HiSET Practice Test 2

Draft Essay: A Repair Café for Our Town

(1) In many towns, a broken lamp or a torn jacket ends up in the trash, even when the problem is small. (2) A growing movement called the repair café offers a different choice. (3) At these monthly events, volunteers with sewing, electrical, and carpentry skills sets up tables in a library or church hall. (4) Visitors bring in broken items, and a volunteer guides each visitor through the repair. (5) The service is free of charge and costs nothing, though most cafés accept donations to cover the cost of spare parts.

(6) Repair cafés help the environment. (7) Every toaster that is fixed is one less toaster in a landfill and one less new toaster that must be manufactured and shipped. (8) The first repair café opened in Amsterdam in 2009, and organizers there estimate that volunteers successfully fix about two-thirds of the items brought in. (9) Amsterdam is also famous for its canals and its many bicycles.

(10) Perhaps the most important benefit, however, is what visitors learn. (11) Instead of simply handing over a broken item, visitors are asked to hold the screwdriver themselves. (12) Many visitors who have went to a repair café say they now feel confident trying simple repairs on their own.

(13) Our town has a hardware store, a library, and plenty of retired electricians and tailors. (14) Opening a repair café here, would cost almost nothing. (15) It would help keep useful objects out of the landfill, and it would teach residents skills that last a lifetime.