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English · Drill 11

English practice 11

15 questions ~9 min recommended
⏱ 00:00
Score
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Hats: On My Head, On My Mind

I do not remember how I came to like wearing a hat. Friends view it as an odd habit of mine, since so few people wear hats today. I think my fondness for hats comes down to the desire to proclaim1 what type of person I am. Telling the world what kind of person resides directly below its brim is one of the principal jobs of any hat worth the name.

Even if we are not supposed to judge a book by its cover, we very often judge a person by his or her hat. In a narrow sense, a top hat indicates to all that you are a magician, just as a mortarboard and tassel tells the world you just graduated. More generally,3 a cowboy hat may say you are the strong, silent type, while a beret suggests, you are artistic and creative.4 We even use hats as a kind of code for moral character, letting "white hats" and "black hats" serve as metaphors for "good guys" and "bad guys." Hats show way up5 in our figures of speech as well. Home is where you hang your hat, while declaring your desire to win a position is throwing your hat into the ring. How could anyone not want to wear a hat, especially because it makes your hair messy?6

A hat can do even more things in everyday life. Deserving7 congratulations, I say that my hat is off to them—and then I can literally do exactly that. When someone has exciting news for me, he can tell me to hold on to my hat, if the news8 has to be kept secret, I can promise to keep it under my hat. He could even tell me to remain calm and not be a mad hatter.

Maybe the real reason I like wearing a hat, however, has to do with getting away from everyday life. What I find so interesting is the possibility of using a hat,10 to make myself more like someone very different from my everyday self. A fedora helps me to think of me11 as more of a street-smart tough-guy private eye. Another hat, appropriately battered, helps me feel like a daring adventurer his12 search for fabulous treasures will succeed against all odds.

On my last birthday, my family that13 gave me a Napoleon hat. I wonder, what are they trying to tell me?

1. Which of the following alternatives to the underlined word would NOT be acceptable?

2. The writer is considering deleting the preceding sentence from the essay. Should the sentence be kept or deleted?

3.

4.

5.

6. Given that all the choices are true, which one most strongly reinforces the author's attitude toward hats as it has been conveyed up to this point in the essay?

7.

8.

9. At this point, the writer is considering adding the following true statement:

"Mad hatter" properly refers to the many nineteenth-century hat makers who suffered extensive neurological damage after they were exposed to the toxic mercury fumes then utilized in hat construction.

Should the writer make this addition here?

10.

11.

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13.

14. The writer is considering concluding the essay with the following statement:

Ultimately, a hat on your head guarantees a song in your heart.

Should the writer end the essay with this statement?

15. This question asks about the preceding passage as a whole.

Suppose one of the writer's goals had been to indicate that items of clothing can be used to communicate things, literally and figuratively, about their wearers. Would this essay have fulfilled that goal?

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