Loud music with lyrics that make you want to lip sync interferes with the brain's "working memory." That's the
neurological system that turns the text or equations you're
studying into knowledge you can retrieve when needed-
like during a final exam.
The author's purpose for writing this passage was to
A. prove that memorizing information is harder in a music-
free environment
B. explain how listening to music can sometimes hinder the
learning process
C. analyze the types of music that are most helpful when
studying for a final exam
D. describe the neurological process used when turning
information into knowledge

Read the excerpt from "mother tongue." those tests were constructed around items like fill-in-the-blank sentence completion, such as “even though tom was mary thought he was ” and the correct answer always seemed to be the most bland combinations of thoughts, for example, “even though tom was foolish, mary thought he was ridiculous.” well, according to my mother, there were very few limitations as to what tom could have been and what mary might have thought of him. so i never did well on tests like that. how does tan build a central idea of her story in the excerpt? tan discusses the types of questions on achievement tests to support the idea that the tests limit students’ ability to write well. tan explains a question on a language achievement test to support the idea that the tests should include more interesting content. tan gives an example of her experience with achievement tests to support the idea that they are not always accurate measures of language ability. tan considers how her mother might answer a question on a test to support the idea that nonstandard english limits a person’s ability to communicate.