Grade 7 ELA Practice Test: Central Idea, Author's Purpose, Phrases and Clauses
- Central Idea, Author's Purpose, Phrases and Clauses
- 15 questions
- 20 minutes
Questions 1-6 are about an informational article, question 7 compares two purposes, and questions 8-15 practice phrases and clauses. Tip: a clause has its own subject and verb; a phrase does not.
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Question 1
Read the passage and answer questions 1-6.
Passage A: A Backup for the World's Crops
(1) Inside a mountain on a remote Norwegian island, a tunnel leads to a frozen vault that holds more than a million seed samples. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which opened in 2008, is a backup copy of the world's crops.
(2) Why would anyone need a backup of seeds? Farmers today grow far fewer varieties of crops than they did a century ago. If a new disease attacks one widely grown type of wheat, scientists may need an older, hardier variety to breed a plant that can resist it. If that old variety disappears, its useful traits disappear with it.
(3) Most countries keep their own seed banks, but those can be damaged by war, floods or simple equipment failure. Svalbard stores duplicate samples so that a loss in one place does not become a permanent loss. In 2015, researchers who had lost access to their seed bank in Syria withdrew samples from the vault to rebuild their collection.
(4) Seeds alone cannot protect the world's food supply. Farmers, scientists and governments still have to grow, test and share these varieties. But a frozen room in the Arctic gives them something valuable: a second chance.
Which statement best expresses a central idea of the passage?
Correct answer: A
Every paragraph explains what the vault is, why seed backups are needed, or how the backup has been used. The passage says local seed banks can be damaged, not that most are poorly run.
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Question 2
Passage A (see above):
Which sentence best summarizes paragraph 3?
Correct answer: C
A good summary keeps the paragraph's main point (duplicates protect against local losses) and its key example (Syria). The paragraph says seed banks "can be" damaged, not that most have been destroyed.
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Question 3
Passage A (see above):
What is the author's main purpose in the passage?
Correct answer: B
The author gives facts and reasons about the vault and its role, which is an informative purpose. Readers are never asked to do anything, so the passage is not mainly persuasive.
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Question 4
Passage A (see above):
Why does the author include the example of the researchers from Syria in paragraph 3?
Correct answer: D
The example proves the paragraph's point in real life: researchers who lost their own seed bank rebuilt it with samples from the vault. Nothing in the paragraph explains why Norway was chosen.
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Question 5
Passage A (see above):
How does paragraph 2 help develop the central idea?
Correct answer: B
Paragraph 2 answers the question "Why would anyone need a backup of seeds?" with the wheat disease example. The tunnel is described in paragraph 1, and the passage never explains how seeds are packed.
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Question 6
Passage A (see above):
Which statement best describes the author's point of view about the vault in paragraph 4?
Correct answer: C
The author admits that "seeds alone cannot protect the world's food supply" but still calls the vault "something valuable: a second chance." That balanced view rules out both the "waste of money" and the "guarantees" choices.
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Question 7
Both sentences are about city bike lanes.
- In 2024, the city added twelve miles of bike lanes along its busiest streets.
- Every resident who cares about safe streets should call the city council and demand more bike lanes.
Which statement best describes the authors' purposes?
Correct answer: A
Sentence I states a fact without urging any action. Sentence II tells readers what they "should" do and to "demand" change, which are signs of persuasive writing.
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Question 8
The girl with the red umbrella waved at us from the bus stop.
What does the underlined phrase do in the sentence?
Correct answer: A
The prepositional phrase tells which girl, so it works as an adjective. It has no verb, so it cannot be a clause. The phrase "from the bus stop" is the one that tells where.
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Question 9
After the storm passed, we walked down to the beach.
What is the underlined part of the sentence?
Correct answer: D
"The storm passed" has a subject and a verb, so it is a clause, and "after" makes it unable to stand alone. It tells when we walked. A prepositional phrase would have no verb, as in "after the storm."
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Question 10
Which group of words is an independent clause?
Correct answer: B
"The bus was late" has a subject and a verb and expresses a complete thought. Adding "because" turns it into a dependent clause, and the other two choices are phrases with no subject-verb pair.
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Question 11
The trail was icy. The ranger closed it.
Which sentence combines the ideas and shows how they are related?
Correct answer: C
The ice is the reason the trail was closed, so "because" shows the cause-and-effect relationship. "But" and "although" signal a contrast, which makes no sense here.
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Question 12
The waiter served a cake to the guests covered in chocolate frosting.
Which revision corrects the misplaced modifier?
Correct answer: D
The frosting belongs on the cake, so the phrase must sit right next to "cake." The original seems to say the guests were covered in frosting, and two other revisions put the frosting on the waiter or the guests.
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Question 13
Which sentence is a complex sentence?
Correct answer: C
A complex sentence has one independent clause and at least one dependent clause. "While his sister sang" is a dependent clause. The sentence joined by "and" with two independent clauses is compound.
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Question 14
What the coach said after the game surprised the whole team.
How does the underlined clause function in the sentence?
Correct answer: A
The whole clause answers "What surprised the team?", so it works as the subject, the job of a noun. You could replace it with a single noun, such as "The speech surprised the whole team."
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Question 15
My neighbor, a retired firefighter, teaches a first-aid class at the library.
What does the underlined phrase do?
Correct answer: B
This is an appositive phrase: a noun phrase set off by commas that renames the noun next to it. "At the library" is the phrase that tells where.
Questions you leave blank are not counted as wrong.
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