mean in this sentence?

Understand Words and Language Structures · TELPAS Grades 10–12 reading. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.

Reporting category 1: work out what words and phrases mean from context, and understand how sentences and word forms work.

Read the story. Then answer the questions.

The Recipe Card

Andres had cooked his grandmother's chicken mole a hundred times, but he had never measured anything. Abuela Gloria didn't believe in measuring. She tossed in chiles by the handful, poured broth until the pot "looked right," and eyeballed the chocolate. When he asked her how much cumin went in, she shrugged and said, "Enough."

That worked fine at home. It did not work in Chef Barrera's culinary arts class. "For the regional competition, every team turns in a written recipe," she announced on Monday. "Exact amounts. The judges will cook from your card, and if they can't make your dish taste the way yours does, you lose points."

Andres's stomach dropped. He could make the mole with his eyes closed. He could not write it down.

On Saturday, he showed up at his grandmother's kitchen with a set of measuring cups, a notebook, and a small kitchen scale. "I'm going to follow you around," he said. "Every time you grab something, I'm going to measure it before it goes in."

Abuela Gloria laughed at him, but she let him do it. Her handful of dried chiles turned out to be six. Her "enough" cumin was a teaspoon and a half. When she poured the broth, he stopped her and measured: four and a half cups. By evening his notebook was stained with sauce, and his recipe card was finished.

At the competition, Andres followed his card exactly, step by step, the way the judges would. When the mole was done, he tasted it. It was close. It was very close. But it wasn't Abuela's.

He thought about the card, and then about his grandmother's hands moving over the pot. He added a pinch of salt, tasted again, and smiled.

That night, before he handed in the final copy of his recipe, he added one more line at the bottom of the card: Taste it. Then trust yourself.

The question

Choose the best answer.

Read this sentence from paragraph 1. "She tossed in chiles by the handful, poured broth until the pot 'looked right,' and eyeballed the chocolate." What does "eyeballed" mean in this sentence?

  • Guessed the amount by lookingCorrect answer
  • Melted it slowly over low heat
  • Checked carefully that it was fresh
  • Measured it exactly with a spoon

Why “Guessed the amount by looking” is correct

This tests a body-part word used as a verb. To "eyeball" an amount means to judge it just by looking. The other phrases in the sentence, "by the handful" and "until the pot looked right," along with "didn't believe in measuring," all point to that meaning.

Why the other answers are wrong

  • Melted it slowly over low heat — Nothing in the sentence is about heat; the whole sentence describes how she adds ingredients without measuring.
  • Checked carefully that it was fresh — The sentence is about how much she uses, not whether it is fresh.
  • Measured it exactly with a spoon — This is the opposite; paragraph 1 says she never measured anything.

Practice more of this

More reading practice for Grades 10–12, or see the TELPAS practice test for 10th–12th grade.

This is an independent study resource. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Texas Education Agency or the official TELPAS program. All questions here are original practice material written to match the published test design.