Examen de práctica mixto de Lenguaje (RLA) 2

Willow Creek Neighborhood Association

Dear Neighbors,

(1) Our annual block party will take place on Saturday, August 16 2027, on Willow Creek Drive between Oak Lane and Cedar Avenue. The street will be closed to traffic from noon until 9:00 p.m. so that families can enjoy the afternoon safely. Please move any cars parked on that block by 11:00 a.m.

(2) This year's party includes several new activities. A local bakery will sell pies and cookies, and the fire department will bring a truck for children to explore. The childrens' games will be set up in the empty lot next to the community garden. In the evening, a band from Jefferson High School will play on a small stage near the corner.

(3) We are also pleased to announce that the Mayor will stop by at 4:00 p.m. to thank volunteers. Our block party has grown every year since it began, and the city has noticed how much it brings neighbors together.

(4) Ray Dunn, our treasurer will collect a five-dollar donation from each household at the welcome table. Every dollar goes toward next year's party and a new fence for the community garden. No one will be turned away for being unable to pay.

(5) Many neighbors have asked whether the party will be canceled if it rains? If storms are forecast, we will move the food and music into the fellowship hall at Grace Church, which has offered its space free of charge. We will post any change on the bulletin board at the corner store by Friday evening.

(6) Volunteers are still needed for setup, cleanup, and the welcome table. To sign up, call Linda Park at 555-0148 or reply to this letter by August 1. We hope to see you there!

Sincerely, The Willow Creek Neighborhood Association Board

MEMORANDUM

To: All Shipping Department Employees From: Karen Osei, Operations Manager Date: September 8 Subject: New break schedule

(1) Beginning Monday, September 22, the shipping department will move to a staggered break schedule. Under the current system, all forty employees take their lunch break at noon, the break room becomes overcrowded within minutes. Many of you have told us that you spend half of your break waiting in line.

(2) The new schedule divides the department into three groups. Group A will take lunch from 11:30 to 12:00, Group B from 12:00 to 12:30, and Group C from 12:30 to 1:00. Your group assignment is posted next to the time clock. Hoping to reduce crowding and shorten the line at the microwaves.

(3) The cafeteria will also begin selling sandwiches to employees wrapped in plastic. These sandwiches can be purchased at the front counter until 1:00 p.m., so even Group C will have fresh food available.

(4) Many employees asked for longer breaks in last spring's survey. The new schedule gives everyone a full thirty minutes, so some employees will still prefer the old fifteen-minute breaks. Supervisors will consider individual requests to switch groups or to split a break into two shorter ones.

(5) We tested this schedule in the receiving department over the summer. Workers there reported shorter lines and quieter lunches. Therefore, a few workers missed eating with friends from other groups. We will try to place employees who carpool or work closely together in the same group.

(6) We will review the new schedule after the first two months. At that time, we will ask every employee to complete a short survey about wait times, noise, and seating in the break room. If you have questions about your group assignment, please speak with your supervisor or email me directly. Thank you for helping us make the break room a more comfortable place for everyone.

(1) Walt Hollis had worked in the same garage on Route 9 for thirty-one years, and he could tell what was wrong with most engines before the hood was fully open. So when the owner, Mr. Banks, announced that a new apprentice would be shadowing him, Walt said only, "Tell her to bring her own coffee," and went back to the truck he was working on.

(2) The apprentice was named Tasha Greene. She was twenty-three, had just finished a certificate program at the community college, and carried a notebook in her back pocket. On her first morning she asked eleven questions before ten o'clock. Walt answered each one with as few words as possible. By lunch, she had stopped asking out loud and started writing everything down instead.

(3) What Tasha did not know was that Walt had been hiding something for months. His right hand had begun to stiffen in the cold, and on some mornings he could not grip a small wrench without pain. He told no one. He came in early so he could finish delicate work before the others arrived, and he kept his hands in his jacket pockets when Mr. Banks walked by.

(4) In the second week of December, a woman brought in a minivan that stalled every time it idled. Walt listened to the engine for a moment and knew the trouble was probably a sensor tucked deep behind the intake. Reaching it meant working by feel in a narrow space with a tiny screw. He tried for twenty minutes. Twice the screwdriver slipped from his fingers and clattered onto the concrete.

(5) Tasha watched from the next bay. She did not offer help. Instead, she walked over, set her notebook on the fender, and said, "I've never seen this one done. Would you talk me through it? I learn better when I do it myself."

(6) Walt looked at her for a long moment. He suspected she had seen the screwdriver fall. He also understood that she was giving him a way to say yes without admitting anything. He stepped back. "Driver's side first," he said. "Feel for the clip before you pull."

(7) It took her forty minutes and a great deal of instruction, most of it gruff. When the engine finally idled smoothly, the customer clapped, and Tasha grinned so widely that Walt had to look away to keep from grinning himself.

(8) The next morning, there were two cups of coffee on Walt's workbench. He handed one to Tasha before she could take off her coat. Then he pulled a stool up to his workbench and said, "Sit down. Ask me your questions. All eleven of them, if you want." And for the first time, he answered every one in full.

Harbor View Apartments January 5

Dear Residents,

(1) Happy New Year! We are writing to share some exciting improvements coming to Harbor View this spring, along with an adjustment to monthly rent.

(2) Over the next four months, we will install brand-new energy-efficient washers and dryers in every laundry room, replace building keys with secure keyless entry, renovate the playground behind Building C, and add bright LED lighting throughout the parking lot. Work will take place during weekday daytime hours, and we will post a notice at least 48 hours before any work begins in your building. At least one laundry room will stay open at all times during installation. Many of you have told us that safety and convenience matter to you, and these upgrades reflect that.

(3) To make these upgrades possible, monthly rent will increase by 6 percent for leases renewed after March 1. We know that any increase can be a challenge. Please understand that our own costs for property taxes, insurance, and maintenance have risen sharply over the past two years. This adjustment is also well below the increases at many newer complexes in the area.

(4) We want to make this transition as easy as possible. Residents who sign a 12-month renewal before February 1 will keep their current rent for an additional three months before the new rate begins. Residents who need help planning for the change may contact the leasing office to discuss a payment plan. The office is open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

(5) We are proud that many of you have called Harbor View home for years, and we look forward to continuing to serve you. Please stop by the leasing office with any questions; our door is always open. Thank you for being part of the Harbor View community.

Sincerely,

Renee Castillo Property Manager, Harbor View Management Group

(1) A proposal to build a large distribution warehouse on the edge of Millbrook has drawn strong reactions from residents, with some welcoming the promise of new jobs and others warning of heavy truck traffic.

(2) Brightpath Logistics, a shipping company based in Ohio, wants to build a 600,000-square-foot warehouse on 80 acres of farmland along Route 9. According to the company's application, the warehouse would employ about 450 full-time workers and operate twenty-four hours a day. The site is about one mile from Millbrook Elementary School.

(3) Company spokesperson Alan Reyes said the project would bring "steady jobs with benefits" to a town where the largest employer, a paper mill, closed in 2019. Brightpath says starting pay would be $19 an hour. "We want to be a good neighbor," Reyes said. "We will plant trees along Route 9 and pay for a new traffic light."

(4) Not everyone is convinced. Linda Marsh, who has lived on Route 9 for thirty years, said she worries about safety. A traffic study submitted with the application estimates that the warehouse would bring about 300 truck trips per day. "My grandkids wait for the school bus right there," Marsh said. "I can't imagine three hundred trucks going by them."

(5) Others see the warehouse as a lifeline. Darnell Fisher, who lost his job when the paper mill closed, now drives forty minutes each way to work at a factory in another county. "If I could work ten minutes from home, I'd get an hour of my life back every day," he said.

(6) Some residents raised other questions at a public meeting last week, including whether the town's water system could handle the building and what would happen to nearby property values. Town engineer Kim Osei said those questions are being studied and that a report is expected by early December.

(7) The town Planning Board will vote on the proposal at its December 16 meeting at Town Hall. Residents may submit written comments to the board until December 9.

Northgate Regional Hospital: Employee Handbook, Section 7.4 Tuition Assistance Policy

(1) Purpose. Northgate Regional Hospital supports employees who want to build their skills and advance their careers. Under this policy, the hospital will reimburse eligible employees for part of the cost of approved courses.

(2) Eligibility. To qualify, an employee must (a) be scheduled to work at least 24 hours per week, (b) have completed 6 months of continuous employment by the course start date, and (c) be in good standing, meaning the employee has received no written warning in the past 12 months.

(3) Approved courses. Courses must be taken at an accredited college, university, or technical school, and must relate to the employee's current job or to a position the employee could reasonably move into at Northgate. Examples include nursing, medical coding, health information technology, and supervisory management. GED preparation and English-language classes are approved for any eligible employee, whatever his or her job. Courses taken only for personal interest, such as photography or cooking, are not eligible.

(4) Amount. The hospital will reimburse 75 percent of tuition, up to $3,000 per calendar year. Books, parking, and lab fees are not covered.

(5) How to apply. Submit a Tuition Request Form to Human Resources at least 30 days before the course begins. Requests submitted late will not be approved. Human Resources will respond to each request within 10 business days. After you finish the course, submit your grade report and tuition receipt within 60 days. Reimbursement requires a grade of C or better, or a "pass" in a pass/fail course.

(6) Repayment. An employee who leaves Northgate voluntarily within 12 months after receiving a reimbursement must repay the full amount of that reimbursement. Employees who are laid off do not have to repay.

(7) Questions. Contact the Human Resources office at extension 4410.

(1) For eleven years, the Westside Community Pantry has handed out groceries from the basement of St. Luke's Church every Tuesday and Thursday. This spring, those two days stopped being enough.

(2) In early March, the Carlton Plastics plant on Industrial Road eliminated its night shift, laying off about 300 workers. Within weeks, the pantry's line stretched up the basement stairs and onto the sidewalk. The table below shows how the pantry's numbers changed during the first half of the year.

Westside Community Pantry, January to June

(3) Pantry director Gwen Alvarez noticed that many of the new families arrived late on Thursday evenings, often still wearing work uniforms from other jobs. "A lot of people who lost their night-shift jobs found new work, but it pays less, and it's during the day," she said. In April, the pantry began opening on Saturday mornings from 9 to noon.

(4) Meeting the demand has been hard for another reason. Most of the pantry's weekday volunteers are retirees, and several have stopped volunteering because of health problems or moves. The pantry has not been able to replace them, even as the number of families has grown. Volunteers now often stay an extra hour to finish packing boxes.

(5) Alvarez is hopeful about two changes. Students from Westside High School have begun volunteering on Saturdays to earn community service hours, and a local grocery store has started donating fresh produce twice a week. "We're doing more with fewer hands," Alvarez said. "But we can't keep stretching forever."

(6) The pantry's board will meet in August to discuss its options. These include asking other churches in the area to share the work or opening a second location on the east side of town.

(1) Every winter for more than a century, volunteers across North America have spent a day counting birds. They record every species they see and how many. At first, the counts were simply a holiday tradition. Today, the long record they have built is one of scientists' best tools for seeing how bird populations change over time.

(2) When researchers compared recent counts with those from the 1960s, they noticed a pattern. Many species were being seen farther north in winter than before. The purple finch, for example, now spends the winter much farther north than it did a few decades ago. Not every species moved, and some moved only a little, but the overall direction was clear.

(3) Over the same period, average winter temperatures across much of the continent have risen. Lakes freeze later in the fall and thaw earlier in the spring. Many scientists think the shift in bird ranges is linked to these changes. Birds that once had to fly far south to find unfrozen water or food can now survive the winter in places that used to be too cold.

(4) Some kinds of birds seem to handle change better than others. Birds that eat many different foods, such as seeds, berries, insects, and the offerings at backyard feeders, can often move into a new area and find something to eat. Birds that depend on a single kind of food or habitat have a harder time. A bird that nests only in one type of evergreen forest, for example, cannot move north faster than that forest can grow there, and forests spread very slowly.

(5) Timing is another problem. Many songbirds migrate thousands of miles each spring to raise their young where insects are plentiful. Their migration is triggered mostly by the changing length of the day, which a warming climate does not affect. But in many places, spring warmth now arrives earlier, and insects hatch earlier too. A bird that arrives on its usual date may find that the peak of the insect supply has already passed, leaving less food for its chicks.

(6) Scientists are now using the volunteers' counts, along with newer tools such as tiny tracking devices, to predict which species are most at risk. Some cities and states are also protecting "stepping-stone" habitats, such as patches of forest, wetland, and grassland, so that birds have places to stop and find food as their ranges change.

(7) The birds at your feeder this winter may look the same as always. But the map of where they live is quietly being redrawn.

Text 1 — Turf Will Keep Our Fields Open (report summary by Dana Whitfield, fictional director of the Linwood Parks Department)

(1) Linwood's three grass ball fields at Millstone Park cannot keep up with demand. I recommend replacing them with artificial turf next spring.

(2) Our department's field logs show that, over the past five years, rain and mud closed the grass fields an average of 61 days per year. During those closures, 38 youth and adult teams had games canceled or moved out of town. Turf fields drain within an hour of a storm, and the manufacturer we are considering rates its surface as playable about 340 days a year.

(3) Turf would also lower our yearly costs. Mowing, watering, fertilizing and reseeding the grass fields cost the department 48,000 dollars last year. The manufacturer estimates that turf maintenance (brushing, cleaning and adding rubber fill) would cost about 12,000 dollars a year.

(4) Installation will cost 1.4 million dollars. However, the state has already awarded Linwood a 900,000 dollar recreation grant that can be used only for field improvements. The remaining 500,000 dollars would come from the parks capital fund, which voters approved in 2022 for this kind of project.

(5) Some residents worry about heat. Turf surfaces do get hotter than grass on sunny days. To address this, the plan includes shade structures for the team benches and a policy, used by many school districts, of checking surface temperature before summer games.

Text 2 — Keep Millstone Park Green (letter to the editor from Rick Paulsen, a Linwood parent)

(6) My daughter played a soccer game on a turf field in another town last July. She came home with red marks on her legs and said the field felt like a frying pan. That tells me everything I need to know about artificial turf.

(7) Everyone knows plastic grass is full of chemicals. Why would we let our kids roll around on it? The parks department says turf is safe, but of course the people selling it would say that.

(8) The cost is also outrageous. Turf has to be replaced after about ten years, and nobody at city hall wants to talk about that bill.

(9) If we cover these fields in plastic today, what is next? Soon the city will pave over every tree in Millstone Park. Linwood has always been a green town, and real families want real grass. Let's keep it that way.

A student wrote this first draft in response to the two texts about protected bike lanes on Riverton's Main Street. The draft needs revision.

(1) Riverton is arguing about bike lanes. Elena Vasquez, a city transportation planner, supports adding protected lanes to Main Street. Hal Dempsey, who owns a hardware store, opposes the plan because it would remove parking. Bike lanes are a topic many people have opinions about.

(2) Vasquez begins with local facts. She cites police crash reports showing 47 crashes involving cyclists or pedestrians on the downtown stretch, including two deaths. She then points to Lakeside, where a state study found that injury crashes fell by 35 percent after protected lanes were added. I rode my bike in Lakeside once, and the lanes were painted green. A state study covering three years is far more reliable than a guess, so her safety claim is strongly supported.

(3) Vasquez notes that the plan removes 40 parking spaces. The city garage one block away is only 55 percent full on average. A survey of 300 shoppers found that 31 percent would bike downtown more often if they felt safe.

(4) Dempsey relies on feelings and secondhand stories. He says one shop owner told him she "would close her shop," but he gives no numbers. As a result, he never explains why a half-empty garage one block away would not work for his customers. He also claims that most people "always will" drive, a prediction with no evidence behind it.

(5) Dempsey does raise one fair point. Customers who buy heavy items need somewhere to load them. Similarly, this problem could be solved with a few loading zones; it is not a reason to reject a plan that would prevent crashes.

(6) In conclusion, bike lanes have good and bad sides. Riverton should think about it.

A student wrote this first draft in response to two texts about banning cell phones at Westbrook High School. The draft has several errors in grammar, usage and style.

(1) Phones in school is a big deal these days. Principal Janelle Price argues that schools should lock up phones during the day, while parent Marcus Lee believes students should be allowed to keep them. Price's argument is more better supported because she uses results from her own school and a international report.

(2) Price gives alot of evidence. Discipline referrals fell by 28 percent and online bullying dropped by half. Which shows that the pouches made a real difference. In addition, 34 of 38 teachers said students was more focused. These numbers come from the very school that is being debated.

(3) Lee's letter has some good stuff in it, but it mostly relies on feelings. He says phones are learning tools, his daughter uses a calculator and a dictionary app. However, he never explains why these tools must be on a phone, so it don't prove that phones are necessary.

(4) Lee's strongest point is about safety. I totally get why parents want to reach their kids. Price responds to this worry directly, she explains that families can reach students through the office and that phones can make it harder for staff to give instructions in an emergency. Rushing to answer calls, instructions from teachers might be missed by students.

(5) In conclusion, Price's argument is better supported because it is based on real results. Lee raises fair concerns, but his evidence is mostly personal. His idea of teaching responsible use is worth discussing, yet he offers no proof that it works. The school day should be for learning, and Price shows how to protect it.