ACT Past Papers with Answers

Laurence's approach to fishing and Omah's approach to gardening reveal that each has: strong opinions abollt pr.eferred techniques in their areas of expertise. an indifferellt attitude toward carrying out farniliar tasks. a sense of responsibility to uphold traditions estab- lished by others. by the larger community.

The passage states" that tbe narrator's feelings for Laurence includc all of the following EXCEPT: envy. angcr.

It can re.asonably be inferred from the passage that bring'ing Laurence 2nd.omah together takes an emo- tional toll on the narratOT because.. fully set aside for making jelly. G: Laurence asks questions that require Omah to defend her values. his mother plums to n]ake jelly. sh& has strong attachments to botb and fears that one might hurt or offend the otheI. When we are wcll down.the road we stop to Test. I sit and chew the tendei end of a foxtail. Laurence chooses Ihe 12igest of the tomatoes caTefully, and then, 85 his aim a wide arc, smashes it against a telephone polt. watch red Juice dripping agaillst the splintered gray wood. The sun is dying. It paints the waier tower shades of gold. The criLkets in the ditch speak to me of Omah's greenbollse where they hide behind earthen- 90 ware pots. S. The author tnost likely provides images contrasting Omah and Laurence in the twelfth and thirteenth para- graphs (lines 55-61) to help the reader.. visllalize physical details that reveal Omah and Laurence's opposing altitudes. imagine iiividly the GhaTacteiistics of Ornah's house and land in Contrast to Laurence, s home. SY￿pathIze with the narrator, who is glad that Laurence's mother can use the plums. understand the disagreement between Omah and Laurence as they pick plums together. What does Laurence know of hauling pails of water from the river, bending and tiailing moisture, row upon ro¥v? What does he know of coaxing seedlings to grow? I turn from him and walk with my face reflecting 95 the fired sky and my dust-coated bare feet raising puffs of anger in tht lin£ warm silt. "Hey, where are you going?" Laurence calls to my Tetreating back. "What did I do?"

Source question 5. Refer to the source image.

The question.s posed by the narrator in .the twenty- second paragraph (lines 91-93) most strongly ir)dicate that she is: curious about how rnuch Laurence has learned about ténding a garden like Ornah's. ryad at Laiiience for demonstrating that he has no . rcspect for Omab, s hard work in the garden. Laurence the significance of Omah's labors.. unexpectedly between Laurence and Omah.

It can rea80nably be inferred from the first Iwo para- graphs (lines 1-14) that in providillg her services to the community, Omah considers it her duty to: strictly to the custouier's request. adjust an order 10 confortll with her sellse of what an occasion calls for. colois of the blooms are the most vivid. ask the narrator detailed quesLion8 about tlie occa- sion and the customer. s preferences.

As it is used in line 50, the word wedges most nearly raeans.. SllPPOrts. interventions. AGT-61D 29 GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE.

It can reasonably be inferred that the narrator, s remark 'His motbèi could use the. plutDs" (line 58) is the nar- rator's way of infiuencing the attitude of: the narrator, s mother toward Laurence. s rAOther. tnative action-preferences, set-asides, and other lace- 45 conscious policies as the ietnedy for the damagc remaining from thc Datiisn's history of slavery and racial bias. JtJst.ice Marshall gavc a clear si￿nal that while legal discrimination had'ended..there was tnore to be 'done to advance educational opportunity for blacks 50 and to bridge the wide canyon of economic inequity between blacks and whitcs. Passage 11 Marshall was busy in the nation's COUTtrooms, win- . nino pernianent changes in the rock-hard laws of segre- gation." He created a new legal'landscape, where raci21 55 .equality was an accepted principle. He woiked ill behalf of black Americans but built a structure of individual rights that becaine the cornerstoue of protections foi all SOCIAL SCIENCE" Thls passage is adapled from the book Thurgood Marshall.. American Revolutionary by Juan Williams (01998 by Juan Williams). i• Thurgood Marshall's lifework made hirn one of America's leading radicals. As a suit-and-tic lawyer, however. he was the unlikely leading actor in creating social change in tbe United States in the twenlieth cen- 5 tury. His great achievellient was to expaud rights for individual Americans. But he especially succeeded in creating new protections under law foi America's women. children, prisoners, homeless, minorities, and immigrants. Their greater claim to full citizenship in 10 the Republic over the last century can be directly traced to Marshall. Even the American press has Marshall to thank for an expansiou of its-liberties during Ihe century. Americans. Marshall's triutophs led black people to speak of him in bibllcal terll￿ of salvation: "He brought 60 us the Constitution as a document like Moscs biought his people the Ten Coullnandments," the NAACP board Lnember Juanita Jacksotj Mitchell once said. The key to Marshall's work was his conviction that integration and only integratioll-would .allow 65 equal rights under the 12W to take bold. Ollce individual rights were accepted. in Marshall's milld, blacks and whites could Tise or fall based on their own ability. Marshall's deep faith in the power of racial inte- gration came out of a middle-class black perspective in 70 turn-of-lhe-celltury Baltimore. He was the child of an activist black conllllunity that had established its own schools and fought for equal rigbis from the time.ol the Civil War. His own fatoily,. of all inteiracial back- ground, had been at the foref.ront of demands by 75 Baltimore blacks for equal.treatment. 'Out of that unique fattlily arAd city was born Thurgood Marshall. the architect of A￿erICan race relations in the'twentieth century. But for black Americans especially. Marshall 15 stood as a colossus. He guided a for￿ellY euslaved people aIong the road to equal rigbts. Oddly, of the three leading black liberators of twentieth-century ' Arnerica-Thurgood Marshall, Imartin Luther Kkllg, Jr., and Malcolm X-marshall was the least well known. 20 Di. King gained fame as the inspiring advocate of non- violence and mass protests.. Malcolm X was the defiant black nai.ionalist whose pre&cbinos abo.L)t sepaiatisTn and artaed ievoluiioll were the other side of King, s appeals for racial peace. But the third man in this black 25 triumvirate stood as the one with the biggest impact on American race relations, Thurgood Marshall lived to be eighty-four. He 80 held high public office, but for those last thiity years of bis life Marshall was reclusive, tnaking few public appearances and rarely talking with reporters. The public knew him primarily as a distant figure whose voice was heaid only in the .legislative language of 85 Supreme Court dissents. I he combination of his reclu- siveness and his standing in poplllar culture as an elderly, establishment figure blinded much of the It was Marshall who ended legal segrecyation in tbe United States. He won Supien]e Court victories breaking the color line in housing, transportation, and 30 votillg, all of which overturned the 'separate-but- equal" apartheid of American life in the first half of the century. •1 nation to the iJnportance of his legacy. However, given that Marshall. laid tbe foundation for today's racial 90 landscape, his grand desion of how race ielatlolls best work makes his life story essential for. anyone delving into the subject. It was Marshall who won the most important legal case of the celltury, Brown v. Board of Educat£on, 35 ending the Itgal separation of black 2nd white children in public schools. The success of the Brown case sparked the 1960s civil rights movement, led to the increased number of black high school and coIlege graduates and the incredible rise of the black middle 40 class in both numbers and political power in the second. half of the century.

Accoiding to the passatre, in his work to improve racc relations, Marshall supported all of the following EXCEFr: the legal process: comtnunity activism. creating new Supreme Court powers, And it was Marshall, as the nation's first African- American Suprcme Court justice, who promoted affir- ACT.81D 30 GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE.

It can rcasorjably be Infe￿e￿ that the author refers to MarshalL as a 'colossus" (line 15) in order to illustrate that". within the African American comrnunTrty, Marshall, s guidance was similar to that of Malcolm X and King. figure, especially to those in the African American community. cases, his legal training must have been colossal. it is little known to the general pubjic.

The passage states that M￿Shal1,S legal victory in the landLnark case Brown v. Board of Education paved the way for: middle class. increased suits against other boards of education. sUpre￿e Couit.

The passage indicates that all of the following ele- ments contributed to Marshall:s belief in iacial inte- gration EXCEPT.. G: the interracial background of his family. munity.

According to the allthor, as the third man irA the "bLack triumviIate," Marshall was: a supporier of both Malcolm X's separatist views and King's appeals foi racial peace. closer to the radical beliefs of Malcolm X than to King's. liberatQTS. ultimately responsible for having the gieatftst impact on r&ce relations.

According to the passage, Marshall believed that equal rights for all cit7zp.ns could .ryol be fully achieiieJ_ without: a new lègislative language. nonviolent mass protests. race-LLeutral policies.

In the last paTagraph, the author indicates cbat studying Marshall's lifework is essential to understanding which of the following. States in the twentieth century American liberators The legislative language of the Supreme Court ACT-61 D 31 GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE. Passage 111 When I was in high school I began to discover 55 how much my sister and I had in commoD. We were both in difficult situations-. I was a shy, ungainIy new- comer at & school where many of .the Stiidents had been together since_,kindergarten, and Becky had a particu- larly unsyll]pathetic .teacher.' On, coming home from 60 school, she'd immediately go to her room and play lock Music while she danced around her roor£L.(and some- tirnes on her bed). She talked to hèrself, incessantly and loudly. The falnily accepted.all this as sorneihing Becky needed to do. HUMANITIES- This passage Ss adapted Irom 'Borderline" by Kathleen Norris {@1995,by Kalhleen Noriis)- Sincc my book Dakotu becatne a surprise best- seller, I've received thousands of letters.respondiri(r to it. Along with tbe reviews, these respollses have been, for the most part, positive. and often so enthusiastic 5 that I wonder if the person has read the same book that I wrote. I was enormously reIieved, then, to Ieceive the following fiom my sistcr Becky- "How are YOU? Everyone heie talks about you and your book. I feel left oul. I tried to read it, but it was boring. Not for the first time ID our forty-lwo-year rela- tionship, my sister Becky had acted as a kind of gmma for Me, a desert mother who chaIlenges my compla- cency, and allows me to see the world {alld myselD in a new light. I was retainded of a saying by Atllma 15 Synclectica, a desert monastic of fouFth-century Egypt.. 'Just as it is i￿pOSSIble to be at thc same moment a plant and a seed, so it is impossible for us to be sur- rounded by worldly houor atRd at Ihe same time to bear heavenly fruit. 65 One day, as Becky carried oll her usual "conversa- tions, with her teachcr, with other girls in her c12SS, with a boy who, d made fun of her, I was doing home- work in the Ioom next door and realized that I, too, needed release.fro£o daily tensions, a way to daydream 70 through the failed encounters and make them come out right. Usually, I lost myself in rcading or piacticing the flute, but sometimes I listened to ￿￿sIC and imagined great careers for myself, great travels, great Ioves. I didn't have the nerve to stollkp arouDd my rooni 2nd 75 yell, as my sister was doing, but our Deeds weie the same. 20 Synclectica sums. up, I believe, the difficulty writers have ID Araerica in survivillg success: to keep bearing.fruit, one must keep returnin humbly, to Ihe blank patre and not pay much heed to tbe 'noted author" the world wanls you to be. Becky's letter was a 25 godsend. Reading it over, I laughed .myself silly, and found ]nyself released from mucb of the lension induced by sudden notoriety and too ￿UCh. literary hoo-ha. We were both struggling with our otherness, although. I suspect I did not know this then. Now that '.m a writer, il's clear to me. Rejection comes to 80 everyone. OF COL]ise, but for those who aTe markedly different from their peers, it is a daily reminder of that difference. To most people. my sisler aThd I didn, I seeTn to have much in common: but I knew from that day on that wè were.reLnarkably alike. 85 If nothintr else, this insi(Fht helped ￿e to survive my new school. I knew that getting a C was llot the worst thing in the world. And when I got an.A. I could put it perspective. I knew there were other kinds of intelltgence that wcie just as valuable. needs that could 90 not be satisfied in school. Becky's life has been. a kind of desert. When she 30 was born, the doctors gave tny ￿Other too strong a dose of sedative. Having already given birth to two children, - W bornetbjing wai wrong. Precioui oxygen was lost. My sistei's braiti was iireversibly datnaged. Becky is diagnosed as 'borderline.' She is intelli- 35 geut enough to comprehend what happened to her when she was boIn. She is not intelligent enough to do math- cmatical computation. A tutor my parents hired when Becky was about ten ycars old told us that Becky could grasp a concept Lontr enough to work out seveial prob-. 40 letns in the course of an hour-long session, but that by the next week she'd have forgottell what skne'd learned and have to start frorn scratch. HeI eletnelltary schools were just passing her along. there %vere no "special ed" prograllLS Ihen, aDd no one knew what to do with her, 45 where she belonged. Becky's life has been Iollely in ways that most of us could not compIehend. Our parellts decided when .Becl(y was very young that she didn't belong in an institution, but with us. I believe that being raised with myself and a br.other, 50 both older, and one younger sister was good for Becky- I know it was good for rne. Very early oll, I had to Icarn to respect Becky's intelligence, although it was very different from mine. l also Came to respect her tenacity.

One of tbe main points the narrator makcs IA thi5 pas- sage is that: rejection is a normal parl of hiEh school life. there should be "special education" programs in every.school. she and her sister had a sinilar need for acceptance. nearly everyone bas an amma to give him or. her advice. ACT-810 32 GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE.

The narrator's reaction to Becky's assessrnent of the book Dakota reveals thai the narrator: wishes she had Becky, s love.

As it is used in line 77, the word otherness refers.to the rya￿at0T,.s and Becky, s: need to be alone.

Source question 25. Refer to the source image.

In the Saying quoted in lines 16-J 9, An]ma Synclectica advises people to be.. intelligent.

It can most reasonably be inferred that the narrator's own version of bearing what Amrna Synclectica called "heavenly fIuit" (line 19) would be to: writ6 high-qu￿ltY literature. continue to be praised by literary reviewers.

It can rnost rcasonably be inferied that the narrator cojnpares Beeky's life to a desert in line 29 as a way of describing Becky's: need for honesty., consistent hopefulness. ongo!ng loneliness.

The sixth paragiaph (lines 47-53) ieveals that the nar- ritor is: thoughtful, naive, and nostalgic. secure, affectionate, and ironic. open-minded, accepting, and grateful. aware, respectful, and tenacious. ?5. The narrator claims that Becky 'acted as a kind of 'anzma" (line I l) because: h¢rself at a time when that was what she needed. the role Becky most often assumed in the family was as a spiritual guide during times of crisis. after reading Becky, s assessniellt of her book, the narrator was .deteimined to .write books Becky would like. unli￿e mosi iGadeLS,' boLiI Becky and Arn￿& Synclectica found the book Dakota boring.

Becky's method of coping with difficulty was similar to the narrator's meLhod in that both girls.. Ca￿led on pretend conversations w,itb each other. acted upconcerned about what others Lhought of theni, relied on their parents and siblings for advice. used their imagination to make theriisei-rftis feel better. ACT-610 33 GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE. Passage IV veisity researcher, has asserted that the dense canals 55 that de RicqIès detected could have iesulted from phys- ical exertion rather tbaD endothermy. In an ingenious experitneut, Owerkowicz gave cold-bIooded monitor lizards retTular treadmill woikouts alld then compared their bolles with those of nonaerobicized contempo- 60 raries. Th'e well-exercised group showed the same kind of complex channels characteristic of mammals, birds, and de Ricqlès's dinosaurs, suggestiog that Haversi2n canals are causally. link8d to an active Jifestyle lather tbaD War￿ bloodedness. Sx)uth African histologist 65 Anusuya Chinsarrty bas also countered some of the bone stn]cture aigumcnt, contending that dinosaur bones exhibit bands called lines of arrested growih. These are characteristkc of modern-day ectotberffls, whose growth rate speeds up and slows down according 70 to seasonal 'tempeTature fluctuations. Cbinsamy con- cluded that dinosaurs grew at a more reptilian pace than envisioned by the Bakkerites. NATURAL SCIENCE: This passage Is adapted from 'WeTe Dinosaurs Cold Blooded?" by Breodan J. Koerner (@1997 by U.S. News and World Report Inc.). Warm-bloodad creatures maintain a nearly conslant'body temperature under most condi- tions. Tbe claim that dinosaurs were warm blooded has dividcd thc paleolltolo(Tical world into riva] camps. For some, endothermy, the scielltific name for warni blood- edness, is the only way to explain the diDosaurs' evolu- 5 tiOriJ-ry success. Without the ability to kecp tbeir bodies at optirnurn temperatures regaTdless of their surround- ings, they argue, dinosaurs could never have dominated the globe for 160 million years. Skeptics counler that ectothermy, the proper label for cold bloodednrss, was i o the logical strategy for dinosaurs living in the Mesozoic Era's generally sweliering heat-and, this group claims, the only option that is SUEiported by physiolog- ical, iather than'circumstantial, evidence. The ectothermic side has sought to boost its case wilh hard physiological evidence. Turbinates, tiny 75 whisps of bone OT cartilage deep inside the nasal cavi- ties of mammals aiid birds, tnake warm bloodedness possible by litniting water loss. Turbinates have never been found in living ectotherms-nor ill dinosaurs. The revisionist view that has so captured the 15 public imagination has long been led by Robert B2Lker, a crusader against slow-moving. ditnwitted, crocodilian dinosaurs. He painted a picture of dinosaurs that were every bit as .elld0tber￿lC as humans. Instead of spending their days lazily basking in the sun and occa- 20 siorjally trudging alono at a torpid pace, Bakker's dinosaurs mo>'ed at constaryt speeds, their postllres fully ereLt ill the Djanner of birds and mamuLals. "Meat- eatinty dinosaurs ie12ted to Tyronnosaurus rex cruised at 3 to 4 miles an hour,, claitns Bakker, who bases his 25 conclusion on fossilized-footprints. where cruises at 3 to 4 miles an hour." 'No. turtle any-. MIDY on the cold-blooded side now use th¢ term 80 'gigantothermy" to describe the unique energetics of laroe dinosaurs. Being huge is one way to maintaiD a relatively constant body ternperature despite cold bloodedDess". Large things-which have a lot of bulk in relation to tbeir skin area lose heat to tbe outside 85 world much more slowly than do small things. If dinosaurs were indeed cold blooded, the slow heat loss associated witb gigantothermy would allow thetn to stay relatively warm-and avoid a reptiliau torpor- when confronted by the nighi or an overcast day. BaLker and his acolytes also point to dinosaurs, relatively fast growth as evidence of endother]ny. Mammals and birds, wh'ich develop quickly compared JO Ith .c'"othe,-TilC PLiies, Fiaye bones characcerized by ULicroscopic channels that appear complex and crystal- like under the microscope. These elegant patterns form when growing bolle meets and meshes with cooncctive tissue, capturing blood vessels in dense, woyell sÈruc- 35 tiires called Haversian canals. Armand de Ricqlès. a University of Paris anatomist, foulld Ihat dinosaur bones exhibited those samc intricate channels rather than the sitnpler, less dense structures coll￿10n to rcp- tiles. "We see the same well-vascularized bone in mam- 40 ￿al8 'but not in turtles and ciocodiles, says Kevin Padian, a paleontologist at the u.niversity of California- Berkeley. "The way the bones grew, diDosaurs seem to have been active all the time. That pace of activity. argue Bakker and his cohorts, is the telltale sifrn of 45 warm bloodedness.

Thc function uf the illformation provided in the pas- sage's last four paragraphs (lines 46-89) is prirnarily to: #i Bakker and his revisionist-rniuded colIeagues.. ines the theories put forward by Padian and Bald(er. show that Haversian caJ]als have a wholly diffeient purpose and origin than de Ricqlès thouoht. n]ake clear the importance ol the research done by Chinsatny and Owerkowicz.

It can reasonably be iufeIred that the word acolytes, as it is used ill line 27, refers'to paleoIitologists who: sh￿e Bakker s revisionist views.

It is clear from the third paTagraph (lines 27-45) that Haversian canals can only be viewed-. in dinosaurs. thiough a microscope.

It can Teasonably be inferred from the Fifth paragraph (lines 52-72) that the description of Owerkowic2' S work functions in the passage as a whole to. canals in the dinosaurs he studied. dinosaurs, Haveisian canals niight have developed. explain what caused ectothermic di.nosaurs to evolve differently from endotheitnic dinosauis. Illustrate the way in which reptiles could be made to perform in ingenious experiments.

The iesearch by Chius2my cited in lines 64-72 serves which of the following purposes? J, It augments the theories o.f Bakkei and his associ- ates. END OF TEST 3 STOP! DO NOT TURN THE PAGE UNTIL TOLD TO DO SO. DO NOT RETURN TO A PREVIOUS TEST. ACT.61D 35

The sixth paragraph (lines 73-78) indicates that turbinaLes are found in all of the following EXCEPT: mammals. eDdotherms. ectotherms.

As it is used in the last paragraph, the term gigan- toihermy most ncarly means that the: to be endothermic. to ret<iin body heat. smaller.the dinosaur, the more likely that that dinosaur will be ectotheTmic. smaller the dinosaur, the more likely it'will exist in a peipetual staté of reptilian torpor.