Count the items, notice the timing, and map the spread
Read for meaning first. Select a highlighted word if you want a closer look.
A multitude of colored paper buildings covered the classroom floor during a collaborative model-city project, leaving only narrow paths between neighborhoods. A spate of collapsed roofs during the first moving test forced the builders to examine several joins at once. Triangular braces became ubiquitous throughout the model as teams added them at almost every building corner. The class described the quantity of objects, the sudden cluster of failures, and the widespread appearance of a new feature separately, so the three terms did not become interchangeable words for something merely common.
The multitude referred to a very large collection of buildings, regardless of whether those objects had arrived all at once. The spate of roof failures added a time pattern: many occurred within the short interval of the first test. The braces became ubiquitous only when they appeared almost everywhere in the model, rather than because a single building used several of them. A second inspection recorded both where the braces were placed and which joins still failed, keeping the description of distribution separate from a claim that every repair had succeeded.
Before you move on
Look away from the passage. Can you explain each focus word in your own words?
Original fictional passages for vocabulary practice.