Which sentence best states what the passage is about?

Sanne records empty rooms, and one job shows her that a room without its people is missing the thing that mattered. (The first half explains her work; the factory scene delivers the point when the welder finds the recording thin because the work is missing.)

How long is each of Sanne's recordings?

Four minutes. (The first paragraph says she captures four minutes of nothing. Ninety refers to the factory's years.)

Why did the recording sound "thin" to the welder?

It held only the empty building, without the machines and people that gave the place its real sound. (Sanne agrees and explains it herself: she recorded the building, not the work, and the work is the part he was missing.)

In "a faint tick from the pipes," faint means:

weak and hard to hear (She is recording rooms that seem empty of sound, so a faint tick is one that is quiet and barely noticeable.)

What The Room Sounds Like: Level 3 Reading Comprehension Questions

Sanne records rooms. Not conversations, not music: rooms. She places a microphone in the middle of a space, asks everyone to leave, and captures four minutes of nothing.

The recordings go to an archive that most people will never open. Still, she is careful. A kitchen at noon has a hum from the refrigerator and a faint tick from the pipes. A school hallway at night holds the buzz of the ceiling lights and, underneath, the traffic outside. No two rooms sound alike, and no room sounds like silence.

Her hardest job was a factory that was closing after ninety years. The owners wanted a record of it. She arrived on the final morning, set up in the main hall, and asked the remaining workers to step outside. They stood in the yard without talking, while a machine that none of them would ever run again cooled behind them.

When she played the file back, one of the welders said it sounded wrong. Too thin, he said. Sanne agreed with him. She had recorded the building, she told him, not the work. And the work was the part he was missing.

Comprehension questions