ACT Past Papers with Answers

Based on the passage, the word they in line 7 refers to: tlie fields of the narrator's childhood. wild strawberries. the narrator's parents.

The main purpose of the second paragraph (lines 10-21) is to: explain why the narrator's father encouraged his children to give strawberries as gifts. the narrator's ancestors. strawberries to the narrator's family. emphasize the importance of plants in traditional Potawatomi stories.

It can most reasonably be iiiferred from the passage that the narrator learned about the growth cycle of strawberries by: observing the runneis and roots of the plants. reading about how to help strawberries grow. Farmers around us grew a lot of strawberries and frequently hired kids to pick for them. My siblin￿S and I would ride our bikes a long way to Crandall's farm to pick berries to earn spending money. A dime for every 90 quart we picked.

As it is used in line 20, the wold recognize most nearly means: concede. notice. acknowledge.

In the passage, the narrator states that as a child, she experienced her world as a: wage economy in which her family struggled. occasions. classroom filled with friends and neighbors.

According to the passage, picking the strawberries for their father's shortcake took the narrator and her sib- lings a long time because: the strawberry patches had many bugs. Saturdays.

According to the passage, runners appeaTed on berry plants Èn the field when: the Strawberry Moon first appeared. a patch of ground was cleared for them. the berry plant was dyin¢J ACT.B05 31 GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE. Passage11 Another place where Henson's Aerial Steam Car- Tiage paradigm misled people was the vital issue of 55 controllability. Controlling horse-drawn vehicles does not require constant active involvement on the driver's part. The horses are set in motion and the reins are not used again until the horses need further instruction. SOCIAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from The Air- plane.. How Ideas Gave Us Wings by Jay Spenser (02008 by Jay Spenser). The invention of the airplane was a battleground for two warring paradigms about what the airplane would be like. Paradigms are mind-sets created by what we think we know. Depending on hoiv closely they 5 match the actualÈty, these méntal models either can help us succeed or can place bl.inders over our eyes that keep us from perceiving what we later realize was obvious all along. Consequently, Europe's 'early birds" were 60 remarkably cavalier about controllability. To them, all one needed to do was create an inherently stable craft whose wings never dropped to either side. After nosing this vehicle aloft, one would simply "drive" it around the sky. 65 Working under the right paradigm helped Ameri- 10 cans Orville and Wilbur Wright to succeed even as a wrong one sabotaged the hopes of Europe's many experimenters. If not for this situation. the French- who felt they had invented flight because of the success of the Montgolfiers, hot-air balloons in 1783-might 15 well have been first. If so, the airplane, like the automo- bile before it, would have been a European invention. wealthy Brazilian named Alberto Santos- Dumont performed Europe's first heavier-than-air tlights late in 1906. His 14-bis was largely uncontrol- lable, but that didn't bother him. his goal was simply to get into the air. This disregard for a key requirement of 70 flight was then so pervasive that more than a year would pass before any European figured out how to actually land where he had taken off. What led Europe's aerial experimenters astray? It was William Samuel Henson. Or more accurately, it was the powerful sway of Henson's persuasive vision of 20 what aviation would be. Wilbur and Orville worked under a different mind- set. They too had seen Henson's artwork, but it didn't 75 sing to them because they were bicyclists. Their inti- mate association with this vehicle, its operation, and its manufacture led them to approach flight development in a different way than their European counterparts. Wilbur and Orville were not in the least scared of 80 tilting to one side or the other in flÉght. Banking in flight seemed natural to them because a bicyclist leans into turns. What's more, they understood from the outset that the airplane needed to be controllable around all three axes and that the pilot had to be inti- 85 mately involved with this process while aloft. These two insights were intuitive because the bicyclist must constantly direct his two-wheeled vehicle by means of a combination of active balance and COOTdinated use of handlebars, acceleration, and braking. If the bicyclist 90 doesn't stay on top of these things every minute, he's in for a spill. First published in the early 1840s, the engraved illustrations of the Henson Aerial Steam Carriage (a passenger-carrying airplane) continued to appear off and on in newspapers, magazines, and books for more 25 than a half century. Moi"e thrilling artwork of heavier- than-air flying machines was hard to imagine, and the very sight of this aerial stagecoach spurred Europe's aerial experimenters to redouble their efforts. Unfortu- nately, however, it also handed them a lot of incorrect 30 notions. The concept of an aerial carriage brought with it a concomitant expectation that people would drive air- planes around the.sky making flat turns as they did in horse-drawn vehicles. This unquestioned assumption 35 shaped how France's early experimentation approached airplane design, and it cost them dearly. Part of Henson's paradigm worked. For example. airplanes would indeed pitch their noses up or down to climb or descend. This was intuitive because horse- 40 drawn carriages do just that when traversing hilly coun- tryside. But carriages don't tilt sideways, or at least not very far, because that leads to a catastrophic upset. Henson's vision told Europe's early experimenters that their airplanes must not be permitted to tilt side to 45 side or else catastrophe would ensue. To ensure that this never happened, some experimenters used strongly upward-angled wings so that the airplane would be self- righting in flight. Others placed vertical fore-and-aft fabric panels between the wings of theii biplanes to 50 pievent sideslips. Both these features sugoest that Europe's pioneers were terrified of banking, or drop- ping a wing in flioht.

The passage can best be described as: a 'critique of the solutions earIy aerial experi- menters found to the problems they faced. an overview of how .various European inventions evolved. an explanation of how Henson's paradigm helped to improve early aircraft design. an analysis of how two different paradigms affected early aircraft design.

The main idea of the fourth paragraph (lines 21-30) is that Henson's illustrations: were so popular that they appeared in newspapers and magazines for over half a century. encouraged experimenters to imagine even more thrilling airplane designs than Henson had. inspired experimenters and helped them build the first working airplanes more quickly. otivated experimenters but hindered their ability to invent a successful airplane.

The author most likely includes the example of Santos- Dumont's flights in 1906 to: illustrate how an inaccurate paradigm can impede overall success. heavier-than-air flights. shift their paradigm. explain why controlling a plane was less vital than the Wrights believed.

According to the passage, compared to Europe's early experimenters, the Wrights were less inspired by Henson's vision because they were: unaware of Henson's work with hot-air balloons. accustomed to a different mode of transportation. more inspired by Santos-Dumont's vision.

As it is used in line 90, the phrase 'stay on top of" most nearly means: remain above.

As presented in the passage, the idea that human flight was invented 'when the Montgolfiers successfully launched their hot-air balloons reflects the perspective

As it is used in line 19, the word sway most nearly influence. regime.

The passage most stronoly sutrgests that compared to early airplanes, horse-drawn vehicles: required less continuous steering. were less inherently stable. could more safely tilt from side to side. were more difficult to control. AGT-B05 33 GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE. Passage 111 singing mostly in a falsetto voice, and managed the group, booking their appearances and scheduling the rehearsals. He was a stickler for punctuality and preci- sion, for looking and sounding sharp, for taking the job 55 seriously. But not everyone in the group shared his commitment" his exasperation mourAted urAtil one day he quit. Pops decided to devote his time to a singing group that he could run from top to bottom, that would show up on time at every rehearsal, no questions asked. 60 Mostly, he wanted to sing because it was a crucial pait of his identity" since boyhood all he could remember was the pleasure singing brought him and his older brothers and sisters. When singing in the Trumpet Jubilees became a chore, he turned to his family. HUMANITIES: Passage A is adapted from the biography Duke.. A Lif8 of Duke Ellington by Terry Teachout (@2013 by Terry Teachout). Passage B is adapted from the biography I'll Take You Th8r8.' Mavis Staples, The Staples Singers, and the March Up Freedom's Highw8y by Greg Kol (02014 by Greg Kot)- Passage A by Terry Teachout What Duke Ellington sought and got fi.om his 'accuJnulation of personalities" was a loose, festive ensemble sound far removed from the clean precision of Benny Goodman's band. He had no interest in the 5 smoothly blended playing that leaders like Goodman, Jitnmie Lunceford, and Artie Shaw demanded from their groups. He preferied to hire musicians with home- made techniques that were different to the point of apparent incompatibility, then juxtapose their idiosyn- 10 cratic sounds as a pointillist painter'might place dots of red and green side by side on his canvas, finding inspi- ration in their technical limitations ("With a musician who plays the full compass of his instrument as fast or as slow as possible, there seems, paradoxically, less 15 opportunity to create"). That is why his charts never sound quite right when performed by other groups, however accomplished the individual players may be. It is also why a keen-eared virtuoso like Jack Teagarden, the greatest jazz trombonist of his (reneration, fouiid it 20 impossible to enjoy the Ellington"band. "I never did like anything Ellington ever did,, he said. "He never had a band all in tune, always had a bad tone quality and bad blend., What Teagarden meant, whether he knew it or not, was that the band had an unconventional 25 tone quality, one that had little in common with received ideas about how a big band ouoht to sound. Asked why he hired Al Hibbler when he already had a singer on the payroll, Ellington replied, "My ear makes my decision., To him, no other ear mattered. 65 "One night he came home early because the guys in tlie Trumpet Jiibilees didn't show up for rehearsal," Mavis says. "He was disgusted. He went into the closet in the living room and got a little guitar he had brought home from the pawnshop. It didn't have more than 70 three or four strings on it, but it was enough to get us started., Mavis, Pervis, Cleotha, and Yvonne sat in a semi- circle in front of their father on the beige carpet in their living room at 506 East 33rd Street. Pops hunched over 75 his $7 guitar and plucked a series of notes, assioning one to each of his cliildren. "People always ask, 'How do we get the sound we have?, And that came from my father-the sound he had with his family in Mississippi wlieii thcy saiig on 80 the gallery after dinner. He gave us [an E chord] and the pai.ts his brothers and sisters would sing. He would hit a note on his guitar and would say, 'Now, Mavis 4yo here,, a barltone pai't, because even then I had the"deepest voice. Pervis was second lead behind Pops because he 85 had the most experience, and he could hit those high notes like Michael Jackson later could. Cleedi had the high harmony. The first song he taught us was 'Will the Circle Be Unbroken.. 30 Billy Strayhorn. who saw Ellington's woi'king methods up close and understood them best, gave them a name in a 1952 article about his rnentor: "Ellington plays the piano, but his real instrument is the band. Each member of his band is to him a distinctive tone 35 color and set of emotions, which he mixes with others equally distinctive to produce a third thing, which I call the Ellington Effect., Sometimes he worked "on" his players as a choreographer makes a ballet 'on" his dancers, passing out or dictating scraps of music, then 40 shaping and reshaping them on the spot into a piece that would later be reduced to written form. Even a work that had already been notated was subject in the heat of the moment to total transformatÉon motivated solely by the whim of the composer. The goal, he explained, was 45 "to mold the music around the man," and the men around whom his music was so tightly molded rarely sounded more theinselves than when they were playing it. Questions 21-24 ask about Passage A.

In Passage A, the phrase "smoothly blended playing" (line 5) most nearly describes: dissimilai musicialls. a sound that band leaders Goodman, Shaw. and Lunceford demanded from their musicians. a sound that Shaw achieved more successfully than did Lunceford and Goodrnan. a specific goal Ellington set for his band but found hard to achieve. Passage B by Greg Kot In a six-member male gospel group calling them- 50 selves the Trumpet Jubilees, Pops was third lead, ACT-B05 34 GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE.

The author of Passage A indicates that Ellington based his decisions about whom to hire to join his band largely on: input from the membei-s of his band. Questions 28-30 ask about both passages.

One of the main ideas of the second paragraph of Pas- sage A (lines 30-48) is that in the process of achieving the sound he wanted from his band, Ellington: accepted that the individual excellence of the play- ers might occasionally be sacrificed. elicited froin his players performances that tapped their particular musical gifts. invited each musician to articulate performance goals that he then helped them reach. maintained a strict rehearsal schedule thi2t some of the musicians rebelled against. Questions 25-27 ask about Passage B.

The point of view from which Passage B is told is best described as that of a: rices she made to succeed as a musician. as performed by the same band. and opinions of Pops and Mavis. third person narrator who expresses opinions of Pops that contrast with those expressed by Mavis.

Compared to Passage A, Passage B presents events in an order that is: chLonologically opposite. it proceeds from describing present events to describing events con- sistently further back in time. chronologically more vague. it gives no indication of how the events described relate to one another in time. anchored more firmly in one stretch of time while making occasional references to events before and after that stretch of time. very similar, as it initially presents the musician at tlie height of his fame and then examines the ￿u1- tiple steps that led to that fame.

The main idea of the passage is that the Messel Pit is significant primarily because it: substantiates the theory that mammals appeared 200 million years ago. interacting. contains fossils that reveal how warm-blooded ani- mals evolved. elsewhere. Then, in an instant, everything changed, appar- ently when an asteroid or cotnet struck Earth 66 million years ago and dramatically altered the climate, eventu- ally wiping out the giant reptiles. The diversity of 45 species found among the Messel Pit fossils reveals that mammals rushed to fill every empty ecological nook and ci'anny they could find. "They really ti'led every- thing-flying, jumping, running, tree-dwelling, ant- eating, says Lehmann. "From the point of view of 50 evolution, Messel is a fantastic laboratory to see what IKfe might have given us."

The main purpose of the second paragraph (lines 7-16) is to discuss: animal fossils in the lake. conditions in the lake that led to the large number of dinosaur fossils. lake. Acf.B05 36 GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE.

The passage indicates that dinosaurs and mammals coexisted for approximately how many millions of years?

In the passage, Ailuravus macrurus most nearly serves as an example of a species that: evolved into a modern-day animal. despite compe- tition from similar animals. adapted to its environment in ways scientists hadn't seen previously. descendants did not inherit. left no descei)dants, despite its apparent resem- blance to modern-day animals.

According to the passage, the Messel Pit crater was formed by: an impact from an asteroid. erosion from a river. steam erupting from underground. a volcano spewing molten rock. END OF TEST 3 STOP! DO NOT TURN THE PAGE UNTIL TOLD TO DO SO. DO NOT RETURN TO A PREVIOUS TEST. ACT-BOS 37

It can most reasonably be inferred from the passage that rnammals survived the impact that killed the dinosaurs because mammals: existed in such large numbers. ate food that dinosaurs could not. were able to adapt to the change in climate.

According to the passage. by examining the contents of a prehistoric horse's stomach, paleontologists deter- mined that the horse ate: more grass than modern horses eat. many plants that modern horses eat.

Based on the passage, which of the following pieces of evidence supports the conclusion that prehistoric horses had adopted herd behavior? . Specimens of pregnant mares were found near fos- siIs of young foals. kinds of plants in their digestive tracts. same direction were found. foal were found.