The following is a sample question from the reading section of my new TOEFL text - Scoring Strategies for the TOEFL iBT, A Complete Guide to TOEFL Success - available in March.
Look at the four squares [n]. They indicate where the following sentence could be added to the paragraph below. Click on the square to insert the sentence into the passage.
Look at the four squares [n]. They indicate where the following sentence could be added to the paragraph below. Click on the square to insert the sentence into the passage.
The Iranian calendar today is based on Khayyám's calculations.
Omar Khayyám, born in Persia in 1048 AD, was polymath, a man whose genius ranged from astronomy to philosophy to poetry. Recognized as one of the greatest medieval mathematicians, Khayyám authored the Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra. n In it, he provides a geometric method for solving cubic equations. n Khayyám's contributions to algebra eventually found it way to Europe, as did the work of many other influential Persian mathematicians. n In astronomy, Khayyám measured a solar year and concluded that it was 365.2421 days. n Yet despite his scientific achievements, Omar Khayyám is most famous for his poetry, in particular his book of poems The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. The Rubáiyát consists of about one thousand quatrains, a quatrain being a poem consisting of four lines or rubaais.
“I sent my soul through the invisible,
some letter of that afterlife to spell;
and by and by my soul returned to me,
and answered, "I myself am Heav'n and Hell"
- Omar Khayyám -
© Bruce Stirling 2011
