RLA Mixed Practice Test 1

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.

A letter to the editor of a local newspaper, written by a Westfield resident

(1) Last week, the county board quietly approved a plan to close the Westfield Branch Library on Sundays to save about $60,000 a year. The decision was buried on page twelve of a forty-page budget and approved at a 9:00 a.m. Tuesday meeting that few working people could attend. If the board hoped no one would notice, it underestimated the people who depend on that building.

(2) To some board members, Sunday hours may look like a luxury. To the families of Westfield, they are a lifeline. Sunday is the only day many parents are free to bring their children to story time. It is the day students study for Monday tests at the long wooden tables. It is the day job seekers without home internet use the library's computers to submit applications that are due before the week begins.

(3) Supporters of the cut point out that Sunday attendance is lower than Saturday attendance. That is true, but it misses the point. The people who come on Sunday are often the people who cannot come at any other time. A bus driver who works six days a week does not care that Saturday is busier; Sunday is the only day she has.

(4) The board also claims the savings are necessary. Yet in the same budget, it found money to repave the parking lot of the county office building, a project that could easily have waited another year. Sixty thousand dollars is a rounding error in a budget of this size. It is not a rounding error to the teenager who has nowhere else to study.

(5) I am not asking the board to spend recklessly. I am asking it to look again. Hold an evening hearing where working residents can speak. Count not only how many people walk through the doors on Sunday, but who they are and where else they could go. Ask whether a smaller cut—shorter Sunday hours instead of none—could save money without shutting the door entirely.

(6) A library is not just a building full of books. It is one of the last places in our town where anyone can walk in, sit down and stay, without buying anything or explaining themselves. Closing it on Sundays will not make headlines. It will simply make life a little harder for the people who already have the least room to spare. The board should reverse this decision.

(1) Mix flour, water, salt, and a spoonful of yeast, and wait a few hours. The sticky lump on the counter will double in size, as if someone had blown air into it. For thousands of years, bakers used this process without knowing why it worked. Today we know that the answer is alive.

(2) Yeast is a tiny fungus, a living thing made of a single cell. A packet of dry yeast holds billions of these cells in a resting state. When yeast gets warm water and food, it wakes up. Its favorite food is sugar, and flour contains starches that break down into simple sugars once they are wet. As the yeast feeds, it gives off two waste products: a gas called carbon dioxide and a small amount of alcohol. The gas is what makes bread rise.

(3) But gas alone is not enough. If you blow bubbles into a glass of water, they simply escape. Dough needs a way to trap the gas, and that is where kneading comes in. When flour is mixed with water, two proteins in the flour join together to form gluten. Kneading (pressing, folding, and turning the dough) stretches the gluten into a web of thin, elastic strands. That web works like millions of tiny balloons that catch the gas and hold it.

(4) The steps of baking follow from these facts. First, the baker mixes the ingredients so the yeast can reach its food. Next, the dough is kneaded for about ten minutes to build the gluten web. Then the dough rests in a warm place, usually for one to two hours, while the yeast fills the web with gas. After that, the baker presses the air out, shapes the loaf, and lets it rise a second time. Finally, the loaf goes into a hot oven.

(5) The oven causes one last burst of growth. Heat makes the gas bubbles expand quickly, and the loaf grows noticeably in its first minutes of baking. Bakers call this "oven spring." When the inside of the dough reaches about 140 degrees Fahrenheit, the yeast dies. The gluten and starches then set firm, locking the bubbles in place. Those frozen bubbles are the holes you see when you slice the bread.

(6) Knowing the science helps explain common mistakes. Water that is too hot can kill the yeast before it starts, so the dough never rises. Too little kneading leaves a weak gluten web, and the gas leaks out, producing a flat, dense loaf. A cold kitchen slows the yeast down, which is why a recipe's rising time is only a guide.

(7) A loaf of bread, in other words, is the work of billions of tiny living things, guided by a baker who knows how to keep them happy.

(1) Everyone knows health inspectors are the enemy. At least, that is what I believed the Tuesday morning Ms. Albright walked into my father's diner, the Blue Kettle, with her clipboard and her sensible shoes.

(2) I had been working the register after school for two years, long enough to know the stories. Mr. Petrakis down the street said an inspector once fined him for a single fingerprint on a cooler door. My father's friend Lou swore they had a quota to fill. So when Ms. Albright asked to see the kitchen, I followed her, ready to defend our honor.

(3) She opened the walk-in refrigerator and checked the thermometer. She wrote something down. She checked again. "Forty-four degrees," she said. "It needs to stay at forty-one or below."

(4) There it was. I looked at my father, expecting him to argue. Instead he just nodded slowly, wiping his hands on his apron. "The door seal," he said. "I have been meaning to replace it."

(5) I waited for the fine, the lecture, the closing notice taped to our window. Ms. Albright crouched by the refrigerator door and ran her finger along the rubber seal. "This brand cracks at the corners," she said. "There's a supplier on Fifth Street that sells a better one for about forty dollars. Move the dairy and the chicken to your reach-in cooler until it's fixed, and I'll come back Friday to recheck."

(6) Then she did something I did not expect. She stopped in front of the handwritten sign my father had taped above the sink years ago: WASH LIKE YOUR MOTHER IS WATCHING. She laughed out loud. "My parents ran a bakery for thirty years," she said. "My mother would have loved this."

(7) After she left, I told my father she had been lucky we didn't complain about her. He gave me a long look. "Mei," he said, "she found a problem that could have made somebody sick. Then she told me how to fix it for forty dollars. Who do you think she is protecting?"

(8) I didn't answer. I was thinking about the stories from Mr. Petrakis and Lou, and about how neither of them had ever mentioned what the inspector actually found.

(9) On Friday, I made sure the new seal was in before she arrived. When she checked the thermometer, it read thirty-eight. She smiled at me, and this time, I smiled back.

MEMO

To: Janet Ruiz, Regional Director From: Marcus Bell, Customer Support Manager Re: Proposal for a four-day workweek trial

(1) I am writing to propose that our customer support team move from five 8-hour days to four 10-hour days, starting with a three-month trial in January. I believe this change would raise productivity, reduce turnover, and cost the company nothing.

(2) First, a compressed schedule would help us keep good employees. Over the past year, 11 of our 40 support agents quit. In exit interviews, 7 of those 11 named "schedule flexibility" as a reason for leaving. Replacing an agent costs us roughly $4,500 in recruiting and training. If a four-day week had kept just three of those seven agents, we would have saved about $13,500.

(3) Second, longer shifts would improve our coverage. Our call volume peaks between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., when many customers get home from work. Right now, most agents leave at 5 p.m. Ten-hour shifts, staggered across the day, would put more agents on the phones during those peak hours.

(4) Third, other companies have had success with this model. A software company in Ohio that switched to four 10-hour days reported that its employees were happier and more productive. I also asked several agents on my team, and they all loved the idea.

(5) Some may worry that agents will be tired by the end of a 10-hour shift and that the quality of our service will slip. I understand that concern. However, our agents are professionals, and I am confident they will rise to the challenge.

(6) Finally, the trial would cost nothing. Total weekly hours would stay at 40 per agent, so payroll would not change. I recommend that we begin the trial on January 6 and measure the results using our existing customer satisfaction scores and call-handling times.

An email from the operations manager of Delmar Distribution, a fictional warehouse company, to the company's leadership team

Subject: Proposal to replace paper forklift checklists with the SafeCheck app

(1) I recommend that we replace the paper forklift safety checklists at all three of our warehouses with the SafeCheck tablet app by March 1. The change will make our workers safer and save the company money.

(2) Right now, every forklift driver fills out a paper checklist before each shift, confirming that the brakes, horn, lights, forks, and tires are in working order. Supervisors collect the sheets and store them in boxes. When a state inspector visited our Riverside warehouse in August, it took two supervisors most of an afternoon to find six weeks of checklists. Three sheets were never found.

(3) SafeCheck stores every checklist online, time-stamped and searchable in seconds. If a driver marks a problem, such as weak brakes, the app immediately alerts the shift supervisor and locks that forklift out of the schedule until a mechanic signs off on the repair. With paper, a problem noted on a sheet might not be seen by anyone until the end of the day.

(4) The costs are modest. We would need 18 tablets at about $300 each, plus a SafeCheck subscription of $2,400 a year, for a first-year total of about $7,800. Last year we paid $11,500 in overtime for supervisors to sort and file safety paperwork, according to our payroll records. SafeCheck's sales representative told me that most customers cut this kind of overtime by 80 percent or more.

(5) I also spoke with the safety manager at Northline Freight, which switched to SafeCheck two years ago. She told me that recorded forklift incidents at her company fell from 14 in the year before the switch to 9 in the year after.

(6) Some supervisors have told me that older drivers may struggle with tablets. I take this concern seriously. SafeCheck uses large buttons and pictures instead of small text, and the company offers free on-site training. I propose a one-hour training session for every driver during paid work time, with a supervisor available on each shift to answer questions during the first month.

(7) Safety should never depend on whether someone can find the right sheet of paper. I ask the leadership team to approve this proposal at our next meeting.

Text 1 — Eighteen Saves Lives (testimony to the state legislature by Alan Brooks, fictional director of the State Office of Traffic Safety)

(1) Car crashes are one of the leading causes of death for American teenagers. In our state last year, drivers aged 16 and 17 made up 4 percent of licensed drivers but were involved in 11 percent of fatal crashes, according to our office's crash records.

(2) Research helps explain why. The parts of the brain that control impulses and judge risk keep developing into a person's mid-twenties. Experience matters too: a driver's crash risk is highest in the first months after getting a license. Delaying licenses until 18 means new drivers begin that dangerous period with more maturity.

(3) We have already seen what stronger rules can do. When our state added nighttime driving limits for 16-year-olds in 2015, fatal crashes involving those drivers fell by 22 percent over the next five years, while fatal crashes among other age groups stayed roughly level.

(4) I understand that many families, especially in rural areas, depend on teen drivers. That is why this proposal includes a hardship permit for 16- and 17-year-olds who must drive to a job or to school and have no other transportation. Raising the age with this exception would save lives without stranding families.

Text 2 — Don't Punish Responsible Teens (letter to the editor from Walt Hendricks, the fictional owner of a rural farm supply store)

(5) I run a farm supply store, and half of my weekend staff are 16 or 17 years old. If the state raises the driving age, I will lose my best workers, and those young people will lose their paychecks.

(6) My own son started driving at 16 and has never had so much as a parking ticket. Most teens I know are careful drivers. The problem is a few reckless kids, not an entire age group.

(7) And where will this end? If lawmakers raise the age to 18 today, they will raise it to 21 next year, and soon nobody under 25 will be allowed behind the wheel.

(8) Instead of taking away licenses, the state should require more hours of driver's education. Teens who practice more become better drivers. Lawmakers should trust parents to decide when their children are ready.

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.

Text 1 — A Small Tax With a Big Health Payoff (op-ed by Dr. Alan Pierce, fictional director of the Bayport Health Department)

(1) Bayport should place a tax of 1.5 cents per ounce on sugary drinks such as soda, sweetened tea and energy drinks, and use the money for school nutrition and community health programs.

(2) Sugary drinks are the largest single source of added sugar in the American diet, according to federal dietary guidelines. In Bayport, 34 percent of adults have obesity, and our clinics see more patients with type 2 diabetes every year.

(3) Taxes change buying habits. After the city of Harlow adopted a similar tax, a university study comparing Harlow with a nearby city without a tax found that sugary drink sales in Harlow fell by 33 percent, while bottled water sales rose.

(4) The tax would also raise about 4 million dollars a year, based on current sales. That money would pay for free healthy breakfasts in every elementary school and for diabetes prevention classes.

(5) Critics say the tax hurts low-income families most. But low-income neighborhoods also suffer the highest rates of diet-related disease, so they would gain the most from healthier choices and new programs.

Text 2 — Don't Tax My Customers' Choices (letter to the editor from Sam Okoye, fictional owner of a Bayport corner store)

(6) The city council wants to tell people what they can drink. That is not the government's job.

(7) This tax will hit working families hardest. A family that buys a 12-pack of soda each week would pay about 9 dollars more a month.

(8) People will just drive to stores outside the city to buy their soda. My cousin owns a store in a city that passed a soda tax, and he says his customers started shopping across the city line the very next week. Small stores like mine will lose business, and some will close.

(9) Besides, soda is not the only cause of obesity. People gain weight from fast food, lack of exercise and many other things. Taxing one drink will not fix the problem.

(10) If the city really cares about health, it should build more parks, not punish shopkeepers.

A student wrote this first draft in response to the two texts about a teen curfew in Easton. The draft has errors in style, grammar and sentence structure.

(1) Easton's police chief wants a curfew for teens under 17, but the director of the town's youth center thinks a curfew would target the wrong hours. Both writers want young people to be safe, yet they disagree about how to protect them. Reyes's argument is way more convincing than Donnelly's.

(2) Donnelly's main statistic is a 30 percent rise in juvenile arrests. Which sounds serious. However, the actual numbers were only 20 and 26. Reyes points out that six extra arrests in a town of 18,000 people could just be a normal change, this weakens Donnelly's whole case.

(3) The data on timing are even more important. According to police records, 57 percent of juvenile incidents happens between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. on school days. Only 9 percent happened during curfew hours. When Reyes compared these numbers with Donnelly's plan, she showed that it would miss most of the problem. In other words, the curfew would cover the hours when the fewest problems occur.

(4) Donnelly also leans on stuff like a mayor's comment that the streets "felt calmer". Feelings are not evidence. Reyes, in contrast, relies on research. Looking at a dozen studies, no consistent drop in juvenile crime was found.

(5) Each of the parents at Donnelly's meeting have a real concern, and I get it. But a curfew isn't the answer. Reyes reports that a spring pilot program at her center drew an average of 65 teens each afternoon. Keeping the youth center open later are a more practical solution.