Read this sentence from the passage: 'At the first rehearsal her hands shook so badly that the opening four…
Read a Literary Passage · ELPAC Grades 6–8 reading. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.
A short story or scene, with questions about characters, events and what words mean in context.
Read the passage. Then answer the questions.
Second Chair
For two years Amira had been the second trumpet in the Lincoln Middle School jazz band, which meant she learned every solo and played none of them. She practiced them anyway, in the garage, with the door pulled halfway down so the neighbors would only get half the noise.
On the Thursday before the spring concert, Ronnie Vasquez broke his wrist skateboarding, and Mr. Ferreira handed Amira the solo folder without any ceremony at all. “Bar forty-one,” he said. “It's yours.”
She had imagined the moment so often that the real thing arrived secondhand, like a jacket someone else had already worn in. At the first rehearsal her hands shook so badly that the opening four bars came out thin and apologetic. The band played on. Mr. Ferreira did not stop them, and somehow that was worse than being stopped.
That night she did not practice the solo at all. She practiced the two bars before it, the ordinary measures where the trumpet only holds a single note under the saxophones, until she could play them without thinking about what came next.
On Saturday the stage lights turned the auditorium into a warm wall of dark. Amira found the single note under the saxophones and held it. When bar forty-one arrived she was already inside the music, and she walked through the door without noticing she had opened it.
The question
Choose the best answer.
Read this sentence from the passage: 'At the first rehearsal her hands shook so badly that the opening four bars came out thin and apologetic.' What does apologetic suggest about the way Amira played?
- She stopped playing in order to say sorry to the band.
- She played the notes louder than the music called for.
- She played notes that were not written in the music.
- She played so faintly and uncertainly that the notes seemed to be asking forgiveness.Correct answer
Why “She played so faintly and uncertainly that the notes seemed to be asking forgiveness.” is correct
This is a vocabulary-in-context question on a word being used figuratively: notes cannot literally apologize, so the reader has to transfer the human quality to the sound. The neighboring word 'thin' and the shaking hands point the same way, toward playing that is quiet and unsure of itself. Ask a student what an apologetic person sounds like, then apply that description to a trumpet.
Why the other answers are wrong
- She stopped playing in order to say sorry to the band. — This takes 'apologetic' literally. Nobody speaks during the rehearsal, and the band plays straight through.
- She played the notes louder than the music called for. — Loud playing would be the opposite of the word 'thin' used alongside it.
- She played notes that were not written in the music. — Wrong notes are a different problem; the passage describes how the notes sounded, not which ones she played.
Practice more of this
More reading practice for Grades 6–8, or see the ELPAC practice test for grades 6–8. For other grades, see free ELPAC practice tests by grade.
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