Free PRAXIS READING SECTION Exam Braindumps (page: 7)

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Read the following passage and answer the question.

In this passage, a Mexican American historian describes a technique she used as part of her research. Doña Teodora offered me yet another cup of strong, black coffee. The aroma of the big, paper-thin Sonoran tortillas filled the small, linoleum-covered kitchen, and I knew that with the coffee I would receive a buttered tortilla straight from the round, homemade comal (a flat, earthenware cooking pan) balanced on the gas- burning stove. For three days, from ten in the morning until early evening, I had been sitting in the same comfortable wooden chair, taking cup after cup of black coffee and consuming hot 10 tortillas. Doña Teodora was ninety years old, and although she would take occasional breaks from patting, extending, and turning over tortillas to let her cat in or out, it appeared that I was the only one exhausted at the end of the day. But once out, as I went over the notes, filed and organized the tape cassettes, exhilaration would set in. The intellectual and emotional excitement I had previously experienced when a pertinent document would suddenly appear now waned in comparison to the gestures and words, the joy and anger Doña Teodora offered. She had not written down her thoughts; but the ideas, recollections, and images evoked by her lively oral expression were jewels for anyone who wanted to know about the life of Mexicanas in booming mining towns on both sides of the Mexico- United States border in the early twentieth century. She never kept a diary.

The thought of writing a memoir would have been put aside as presumptuous. But all her life Doña Teodora had lived amidst the telling and retelling of family stories. Genealogies of her own family as well as complete and up-to-date information of the marriages, births, and deaths of numerous families that made up her community were all well-kept memories. These chains of generations were fleshed out with recollections of the many events and tribulations of these families. Oral history had proven to be a fertile field for my research on the history of Mexicanas. My search had begun in libraries and archives-repositories of conventional history.

The available sources were to be found in census reports, church records, directories, and other such statistical information. These, however, as important as they are, cannot provide one of the essential dimensions of history, the full narrative of the human experience that defies quantification and classification. In certain social groups, this gap can be filled with diaries, memoirs, letters, or even reports from others. In the case of Mexicans in the United States, one of the many devastating consequences of defeat and conquest has been that the traditional institutions that preserve and transfer culture (the documentation of the past) have ignored these personal written sources. The letters, writings, and documents of Mexican people have rarely, if ever, been included in archives, special collections, or libraries. At best, some centers have attempted to collect newspapers published by Mexicans, but the effort was started late.

The historian who tries to reconstruct the past from newspapers is constantly frustrated because, although titles abound, collections are scarce and often incomplete. Although many hours of previous study and preparation had taken me to Doña Teodora's kitchen, I was initially unsure of my place. Was I really an insider or were the experiences that had made the lives of my interviewees such that, although I could speak Spanish and I am Mexican, I was still an outsider? I realized, nonetheless, that the richness and depth of the spoken word challenges the comforting theories and models of the social sciences. Mexican history challenges social- science models derived solely from victorious imperialistic experiences. Our history cannot be written without new sources. These sources will determine which concepts are needed to illuminate and interpret the past, and these concepts will emerge from the people themselves. This will permit the description of events and structures to assume a culturally relevant perspective, thus emphasizing the point of view of the Mexican people. The use of theoretical constructs must 75 follow the voices of the people who live the reality, consciously or not. For too long the experiences of women have been studied according to male-oriented sources and constructs. These must be questioned. For the history of Mexican people, the sources primarily exist in our own worlds. And it is here where we must begin. I often found that as the memory awakened, other sources would emerge. Boxes of letters, photographs, and even manuscripts and diaries would appear. Long- standing assumptions of illiteracy were shattered and had to be reexamined. I saw that constant reevaluation became the rule rather than the exception. I entered women's worlds created on the margin — not only of Anglo life, but of, and outside of, the lives of their own fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, or priests, bosses, and bureaucrats.

The author's comments in the third paragraph suggest that her research project resembles more conventional research.

  1. attention to the details of everyday life in certain communities
  2. use of written public materials as a starting point
  3. adoption of family memories of past events as data
  4. reliance on church and state records to test new theories
  5. assumption that conventional sources are accurate but incomplete

Answer(s): B

Explanation:

The author identifies the starting point of her research project when she writes “My search had begun in libraries and archives-repositories of conventional history”. In these places, she discovered that the “available sources were to be found in census reports, church records, directories, and other such statistical information”. These sources all share the characteristic of being written public materials.



Read the following passage and answer the question.

In this passage, a Mexican American historian describes a technique she used as part of her research. Doña Teodora offered me yet another cup of strong, black coffee. The aroma of the big, paper-thin Sonoran tortillas filled the small, linoleum-covered kitchen, and I knew that with the coffee I would receive a buttered tortilla straight from the round, homemade comal (a flat, earthenware cooking pan) balanced on the gas- burning stove. For three days, from ten in the morning until early evening, I had been sitting in the same comfortable wooden chair, taking cup after cup of black coffee and consuming hot 10 tortillas. Doña Teodora was ninety years old, and although she would take occasional breaks from patting, extending, and turning over tortillas to let her cat in or out, it appeared that I was the only one exhausted at the end of the day. But once out, as I went over the notes, filed and organized the tape cassettes, exhilaration would set in. The intellectual and emotional excitement I had previously experienced when a pertinent document would suddenly appear now waned in comparison to the gestures and words, the joy and anger Doña Teodora offered. She had not written down her thoughts; but the ideas, recollections, and images evoked by her lively oral expression were jewels for anyone who wanted to know about the life of Mexicanas in booming mining towns on both sides of the Mexico- United States border in the early twentieth century. She never kept a diary.


The thought of writing a memoir would have been put aside as presumptuous. But all her life Doña Teodora had lived amidst the telling and retelling of family stories. Genealogies of her own family as well as complete and up-to-date information of the marriages, births, and deaths of numerous families that made up her community were all well-kept memories. These chains of generations were fleshed out with recollections of the many events and tribulations of these families. Oral history had proven to be a fertile field for my research on the history of Mexicanas. My search had begun in libraries and archives-repositories of conventional history.

The available sources were to be found in census reports, church records, directories, and other such statistical information. These, however, as important as they are, cannot provide one of the essential dimensions of history, the full narrative of the human experience that defies quantification and classification. In certain social groups, this gap can be filled with diaries, memoirs, letters, or even reports from others. In the case of Mexicans in the United States, one of the many devastating consequences of defeat and conquest has been that the traditional institutions that preserve and transfer culture (the documentation of the past) have ignored these personal written sources. The letters, writings, and documents of Mexican people have rarely, if ever, been included in archives, special collections, or libraries. At best, some centers have attempted to collect newspapers published by Mexicans, but the effort was started late.

The historian who tries to reconstruct the past from newspapers is constantly frustrated because, although titles abound, collections are scarce and often incomplete. Although many hours of previous study and preparation had taken me to Doña Teodora's kitchen, I was initially unsure of my place. Was I really an insider or were the experiences that had made the lives of my interviewees such that, although I could speak Spanish and I am Mexican, I was still an outsider? I realized, nonetheless, that the richness and depth of the spoken word challenges the comforting theories and models of the social sciences. Mexican history challenges social- science models derived solely from victorious imperialistic experiences. Our history cannot be written without new sources. These sources will determine which concepts are needed to illuminate and interpret the past, and these concepts will emerge from the people themselves. This will permit the description of events and structures to assume a culturally relevant perspective, thus emphasizing the point of view of the Mexican people. The use of theoretical constructs must 75 follow the voices of the people who live the reality, consciously or not. For too long the experiences of women have been studied according to male-oriented sources and constructs. These must be questioned. For the history of Mexican people, the sources primarily exist in our own worlds. And it is here where we must begin. I often found that as the memory awakened, other sources would emerge. Boxes of letters, photographs, and even manuscripts and diaries would appear. Long- standing assumptions of illiteracy were shattered and had to be reexamined. I saw that constant reevaluation became the rule rather than the exception. I entered women's worlds created on the margin — not only of Anglo life, but of, and outside of, the lives of their own fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, or priests, bosses, and bureaucrats.

In what sense are "census reports, church records, directories" inadequate?

  1. They place too great a reliance on political factors.
  2. They blur the distinction between the political and the religious realm.
  3. They are not of sufficient accuracy to be of use to historians.
  4. They do not tell the human side of the story.
  5. They are often too difficult to obtain.

Answer(s): D

Explanation:

The “census reports, church records and directories” are representative of the “available sources” that the author finds inadequate specifically because they “cannot provide one of the essential dimensions of history, the full narrative of the human experience”. That is, they do not tell the human side of the story.



Read the following passage and answer the question.

In this passage, a Mexican American historian describes a technique she used as part of her research. Doña Teodora offered me yet another cup of strong, black coffee. The aroma of the big, paper-thin Sonoran tortillas filled the small, linoleum-covered kitchen, and I knew that with the coffee I would receive a buttered tortilla straight from the round, homemade comal (a flat, earthenware cooking pan) balanced on the gas-burning stove. For three days, from ten in the morning until early evening, I had been sitting in the same comfortable wooden chair, taking cup after cup of black coffee and consuming hot 10 tortillas. Doña Teodora was ninety years old, and although she would take occasional breaks from patting, extending, and turning over tortillas to let her cat in or out, it appeared that I was the only one exhausted at the end of the day. But once out, as I went over the notes, filed and organized the tape cassettes, exhilaration would set in. The intellectual and emotional excitement I had previously experienced when a pertinent document would suddenly appear now waned in comparison to the gestures and words, the joy and anger Doña Teodora offered. She had not written down her thoughts; but the ideas, recollections, and images evoked by her lively oral expression were jewels for anyone who wanted to know about the life of Mexicanas in booming mining towns on both sides of the Mexico- United States border in the early twentieth century. She never kept a diary.

The thought of writing a memoir would have been put aside as presumptuous. But all her life Doña Teodora had lived amidst the telling and retelling of family stories. Genealogies of her own family as well as complete and up-to-date information of the marriages, births, and deaths of numerous families that made up her community were all well-kept memories. These chains of generations were fleshed out with recollections of the many events and tribulations of these families. Oral history had proven to be a fertile field for my research on the history of Mexicanas. My search had begun in libraries and archives-repositories of conventional history.

The available sources were to be found in census reports, church records, directories, and other such statistical information. These, however, as important as they are, cannot provide one of the essential dimensions of history, the full narrative of the human experience that defies quantification and classification. In certain social groups, this gap can be filled with diaries, memoirs, letters, or even reports from others. In the case of Mexicans in the United States, one of the many devastating consequences of defeat and conquest has been that the traditional institutions that preserve and transfer culture (the documentation of the past) have ignored these personal written sources. The letters, writings, and documents of Mexican people have rarely, if ever, been included in archives, special collections, or libraries. At best, some centers have attempted to collect newspapers published by Mexicans, but the effort was started late.

The historian who tries to reconstruct the past from newspapers is constantly frustrated because, although titles abound, collections are scarce and often incomplete. Although many hours of previous study and preparation had taken me to Doña Teodora's kitchen, I was initially unsure of my place. Was I really an insider or were the experiences that had made the lives of my interviewees such that, although I could speak Spanish and I am Mexican, I was still an outsider? I realized, nonetheless, that the richness and depth of the spoken word challenges the comforting theories and models of the social sciences. Mexican history challenges social- science models derived solely from victorious imperialistic experiences. Our history cannot be written without new sources. These sources will determine which concepts are needed to illuminate and interpret the past, and these concepts will emerge from the people themselves. This will permit the description of events and structures to assume a culturally relevant perspective, thus emphasizing the point of view of the Mexican people. The use of theoretical constructs must 75 follow the voices of the people who live the reality, consciously or not. For too long the experiences of women have been studied according to male-oriented sources and constructs. These must be questioned. For the history of Mexican people, the sources primarily exist in our own worlds. And it is here where we must begin. I often found that as the memory awakened, other sources would emerge. Boxes of letters, photographs, and even manuscripts and diaries would appear. Long- standing assumptions of illiteracy were shattered and had to be reexamined. I saw that constant reevaluation became the rule rather than the exception. I entered women's worlds created on the margin — not only of Anglo life, but of, and outside of, the lives of their own fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, or priests, bosses, and bureaucrats.

The "gap" can best be described as the distance between the:

  1. politically motivated view of reality and the personally motivated view of reality
  2. abundance of concrete facts and the shortage of scholarly interpretation of them
  3. pictures presented by traditional historical sources and by subjective personal accounts
  4. information contained in libraries and the information that has been lost
  5. story of one person and the history of a nation as a whole

Answer(s): C

Explanation:

The “gap” is discussed in the context of written sources and the pictures of life they represent. The author discovered that fact-based conventional records lacked “one of the essential dimensions of history, the full narrative of the human experience”. She suggests that “diaries, memoirs, and letters”, which are included in the category of “personal written sources”, would present that other viewpoint. The “gap” lies between these two types of sources.



Read the following passage and answer the question.

In this passage, a Mexican American historian describes a technique she used as part of her research. Doña Teodora offered me yet another cup of strong, black coffee. The aroma of the big, paper-thin Sonoran tortillas filled the small, linoleum-covered kitchen, and I knew that with the coffee I would receive a buttered tortilla straight from the round, homemade comal (a flat, earthenware cooking pan) balanced on the gas- burning stove. For three days, from ten in the morning until early evening, I had been sitting in the same comfortable wooden chair, taking cup after cup of black coffee and consuming hot 10 tortillas. Doña Teodora was ninety years old, and although she would take occasional breaks from patting, extending, and turning over tortillas to let her cat in or out, it appeared that I was the only one exhausted at the end of the day. But once out, as I went over the notes, filed and organized the tape cassettes, exhilaration would set in. The intellectual and emotional excitement I had previously experienced when a pertinent document would suddenly appear now waned in comparison to the gestures and words, the joy and anger Doña Teodora offered. She had not written down her thoughts; but the ideas, recollections, and images evoked by her lively oral expression were jewels for anyone who wanted to know about the life of Mexicanas in booming mining towns on both sides of the Mexico- United States border in the early twentieth century. She never kept a diary.

The thought of writing a memoir would have been put aside as presumptuous. But all her life Doña Teodora had lived amidst the telling and retelling of family stories. Genealogies of her own family as well as complete and up-to-date information of the marriages, births, and deaths of numerous families that made up her community were all well-kept memories. These chains of generations were fleshed out with recollections of the many events and tribulations of these families. Oral history had proven to be a fertile field for my research on the history of Mexicanas. My search had begun in libraries and archives-repositories of conventional history.

The available sources were to be found in census reports, church records, directories, and other such statistical information. These, however, as important as they are, cannot provide one of the essential dimensions of history, the full narrative of the human experience that defies quantification and classification. In certain social groups, this gap can be filled with diaries, memoirs, letters, or even reports from others. In the case of Mexicans in the United States, one of the many devastating consequences of defeat and conquest has been that the traditional institutions that preserve and transfer culture (the documentation of the past) have ignored these personal written sources. The letters, writings, and documents of Mexican people have rarely, if ever, been included in archives, special collections, or libraries. At best, some centers have attempted to collect newspapers published by Mexicans, but the effort was started late.

The historian who tries to reconstruct the past from newspapers is constantly frustrated because, although titles abound, collections are scarce and often incomplete. Although many hours of previous study and preparation had taken me to Doña Teodora's kitchen, I was initially unsure of my place. Was I really an insider or were the experiences that had made the lives of my interviewees such that, although I could speak Spanish and I am Mexican, I was still an outsider? I realized, nonetheless, that the richness and depth of the spoken word challenges the comforting theories and models of the social sciences. Mexican history challenges social- science models derived solely from victorious imperialistic experiences. Our history cannot be written without new sources. These sources will determine which concepts are needed to illuminate and interpret the past, and these concepts will emerge from the people themselves. This will permit the description of events and structures to assume a culturally relevant perspective, thus emphasizing the point of view of the Mexican people. The use of theoretical constructs must 75 follow the voices of the people who live the reality, consciously or not. For too long the experiences of women have been studied according to male-oriented sources and constructs. These must be questioned. For the history of Mexican people, the sources primarily exist in our own worlds. And it is here where we must begin. I often found that as the memory awakened, other sources would emerge. Boxes of letters, photographs, and even manuscripts and diaries would appear. Long- standing assumptions of illiteracy were shattered and had to be reexamined. I saw that constant reevaluation became the rule rather than the exception. I entered women's worlds created on the margin — not only of Anglo life, but of, and outside of, the lives of their own fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, or priests, bosses, and bureaucrats.

"Place" most nearly means:

  1. home
  2. duty
  3. role
  4. appropriate moment
  5. geographical location

Answer(s): C

Explanation:

A "role" is the position or the expected social behavior of an individual. When the author writes "I was initially unsure of my place", she is expressing uncertainty about how she should think of herself and about how she is perceived by Doña Teodora and other Mexican interviewees. In this context, "place" refers to her social "role." This is made clear in the subsequent text, when she wonders if, despite speaking Spanish and being Mexicana, she is an "insider" or an "outsider".






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