Question 28 Answer and Explanation _ACT December 2014 Asia Form 65B English Section

Passage II

Vaqueros, the Original Cowboys

Many who think of the cowboy as an icon of U.S. culture, might be surprised to find out that cowboys learned their craft from Mexican vaqueros. In the early 1500s, Spanish colonists began to bring horses and cattle to North America. Large ranchos, or ranches, were established for raising livestock on the open plains of central Mexico. (17) The first ranch hands, or vaqueros, were Indians. They became spectacular horsemen and developed the tools and skills of the cowboy trade as it is known today.

[1] Vaqueros from neighboring ranches joined together to ride the range and flush the free-roaming cattle from their hiding places and send them trotting toward a central roundup ground. [2] The first cattle roundups—called rodeos, from the Spanish word rodear, which means "to surround"—were held in the 1520s. [3] There the cattle would be sorted for new calves branded. (20)

The vaqueros developed the lazo (lasso), or la reata (lariat) , as an everyday item that the vaquero made by hand with great care. It was a braided rawhide rope with a slipknot, or running noose, at one end. The vaquero while riding at full gallop became an expert at twirling a lariat above his head and then throwing the noose to snare a cow on the run. (24)

During the 1700s, cattle ranching was introduced to Mexico's northernmost region—what is now Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. After declaring it's independence from Mexico in 1836, Texas began to be settled by significant numbers of Anglo-Americans. When they decided to try to herd the wild longhorn cattle that roamed the Texas plains, they turned to the Mexican vaqueros for help. Watching the vaqueros round up steers, the cowboy trade was learned from experts. (28) The word vaquero, as pronounced by U.S. cowboys in their speech, became buckaroo.

Like the cowboys, the vaqueros were poorly paid laborers, but no one looked down on a vaquero on horseback. To shield his head and eyes from the sun, he wore a wide-brimmed sombrero, the precursor to the ten-gallon cowboy hat.

28. At this point, the writer is thinking about adding the following true statement:

The vaqueros showed them how to add to their herds of saddle horses by capturing and taming mestengos (mustangs), the descendants of horses brought to America by the Spanish.

If added here, this sentence would primarily:

F. strengthen the paragraph by explaining how the vaqueros had learned to be such good ranch hands

G. strengthen the paragraph by adding another detail supporting the expertise of the vaqueros.

H. weaken the paragraph by introducing vocabulary that needs to be explained to readers.

J. weaken the paragraph by shifting the focus from Texas cowboys to Mexican vaqueros.

Answer and Explanation

Your Answer is

Correct Answer is G

Explanation

The added sentence is a specific explanation of the previous experts. Enhanced the description of the professionalism of vaqueros. Item G is explained correctly.

Item F: The fault is not that vaqueros had learned... The learners are newcomers.

Item H: The point of error is that although there are new words in the added sentence, they have been explained in the sentence.

Item J: The reason for the error is that the focus of the article is still on cowboys, and the added sentence is an explanation of what cowboys learned.