Fill in the blank:
(BLANK) words help the writing move smoothly from one idea to the next.

Read the excerpt from the land. of my brothers, i was closest with robert. i suppose, in part, being the same year's children made us close, but there were other things too. we had been together practically since birth, and we always took care of each other. when i got into trouble, robert was there to pull me out of it if he could, or at least to see me through it, and i did the same for him. the passage provides evidence of why paul and robert have physical conflicts. paul and robert avoid social conflicts. paul is the least influenced by robert. paul is motivated to ask robert for .

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.

Read this paragraph from a cause-and-effect essay. upwelling and el niño in normal years, the trade winds cause colder, nutrient-rich waters to rise to the ocean surface. this process is called “upwelling,” and it causes small fish called plankton to multiply. which rubric term or phrase would apply to the phrase “trade winds”? a. effect b. elaboration of a cause or effect c. transition between a cause and an effect d. cause