines 13-17) serve in the passage as a whole? ) It extends an O rien s central anecdote. ) It defines the passage s main topic. ) It reinforces a psychologist s authority. ) It introduces the passage s main premise. Which choice best reflects the effect of the double entendre used in line 20? ) It inspires an athletic dualism. ) It measures executional pressure. ) It represents a conspicuous term. ) It illustrates a performance-based paradigm. s used in line 26, grave most nearly means ) devastating. ) deadly. ) serious. ) somber. ccording to the passage, choking can occur ) most painfully in sports. ) more frequently in Olympic sports. ) to people who do not play sports. ) more frequently in big-ticket sports. ENGL HW RE - hoking Under Pressure

5 6 Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to the previous question? ) Lines 33-3 ( Non... spouse. ) ) Lines 3-37 ( ut choking... perfecting. ) ) Lines ( Seldom... stake. ) ) Lines ( Unlike... Olympics ) 9 Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to the previous question? ) Lines 0-3 ( To compound... get. ) ) Lines ( Skilled... awareness. ) ) Lines 72-7 ( eilock... overthink. ) ) Lines 81-8 ( Other... attention. ) 7 The passage identifies which of the following as a factor negatively affecting golfers? ) Neural complications in the prefrontal cortex ) ttentive engagement with the prefrontal cortex ) Quick movement on three- to five- foot putts ) Overconcentration on small details The author s main purpose of including the study on golfers is to ) further explore how choking occurs. ) illustrate Sian eilock s authority. ) provide an example of choking in a specific sport. ) present a definitive study. 8 ased on the passage, which of the following can reasonably be inferred about the brain s relation to choking? ) The prefrontal cortex is the cause of choking. ) rain distraction eliminates the risk of choking. ) Multiple areas of the brain can influence choking. ) Friendlier crowds cause athletes to become more self-conscious. ENGL HW RE - hoking Under Pressure

Coach Zak Boisvert has put together some notes on the coaching philosophy of

Coach Zak Boisvert has put together some notes on the coaching philosophy of Alabama Football Coach Nick Saban. I hope the notes can have a positive impact on your program. All coaches can learn something,