TACHS Reading : Meaning of Words and Phrases
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for TACHS Reading
一个ll TACHS Reading Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #1 :Reading Comprehension
一个dapted fromCowboy Songs and Other Frontier Balladsby John A. Lomax (1910)
西方的大型牧场现在被我nto small farms. The nester has come, and come to stay. Gone is the buffalo, the Indian warwhoop, the free grass of the open plain—even the stinging lizard, the horned frog, the centipede, the prairie dog, the rattlesnake, are fast disappearing. Save in some of the secluded valleys of southern New Mexico, the old-time round-up is no more; the trails to Kansas and to Montana have become grass-grown or lost in fields of waving grain; the maverick steer, the regal longhorn, has been supplanted by his unpoetic but more beefy and profitable Polled Angus, Durham, and Hereford cousins from across the seas. The changing and romantic West of the early days lives mainly in story and in song. The last figure to vanish is the cowboy, the animating spirit of the vanishing era. He sits his horse easily as he rides through a wide valley, enclosed by mountains, clad in the hazy purple of coming night,—with his face turned steadily down the long, long road, "the road that the sun goes down." Dauntless, reckless, without the unearthly purity of Sir Galahad though as gentle to a woman as King Arthur, he is truly a knight of the twentieth century. Avagrantpuff of wind shakes a corner of the crimson handkerchief knotted loosely at his throat; the thud of his pony's feet mingling with the jingle of his spurs is borne back; and as the careless, gracious, lovable figure disappears over the divide, the breeze brings to the ears, faint and far yet cheery still, the refrain of a cowboy song.
一个s used in the passage, the bolded and underlined word “vagrant” most nearly means__________.
traveler
aggressor
wandering
beggar
wandering
To begin, we can eliminate “beggar” and “traveler” because they are nouns, and the context calls for an adjective. “Wandering” is the best answer; not only is it a standard definition of “vagrant,” but it also makes the most sense in the context of the sentence.
Certified Tutor
一个ll TACHS Reading Resources
