Also in 2025 Practice Test B English, question 9.
Passage A Miracle Mile
A Miracle Mile
In the 1950s people compared running one mile in four minutes to scaling Mount Everest and nicknamed the feat a “dream mile.” Although such an accomplishment was considered humanly impossible, several elite runners aimed to break that supposedly impenetrable barrier. One of them was a twenty-five-year-old medical student named Roger Bannister.
Roger Bannister had tasted failure during the 1952 Olympics. There, he was favored to win the 1,500-meter competition, a distance slightly shorter than a mile, but he finished in a dismal fourth place instead. Bannister’s performance was a disappointment for him and his country, Great Britain. Determined to redeem himself, Bannister postponed his plans to retire from racing and focused on the ultimate prize—breaking the four-minute-mile barrier.
Bannister attacked the elusive milestone with a positive attitude and logical planning. The amateur athlete decided to use intensive interval training to develop endurance and speed. For these workouts, Bannister ran an interval of ten consecutive laps on a quarter-mile track, aiming for sixty seconds each lap. In between intervals, he let his body recover for two minutes.
By early 1954, Bannister had succeeded in lowering his quarter-mile pace to sixty-one seconds, but he had to shave off at least one more second in order to reach his target. Frustrated by the plateau he had reached, Bannister took a break from training and went mountain climbing for three days. The rest from running permitted his muscles to recuperate and left him feeling refreshed. When Bannister returned to the track, he completed ten quarter-mile-long intervals at fifty-nine seconds each. He finally felt prepared to attempt to break the world record.
As a member of the Amateur Athletic Association (AAA), Bannister joined the AAA team for a track meet against Oxford University. The event took place on a cinder track in Oxford on May 6, 1954. Bannister and his two AAA teammates, Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher, were close friends and frequent running partners. Chataway and Brasher agreed to help Bannister accomplish his goal by being his “rabbits.”
In track and field, rabbits are runners who enter the race solely to pace a teammate for a segment of the course. Typically, a runner settles in behind the rabbit and allows the rabbit to set an appropriate tempo. Additionally, by running behind the rabbit, the runner conserves about 15 percent of his or her effort. When the starting pistol fired, Brasher pounced into the lead, and Bannister followed behind his first rabbit.
Propelled by the excitement, Bannister lost his instinctive feel for his pace and shouted “Faster!” at Brasher. Brasher, however, remained composed and maintained his current steady but grueling pace, completing the first two laps in a desirable one minute and fifty-eight seconds. Then Chataway surged forward, leading Bannister at this same punishing rate for another lap and a half. At the beginning of the back straightaway of the track, Bannister bolted past Chataway. Bannister said, “I felt that the moment of a lifetime had come. There was no pain, only a great unity of movement and aim.” Bannister crossed the finish line in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. The ecstatic crowd erupted the moment the timekeeper announced the word “three.”
Soon after Bannister’s achievement, four other athletes matched his performance. A new mindset had taken root among runners. Over the years, the record continued to fall. However, the current record, 3 minutes 43.13 seconds, has stood unbroken since 1999. Some question whether this record represents the limits of human ability. But perhaps there is another Bannister, an athlete who, with willpower and dedication, will accomplish the miraculous.
Question
The words “feat,” “humanly impossible,” and “impenetrable barrier” in paragraph 1 affect the tone of the paragraph because they
- Ahighlight the idea that only the most skilled runners would be able to run a four-minute mile.
- Bemphasize the idea that running a mile in less than four minutes was a seemingly unattainable goal.
- Cconvey the competitiveness among elite runners to consistently set and break speed records.
- Dshow the intensity of the training programs athletes endure in order to achieve their goals.
Show the answer
Correct answer: B
The question asks how the words “feat,” “humanly impossible,” and “impenetrable barrier” in paragraph 1 affect the tone of the paragraph.
A. Incorrect. Although paragraph 1 states that “several elite runners aimed to break that supposedly impenetrable barrier,” the words “feat,” “humanly impossible,” and “impenetrable barrier” suggest that the goal was unattainable even for the most skilled runners.
B. CORRECT. No one had ever been able to run a mile in less than four minutes, and the words “feat,” “humanly impossible,” and “impenetrable barrier” imply that the goal seemed unattainable. These words also reinforce the comparison of running a four-minute mile to “scaling Mount Everest” (paragraph 1).
C. Incorrect. The words “feat,” “humanly impossible,” and “impenetrable barrier” describe how challenging and almost impossible running a four-minute mile seemed, and while other elite runners “aimed to break that supposedly impenetrable barrier” (paragraph 1), the paragraph focuses on Roger Bannister, not the competition among elite runners seeking to break the record.
D. Incorrect. Bannister’s training program is described in paragraphs 3 and 4, and the words “feat,” “humanly impossible,” and “impenetrable barrier” are used in paragraph 1 to describe the magnitude of Bannister’s goal to run a four-minute mile. Though his training program was intense, these words relate to the intensity of the goal itself, not to the intensity of his training.
Question analysis
This tone question on “A Miracle Mile,” an article about Roger Bannister and the four-minute mile, asks how three word choices in the opening paragraph, “feat,” “humanly impossible” and “impenetrable barrier,” affect its tone. Students must read the connotations of strong words in context and decide what they stress, while choices that echo other parts of the passage compete for attention.
- Grade level
- Grade 6 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- Below grade 7 Grade 7 tone questions often ask students to find the telling words themselves. Here the three words are quoted and sit in one short opening paragraph, and their shared meaning is strong and plain, so one careful reading is enough.
- Estimated difficulty
- Straightforward: two steps or one careful reading.
- Thinking it demands
- Depth of knowledge 2, skills and concepts · mainly analyze
- What makes it hard
- A very close wrong answer minor
- Hard words minor
- Evidence
- Answered from one paragraph or stanza
- Reading level
- Passage: about grade 10, 587 words; question and choices: about grade 11, 80 words.
- Students, last 30 days
- Not enough answers yet to show (it takes 10).
Why it is hard, traps and wrong answers (shows the answer)
Why it is hard
The three quoted words all make the same point, and the opening comparison with “scaling Mount Everest” makes it again, so the effect is easy to sense. Points are lost on degree: the sentence holding two of the three words also names “several elite runners,” which makes a choice about only the best runners look supported. Students who hold on to “humanly impossible” rule it out, and the choices about rivalry and training fall away once they check that the words describe the goal, not the runners or their preparation.
A very close wrong answer minor Choosing the answer
The choice about only the most skilled runners and the right one both stress how hard the four-minute mile was; they differ on degree, possible for the best runners or thought impossible for anyone. (Embretson & Wetzel, 1987; Gorin & Embretson, 2006; Ascalon et al., 2007)
Hard words minor Understanding the question
“Impenetrable” and “feat” carry the tone, and a student who does not know that impenetrable means impossible to break through may miss how absolute the barrier sounded. (Perfetti, 2007; Freedle & Kostin, 1993)
Strategy: Decide what feeling the three quoted words share, then reread paragraph 1 to see what they describe, and keep only a choice that fits both the feeling and the thing described.
Traps
- Twists what the text says: Uses the text's topic and ideas but changes what it says: who did it, how much, when, or why.
- Word match: Repeats striking words or phrases from the text, so it looks supported, but its meaning does not fit the question.
- Wrong part of the text: A choice is true of another paragraph, stanza or speaker than the one asked about.
The wrong answers, classified
A Twists what the text says (King et al., 2004)
Sees that the words stress difficulty but scales it down to a feat for the best runners only, though “humanly impossible” says no runner at all was thought able to do it.
C Word match (Freedle & Kostin, 1993)
Picks up “elite runners aimed to break” from the same sentence and turns it into a rivalry over records, though the three words describe the barrier, not the runners.
D Wrong part of the text (Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990)
Carries the intensive interval training of paragraphs 3 and 4 back to paragraph 1, where the words measure the size of the goal, not the effort of preparing for it.
Working it out, step by step
Figure out what the question asks
This is a tone question. Tone is the feeling or attitude that a writer’s words give a passage. The question names three word choices from paragraph 1. You need to decide what feeling they share and what they describe.
Find the words in paragraph 1
Paragraph 1 says people “compared running one mile in four minutes to scaling Mount Everest.” Scaling means climbing. Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on Earth. The paragraph calls running that fast a “feat.” The next sentence says “Although such an accomplishment was considered humanly impossible, several elite runners aimed to break that supposedly impenetrable barrier.”
Work out what the words mean
A feat is an amazing deed that is very hard to do. Humanly impossible means no person could ever do it. Impenetrable means impossible to break through, and a barrier is a wall. All three say the same thing. A mile under four minutes seemed like a goal no one could reach. A word for that is unattainable.
Check each choice
- A does not fit. It says the best runners could do it. But “humanly impossible” means no one could.
- B fits. The words make the four-minute mile sound out of reach.
- C does not fit. The words describe the barrier, not a contest between runners.
- D does not fit. Training comes later, in paragraphs 3 and 4. These words describe the goal itself.
Watch out: A is tempting because the same sentence mentions “several elite runners.” Elite means the very best. But even they were not expected to succeed.
Choose the answer
The three words make the goal sound almost impossible for anyone. So the answer is B, “emphasize the idea that running a mile in less than four minutes was a seemingly unattainable goal.”
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
A is the closest wrong choice. It also says the four-minute mile was hard. But A says that only the most skilled runners could do it. The passage says it was “considered humanly impossible.” People thought no runner at all could do it. That is why B fits better.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “A Miracle Mile” as printed (page 13)
