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1 Communication and Literacy Assessment VIRGINIAPRACTICE TESTEVALUATION SYSTEMSVIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONR eading Subtest (091)National Evaluation Systems is now the Evaluation Systems group of of ContentsGETTING STARTED .. 1 Reviewing the Test Content .. 1 Taking the PRACTICE Test .. 1 MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTION Answer 2 Multiple-Choice Questions .. 3 EVALUATING YOUR 27 Answer Key ..28 Results Worksheet ..29 Readers should be advised that this PRACTICE test, including many of the excerpts used herein,is protected by federal copyright 2008 Pearson Education Inc. or its affiliate(s). All rights Systems, Pearson, Box 226, Amherst, MA 01004 Virginia Communication and Literacy Assessment, VCLA, and the Virginia Communication and Literacy Assessment logoare trademarks, in the and/or other countries, of Pearson Education Inc.

2 Or its affiliate(s).Pearson and its logo are trademarks in the and/or other countries of Pearson Education Inc. or its affiliate(s).Virginia Communication and Literacy Assessment PRACTICE Test Reading SubtestCopyright 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliate(s). All rights reserved. 1 GETTING STARTEDThe Virginia Communication and Literacy Assessment (VCLA ) is composed of two subtests areading subtest and a writing subtest. This document provides a full-length sample VCLA readingsubtest consisting of 40 multiple-choice PRACTICE test for the writing subtest is also available; see the VCLA Web site Reviewing the Test ContentThe content of each VCLA subtest is documented in the test blueprint, which consists of a set of testobjectives.

3 The content of the VCLA reading subtest is defined by the objectives in the "Subtest I Reading Comprehension and Analysis" section of the test test blueprint for the VCLA is available on the VCLA Web site at Taking the PRACTICE TestTo take the PRACTICE test, follow these steps:Read each multiple-choice question carefully and choose the ONE best answer outof the four answer choices your answer to each question on the Multiple-Choice Answer the instructions in "Evaluating Your Performance" to score your test andevaluate and interpret your may wish to monitor how long it takes you to complete the PRACTICE test. When taking the actualVCLA, you will have a four-hour test session.

4 Keep in mind that if you are taking both VCLA subtestsat one administration, you will be assigned to complete both subtests during one four-hour testsession. If you are taking only one subtest, you will have the full four-hour test session to completethe Communication and Literacy Assessment PRACTICE Test Reading SubtestCopyright 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliate(s). All rights reserved. 2 MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTION SET Multiple-Choice Answer SheetUse the space provided below to record your responses to the multiple-choice questions that ResponseQuestionNumberYour Response12122232342452562672782892910301 131123213331434153516361737183819392040 Multiple-Choice Question SetVirginia Communication and Literacy Assessment PRACTICE Test Reading SubtestCopyright 2008 Pearson Education, Inc.

5 Or its affiliate(s). All rights reserved. 3 Multiple-Choice QuestionsUse the passage below to answer the five questions that asked to name the film capitalof the world, most Americans wouldunhesitatingly answer, "Hollywood,California!" However, there is another citythat has long exceeded Hollywood in termsof annual output. Mumbai, India, is a SouthAsian motion picture center known as"Bollywood" that produces almost 1,000films a year in twenty different structure and style of Bollywoodfilms reflect a belief that movies shouldprovide audiences with a complete enter-tainment experience. Generally three to fourhours long, Bollywood pictures often havea fifteen-to-twenty minute intermission forviewers to purchase concessions and to dis-cuss what they have been watching.

6 Ratherthan adhere to a single genre, many of thesefilms are called masala movies. Masala is aHindi word for a spice mixture, and the typicalmasala film borrows elements from familydramas, love stories, action adventures,comedies, sports features, and, of course,musicals. No Bollywood picture would becomplete without a handful of extravagantlystaged musical numbers in which charactersexpress their feelings through song and Bollywood style first emerged duringthe early 1930s. With the introduction ofsound in motion pictures, singing and dancingquickly became an integral part of Indianmovies. Although filmmakers initially haddifficulty locating actors who could sing, theadoption of "playback singing" in 1935 solvedthe problem.

7 This innovation allowed actorsto lip-synch songs recorded in advance offilming. A small group of Indian vocalistsdominated playback singing for many years,recording thousands of songs and rising to thestatus of national 1940, the Indian film industry hadcome into its own, with domestic productionsaccounting for 90 percent of the movies inIndian theaters. This paved the way for thecreative advances of the 1950s and 1960s, aperiod that is now considered the "golden age"of Indian cinema and that strongly shaped theBollywood cinema of today. It was duringthis era that movies began using songs anddialogue to promote Indian national identity,an emphasis that has continued to the "golden age" influence can be seen inthe names of leading actors.

8 Bollywood is afamily business, and many of today's starsare related to idols of the past. It is notuncommon for two or three generations ofactors to appear in a movie that is directed byyet another member of the the past decade, the audience forBollywood movies has expanded consid-erably. Long confined largely to South Asianand Middle Eastern theaters, these films arenow being screened all over the world. Thereare also signs that the gap between BollywoodMultiple-Choice Question SetVirginia Communication and Literacy Assessment PRACTICE Test Reading SubtestCopyright 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliate(s). All rights reserved.

9 4 and Hollywood may be shrinking. Since themid-1990s, budgets for Bollywood films havebeen steadily increasing as a consequence ofactors' rising salaries and improved produc-tion values. Although this puts pressure onfilmmakers to produce blockbusters to recoupinvestments, lovers of Bollywood need notworry about the pictures losing any of theelements that make them unique. Recent big-budget releases have boasted more singing,more dancing, more extravagant shootinglocations, and more of everything else thatmakes Bollywood a true masala feast. of the following is the bestsynonym for the word screened as it isused in the fifth paragraph of the passage?

10 Of the following best describes theauthor's main purpose in this passage? demonstrate the superior qualityof Indian analyze the Indian star describe the evolution of defend the Indian film presented in the passagebest supports which of the followingconclusions? Bollywood movies addressimportant contemporary is a larger global marketfor Bollywood films than forHollywood actors now earn morethan their Hollywood films have helped influ-ence the development of Indiannational Question SetVirginia Communication and Literacy Assessment PRACTICE Test Reading SubtestCopyright 2008 Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliate(s).