PSAT-Test Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test: Math, Reading - Practice Questions

Question 1 (Reading)

The main purpose of this story is to appeal to the reader’s interest in a subject which has been the theme of some of the greatest writers, living and dead – but which has never been, and can never be, exhausted, because it is a subject eternally interesting to all mankind. Here is one more book that depicts the struggle of a human creature, under those opposing influences of Good and Evil, which we have all felt, which we have all known.

It has been my aim to make the character of “Magdalen,” which personifies this struggle, a pathetic character even in its perversity and its error; and I have tried hard to attain this result by the least obtrusive and the least artificial of all means – by a resolute adherence throughout to the truth as it is in Nature. This design was no easy one to accomplish; and it has been a great encouragement to me (during the publication of my story in its periodical form) to know, on the authority of many readers, that the object which I had proposed to myself, I might, in some degree, consider as an object achieved.

Round the central figure in the narrative other characters will be found grouped, in sharp contrast – contrast, for the most part, in which I have endeavored to make the element of humor mainly predominant. I have sought to impart this relief to the more serious passages in the book, not only because I believe myself to be justified in doing so by the laws of Art – but because experience has taught me (what the experience of my readers will doubtless confirm) that there is no such moral phenomenon as unmixed tragedy to be found in the world around us. Look where we may, the dark threads and the light cross each other perpetually in the texture of human life.

Why does the author believe he is justified in using humor in the work being referenced?

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only because it is his artistic freedom to do so
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because this art must represent life and life is humorous
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because there are no pure lines between Good and Evil or humor and tragedy
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because the human characteristics of Magdalen have to show both sides of humanity to be truly representative and accepted as realistic by the reader
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just to show that he can master both the serious and humorous aspects of writing and to do so in a singular work is commendable

Question 2 (Math)

A rectangle has a width of 2x. If the length is five more than 150% of the width, what is the perimeter of the rectangle?

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10(x + 1)
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5x + 10
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6x2 + 10x
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5x + 5
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6x2 + 5

Question 3 (Reading)

This passage discusses the work of Abe Kobo, a Japanese novelist of the twentieth century.

Abe Kobo is one of the great writers of postwar Japan. His literature is richer, less predictable, and wider-ranging than that of his famed contemporaries, Mishima Yukio and Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo. It is infused with the passion and strangeness of his experiences in Manchuria, which was a Japanese colony on mainland China before World War II.

Abe spent his childhood and much of his youth in Manchuria, and, as a result, the orbit of his work would be far less controlled by the oppressive gravitational pull of the themes of furusato (hometown) and the emperor than his contemporaries’.

Abe, like most of the sons of Japanese families living in Manchuria, did return to Japan for schooling. He entered medical school in Tokyo in 1944 – just in time to forge himself a medical certificate claiming ill health; this allowed him to avoid fighting in the war that Japan was already losing and return to Manchuria. When Japan lost the war, however, it also lost its Manchurian colony. The Japanese living there were attacked by the Soviet Army and various guerrilla bands. They suddenly found themselves refugees, desperate for food. Many unfit men were abandoned in the Manchurian desert. At this apocalyptic time, Abe lost his father to cholera.

He returned to mainland Japan once more, where the young were turning to Marxism as a rejection of the militarism of the war. After a brief, unsuccessful stint at medical school, he became part of a Marxist group of avant-garde artists. His work at this time was passionate and outspoken on political matters, adopting black humor as its mode of critique.

During this time, Abe worked in the genres of theater, music, and photography. Eventually, he mimeographed fifty copies of his first “published” literary work, entitled Anonymous Poems, in 1947. It was a politically charged set of poems dedicated to the memory of his father and friends who had died in Manchuria. Shortly thereafter, he published his first novel, For a Signpost at the End of a Road, which imagined another life for his best friend who had died in the Manchurian desert. Abe was also active in the Communist Party, organizing literary groups for workingmen.

Unfortunately, most of this radical early work is unknown outside Japan and underappreciated even in Japan. In early 1962, Abe was dismissed from the Japanese Liberalist Party. Four months later, he published the work that would blind us to his earlier oeuvre, Woman in the Dunes. It was director Teshigahara Hiroshi’s film adaptation of Woman in the Dunes that brought Abe’s work to the international stage. The movie’s fame has wrongly led readers to view the novel as Abe’s masterpiece. It would be more accurate to say that the novel simply marked a turning point in his career, when Abe turned away from the experimental and heavily political work of his earlier career. Fortunately, he did not then turn to furusato and the emperor after all, but rather began a somewhat more realistic exploration of his continuing obsession with homelessness and alienation. Not completely a stranger to his earlier commitment to Marxism, Abe turned his attention, beginning in the sixties, to the effects on the individual of Japan’s rapidly urbanizing, growthdriven, increasingly corporate society.

Which of the following does the passage present as a fact?

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Abe was a better playwright than novelist.
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Abe’s early work was of greater quality than his later work.
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The group of avant-garde artists of which Abe was a part were influenced by Marxism.
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The themes of furusato and the emperor have precluded Japanese literature from playing a major role in world literature.
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Abe’s work is richer than his contemporaries’ because he included autobiographical elements.

all contain evaluative opinions, so eliminate them. The author expresses strong opinions about the themes furusato and the emperor, but never presents any facts about their influence on Japanese literature in the world. The best answer is (C). The author presents it as a known fact that young Japanese artists after World War II were interested in Marxism.

PSAT-Test – Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test: Math, Reading