ACT Past Papers with Answers

The main purpose of the fourth paragraph (lines 2(k29) is to: explain why the narrator's oreat-grandparents moved to the Marquesas Islands. of the people of the Marquesas Islands. illustrate why the narrator's grandmother felt at home with the Pa'umotu people. discuss the practice of tattooing on the Marquesas Islands.

The passage's repetition in lines 65-66 of the sitnile used in lines 28-29 creates a direct connection between the Marquesas Islanders, speech and the: staring the tattoo lady does by the ocean. singing of the narrator's grandmother. chanting of the narrator's great-grandfather.

In the passage, the narrator's grandmother SULFgests that havÉng a tattoo would have allowed her to do all of the following EXCEPT: sit still for long periods of time under the sun. speak to others in a calm voice. catch words from the clouds. ACT.70C 31 GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE. Passage 11 The canal was a success even before it fully opened, as traffic buroeoned on the completed parts, 55 helping fund continuing consti"uLtion. When it was fin- ished in 1825, ahead of schedule and under bud(Tet, traffic was tremendous from the stai't. It is not hard to understand why. Before, it had taken three weeks and cost $120 to ship a ton of flour from Buffalo to New 60 York City. With the canal, it took eight days and cost $6. SOCIAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from Ihe article '10 Moments that Made American Business" by John St8818 Gordon {CJ2007 by American Heritage Publishing). The cost of overland transportation had been a limiting factoi in the world economy since time immemorial. Any material with a low value-to-weight ratio. Such as foodstuffs, that couldn't be transported to 5 distant markets by water couldn't be sold in those mar- kets at a price anyone would pay. This meant that national econotnies were fragmented into an infinity of local ones. Produce that had gone down the Mississippi to New Orleans now began to flow eastward. In a 1.cw years the Boston poet and physician Oliver Wendell 65 Holmes (father of the Supreme Coui"t justice) described New York as 'that tongue that is licking up the cream of commerce and finance of a continent., In 1800 aboul 9 percent of American exports passed through the port of New York. By 1860 it was 62 percent. Until the Industrial Revolution, there was only one 10 way to reduce these transportation costs.. build artificial rivers. By the end of the eighteenth century England was well laced with canals, greatly facilitating industri- alization as factories could sell their goods profitably throughout the entire country. But the new United States was 10 times the size of England and far less developed. And a considerable mountain range divided the more developed eastern seaboard from the feitile, resource-rich, and iapidly growing West. Settlers west of the Appalachians had no 20 choice but to send their crops down the Mississippi to market. 70 With the opening of the Erie Canal, New York became the greatest boomtown the woi-ld has ever known. The population of New York had been increas- ing by about 30,000 every decade since 1790, with 123,000 inhabitants in J 820. By 1830, however, New. 75 York's population had reached 202,000; by 1840, 313,000. It was 516,000 in 1850 and 814,000 in 1860. Development roared up Manhattan Island, at the aston- ishing rate of about two blocks a year. Thanks to the Erie Canal, by the 1840s New 80 York's financial market was the largest in the country. In that decade the telegraph began to spread quickly, allowing more and more people to trade in thc New York market, which has 'dominated American financial activity ever Slnce. 15 Along the whole great chain of mountains that stretched from Maine to Alahama, there was only a single (yap-where the Mohawk River tumble% into the 25 Hudson near Albany-at which a canal was even theo- retically possible. The idea of building a canal to connect the Hudson with the Great Lakcs there had been around for many years but always dismissed as hopelessly impracticable. 30 Even Thomas Jefferson thought the idea 'little short of madness." Dewitt Clinton, however, did not. Born into a prominent New York family (his uncle had been gov- ernor of New York and then Vice President under Jarnes Madison), Clinton would be the mayor of New York 35 City and governor of the state for most of the first quar- ter of the nineteenth century. A shrewd politician, he built public support for the canal and pushed it through a reluctant state legislature. 85 Even so, perhaps the greatest consequence of the Erie Canal was that its success made the country far more receptive to other projects of unprecedented scale and scope and encouraued its entrcpreneurs and politi- clans to think big. The result was a still-continiiiiig 90 String of megaprojects-the Atlantic cable, the Brook- lyn Bridge, the Panama Canal, Hoover Dam, the inter- state highway system, the Apollo missions-thL2t have marked the economic history of the United States and shaped the national character. One can understand the reluctance, for the project 40 was huge by the standards of the day. At 363 miles the Erie would be by far the longest canal in the world. It would require moving, largely by hand, 11.4 million cubic yards of earth and rock-well over three times the volume of the Gredt Pyramid of Egypt-and build- 45 ing 83 locks in what was still a 8emiwilderness. The budget, seven million dollars, was about equal to one percent of the gross domestic product of the entire country. Nonetheless, ￿,hen the federal government refused to help, New Yolk decided to go it alone. It was 50 a gigantic roll of the economic dice, but one that paid off beyond even Clinton's dreams. The Erie Canal put the Empire in the Empire State.

Source question 5. Refer to the source image.

As it is used twice in line I, the word I directly iefers to the: narrator. narrator's grandmother. narrator's great-grandfather. tattoo lady. l. In the passage, the narrator's grandmother states that one reason she spent time at the shore was to.. watch the white birds. Islands.

In the passage, the narrator's grandrnother speculates that the tattoo lady came down to the village by the shore because the tattoo lady: wanted to be where there was silence.

The passage indicates that when the narrator's grand- mother tried to imitate the tattoo lady, the narrator's grandmother found the hEat of the sun to be: sedating. astonishing. pleasing.

The designs of the tattoos on men in the army are por- trayed in the passage by the narrator's orandmother as being.. incomplete. rebellious. traditionally Polynesian. revered.

In the passage, the phrase 'the desire for words to grow inside me" (lines 93-94) is best described as the: narrator's grandmother's paraphrase of a quote from the tattoo lady. narrator's grandmother's realization that she finally understood the tattoo lady. narrator's emotional reaction to hearing the grand- tnother's story. narrator's critique of the grandmother's story.

In the second and third paragraphs (lines 9-21), the primary contrast is between: the Industrial Revolution in England and in the United States. ing and the early United States,. U.S. public's. canals built before and after the Industrial Revolution. ACT-70C 32 GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE.

The author speculates that perhaps the trreatest conse- quence of the Erie Canal was the way it: inspired other nations to build canal systems and thereby improve tbeir economies. in the United States. encouraged people in the United States to envision a wide range of monumental projects. allowed goods produced in previously isolated parts of the United States to reach large markets.

According to the passage, the kind of crops that were transported on the Erie Canal had, prior to the canal's existence, been transported from: ing the two states. the Hudson River to the Great Lakes. west of the Appalachian Mountains to the south on the Mississippi River.

The passage portrays Clinton as.. an outsider to New York politics who achieved prominence through the sheer force of intelligence and hard work. an outsider to New York politics who was never fully embraced by the state in spite of his contribu- tions to its well-being. an established politician who had to overcome the stioma of relatives who were failures as elected officials. a member of a prominent New York family with ties to politics who presided over a transforma- tional time in the state's history.

The passaoe states that the New York state legislature's attitude toward Clinton's plans to build the Erie Canal was one of: indifference. reluctance. unrealistic enthusiasm. well-reasoned support.

It is reasonable to infer from the passage thai each of the canals in England was.. shorter than 363 miles. a brainstorm of the national government. off-limits to private businesses.

According to the passage, one source of funds for the buildinu of the Erie Canal was: River that wanted access to the completed canal. revenues from commerce on the completed parts of the canal. revenues from other large-scale projects in opera- tion, such as the Panama Canal.

In the context of the passage, lines 58-61 priTnarily serve to.. compare the value of $120 today with the value of $120 in Clinton's time. contradict what Clinton had predicted would be the cost of operatino the Eric Canal. support the point that the Erie Canal was primarily a route to transpoit foodstuffs. illustrate why the Erie Canal was so heavily used. ACT.70C 33 GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE. Passage111 55 which happened to be the first book to employ the Eng- lish word dictionary in its title. Twenty years later a man named Withals put out A Shorte Dicfionarie for Yonge Besiiiiiers in both languages, but with words arranged not alphabetically, but by subject, such as 'the 60 names of the Byrdes, Byrdes of the Water, Byrdes about the house, as cockes, hennes, etc., of Bees, Flies, and otheis. HUMANITIES: This passage is adapted from Th8 Prof8ssor and th8 Madman by Simon Winchester ((>1998 by Simon Winchester). The 'English dictionary, in the sense that we commonly use the phrase today, is a relatively new invention. Four hundred years ago there was no such convenience available on any English bookshelf. But what was still lacking was a proper English dictionary, a full statement of the extent of the English 65 tongue. With one single exception, of which Shakespeare probably did not know when he died in 1616, this need remained stubbornly unfulfilled. Others were to remark on the apparent lack as well. In the very same year as Shakespeare's death, his friend John 70 Webster wrote his play The Duchess of Malfi, incorpo- rating a scene in which the duchess's brother Ferdinand imagine% that he is turning into a wolf, 'a pestilent dis- 'What is that??? cries one ease they call licanthropia. of the cast. 'I need a dictionary to*t!?? There was none available, for instance, when William Shakespeare was writing his plays. Whenever he came to use an unusual word, or to set a word in what seemed an unusual context-and his plays are extraordinarily rich with examples-he had almost no 10 way of checking the propriety of what he was about to do. He could not, as the saying goes, "Inok .qomething up., Indeed, the very phrase-when it is used in the sense of 'searching for something in a dictionary or encyclopedia or other book of reference" simply did 15 not exist. It doeg not appear in the English languaoe, in fact, unlil as late as 1692, when an Oxford historian named Anthony Wood used it. 75 But in fact someone. a Rutland schoolmaster named Robert Cawdrey, who later moved to teach in Coventry, had evidently been listening to this drumbeat of demand. He read and took copious notes from all the reference books of the day and eventually produced his 80 first halfhearted attempt at what was wanted by pub- lishin(T such a list in 1604. It was a small octavo book of 120 pages, wbich Cawdrey titled A Table Alphabeti- call of hard unusual English word.s. It had about 2,500 word entries. It had many shortcomings; but it 85 was without doubt .the very first true monolin(Fual Eng- lish dictionary, and its publication remains a pivotal moment in the history of English lexicography. One might think Shakespeare would want to look things up all the time. "Am not I consanguineous?" he 20 writes in Twelf£h Nighi. A few lines on he talks of "thy doublet of changeable taffeta., He then declares: "Now is the woodcock near the gin,, Sbakespearc's vocabu- lary was evidently prodioious: But how could he be certain that in all the case8 where he employed unfamil- 25 iar words, he was grammatically and factually right? At the time he was writing ihere were atlases aplenty, there were prayer books, missals, histories, biographies, romances, and books of science and art. Shakespeare is thought to have drawn tnany of his clas- 30 sical allusions from a specialized Tliesaurus that had been compiled by a man named Thomas Cooper-its many errors are replicated far too exactly in the plays for it to be coincidence-and he is thought al,so to have drawn from Thomas Wilson's Arte of Rhelorique. It is 35 perhaps difficult to imagine so creative a mind working without a single work of lexicographical reference beside him, other than Mr. Cooper's crib (which Mrs. Cooper once threw into the fire, prompting the great man to begin all over again) and Mr. Wilson's little 40 manual, but that was the condition under which his par- ticular genius was compelled to flourish. The English language was spoken and written-but at the time of Shakespeare it was not defined, not fixed. It was like the air it was taken for granted, the medium that 45 enveloped and defined all Britons. But as to exactly what it was, what its components were-who knew?

The main purpose of the passage is to: identify the linguistic references Shakespeare drew on while writing bis plays. trace in chronological order the key events and work8 in the history of the English dictionary. and the need that prompted such a book. show how playwrights were hurt by the slow evo- lution of the English dictionary.

The passage's author uses quotations from Shakespeare mainly to help make the point that Shakespeare: intentionally misused some obscure words and phrases in his plays. avoided consulting dictionaries for fear of stifling his creativity. saved his most innovative and memorable expres- sions for Twelfth Niglzt. had few language references available to guide how he used words in his plays. That is not to say there were no dictionaries at all. There had been a collection of Latin words published as a Dictionai"ius as early as 1225, and a little more than a 50 century later another, also Latin-only, as a helpmeet for students of Saint Jerome's difficult translation of the Scriptures known as the Vulgate. In 1538 the first of a series of Latin-English dictionaries appeared in London-Thomas Elyot's alphabetically arranged list, ACT.7 GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE.

To support his assertion about Shakespearc's use of Cooper's ThesaL4rus, the passa(Ye's author points to: evidence from Shakespeare's plays. scholarly articles.

The passage quotes dialooue from the play The Duchess of Malfi primarily to: friends. indicate that some people in the early 1600s recog- nized the need for an English dictionary. claim that the word licaiithropEa lacked an ade- quate definition in Shakespeare's time. document Webster's role in expanding the English language through his plays.

The passage makes clear that one purpose of the early Latin-only word collections was as an aid to the study religious writings. natural science. agriculture. plays.

According to the passage, all of the following are true about ERyot's word list EXCEPT that it: was the first of a series of Latin-English dictionaries. was the first to use the English word dictionary in its title. was organized by subject rather than alphabeticaIly.

The primary purpose of the words in quotation rnarks in lines 59-62 is to- indicate that the focus. of Withals's dictionary wa.s on waterfowl and domesticatcd birds, organize his dictionary. Elyot's earlier work. suggesl that Withals's dictionary was too advanced for "young beginners. ACT-70C 35 GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE. Passage IV rain create a complex network of ridges, a hiker's dream of hilltop rnazes with nonstop prairie vistas. Most of Iowa's prairie long ago fell victirn to the plow or the pavement. But because the Loess Hills are often too steep for row crops, pockets of hicTh-quality virgin prairic remain. Big bluestem, little bluesteni. sideoats gratna, prairie clovers. lead plant, aiid dozens 60 of other grasses, sedges, and flowering planis rnottle the hills. NATURAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from the article "Prairie Islands. by Sam Hooper Samuels IE)2005 by the Si8rra Clubl. 55 It's a fine day for a prairie fire. Wind is steady at 10 to l5 miles per hour from the southeast, and the humidity hovers around 50 percent. For early August in Iowa the weather is cool and won't overheat the crew. 5 Kevin Pape, a ranger for Stone State Park, attired in a flame-resistant suit and broad-brimrned fire hat, exudes quiet confidence as he passes among the workers. He's handing out aerial photographs marked with letters and boundary lines of the next unit to be burned. When Lewis and Clark passed within a few miles of this spot 200 years ago, it was largely a treeless land- scape. Back then: fire would scorch any given patch of 65 prairie every four to seven years. In autumn. the dry plants could fuel towering flaine.8 and intense heat. These conflagrations could advance fastei than a person on horseback could flee, but they were as vital to the survival of a prairie as water itself. Prairie plants 70 evolved root systems up to 15 feet deep to survive the flames. 10 Pape and his crew are preserving prairie in the Loess Hills of Iowa by torching it. These are some of Iowa's last and most ecologi- cally diverse prairies, and they're disappearinu like drops of water on a hot skilleL. Of the vast prairie that 15 once blanketed the Hawkeye State, less than one-tenth of one percent survives. Of that tiny remnant, Tnore than half is herc in the Loess Hills, a long band of steep peaks, some jutting up to 400 feet, huggints the Mis- souri River valley along the western edge of the state. 20 The hills are Iowa's secret treasure, a 650,000-acre miniature mountain range that punctuates the famous flatness of the Midwest with sharp slopes and cool, sheltering hollows. To bring fire back, Pape and his crew are part of a network of prescribed-burn fire-setters called the Stew- ardship Committee. Of the hills, 650.000 acres, only 75 about 18,000-a patchwork of state, county, and pri- vately owned parklands-are under any sort of conscr- vation management. The comtnittee does its best to burn those areas as regularly as nature once did. It's a sort of latter-day ecological posse, a band of profes- 80 sionals trained in fire management that convenes when- ever and wherever condilions are right to incineratc bad guys like overgrown sutnac, dogwood, eastern red cedar, and the invasive Siberian elm. The hills were blown in, particle by particle, on 25 the winds. The Loess Hills get their name from the dirt they're made of. It's a German word, Lciss. It rhymes with 'fuss" and means dust, literally 'loose. Loess is fine yellowish mineral stuff, rock pulverized by gla- ciers over the 150 millennia of the last ice age and car- 30 ricd south by rivers. When the rivers dried. Ihey left tons of this siltlike powder to be picked up by winds and scattcred across thc heartland. It takes less than an hour for the committee to 85 transform thc patch of lush prairie into a smokincr black blanket. All around, the scorched skeletons of hundreds of young sumac trees stand, still vertical but ready to disintegrate into ashes. In a few weeks, this area will be green again. Under the rich topsoil of its green croplands, most of Iowa is covered in a 50-foot-deep blanket of loess. 35 Only here, though, where the winds from the west met the Missouri's eastern shore, was the loess dumped in great heaps. The only other landform like it is aloncr the banks of China's Yellow River, named for its loess- clouded waters. 40 Fragile Giaiits is what scientific historian Cornelia Mutel titled her 1989 book, the best natural history yet of the hills. Fragile indeed. Where the loess is exposed, you can break it off in chunks and crumble it to a powder that disappears almost before it hits the ground. From the ground, the topography calls to mind the inlricate: pleated patterns of sand dunes. Long, mean- dering ridges are like spines with rows of smaller ridges projecting out like ribs, and even smaller spur ridtses projecting from these in turn. Natural terraces follow 50 the hills, contours because of the mineral soil's peculiar inclination to compact into straight vertical walls. These 'catsteps" unmistakable signatures of loess ter-

The passage does NOT identify which of the following as a feature of the Loess Hills? Dozens of types of grasses

In the context of the passage, the phrase "as regularly as nature once did" (line 78) most strongly suggests that fire-settei-s aim to conduct prescribed burns for any given area of praiiie approximately: once a year. every foul- to seven years. every decade or two. every two hundred years.

The passage most strongly implies that the root sys- tems of prairie plants differ from those of plants such as sumac and the Siberian elm in that the root systems of prairie plants.. are deep enough to help the plants recover from can help eliminate invasive plants. can propagate the plant when seeding conditions are poor. survive in loess aiid sandy soil.

The details describing Pape in lines 5-9 are most likely included to: explain why Papc appreciates his occupation as a ianger. are difficult to control. suggest that Pape is experienced in setting and managing prcscribcd prairie burns. show that human presence on the Loess Hills is environmentally hazaidous.

The statement in lines l(kll can best be described as claim that seems contradictory until the passage makes clear that setting fire to the prairie is bene- ficial to its survival. metaphor that likens Pape and his crew to a torch in order to illustiate how they will destroy the prairie. saicastic remark that makes clear that the pas- sage's author is crÈtical of Pape's rnethods. claim that the passage's author seeins to agree with but then goes on to refute.

As it is used in line 21, the word puiictuates most nearly means: scatters. indicates. interrupts.

The passage implies that natural praii'ie fires previ- ously burned the highest and fastest during which season? Summer

According to the passage, compared to a prairie's need for water, a prairie's need for fire is: equal. sli(Fhtly less. significantly less. END OF TEST 3 STOP! DO NOT TURN THE PAGE UNTIL TOLD TO DO SO. DO NOT RETURN TO A PREVIOUS TEST. ACT-70C 37