ACT Reading practice test

Passage A gives both favorable and unfavorable interview evidence, explains the limitations of sensors and diaries, and recommends a trial using both. That balance shows the author considers the present evidence insufficient for a one-sided judgment.

The sensors report total users and lengths of stays without individual identities or reasons, whereas the diaries provide person-specific detail. In this contrast, “aggregate” means combined into overall totals.

The heat sensors count users and stay length at scale. The diaries supply detailed accounts—such as help standing or difficulty fitting a bag—but cannot establish how common those experiences are.

The team proposes removing the center arms from half the benches and leaving half unchanged. Passage A notes that the arms bolt independently of the seats, so the comparison can be created without replacing the furniture. The arms matter as an independently alterable design feature; the passage does not base the trial on the arms’ material, a different site, or equal assignment of diarists.

B is correct because more seating events and shorter stays indicate increased turnover. Passage A explains that this could mean more people found seats, people left sooner because of discomfort, or both; the sensor counts alone cannot establish broader access.

Passage B interprets shorter visits as the loss of sustained routines, acknowledges Ms. Alvarez’s need for leverage, and recommends retaining useful supports while opening most bench spans. The summary preserves both the criticism and the qualification.

The reminder about medication is a concrete act of care performed within a relationship formed around prolonged plaza use. It most directly shows care or accountability rather than merely occupancy or discomfort.

Passage B sets the report’s uncertainty against the author’s local claim of clarity, presenting firsthand observation as already able to interpret the change. That opening diction is assured rather than the measured caution of Passage A, and nothing in it is playful or celebratory.

Passage A treats the negative diary accounts as meaningful but not sufficient to show how common each effect is. Its recommended half-and-half trial indicates that the author would prefer comparison before implementing Passage B’s plaza-wide recommendation.

B is supported by the sixth through eighth paragraphs: the display recovers the backdrop’s visual effect while exposing the limits of competing historical interpretations. A elevates Pell’s initial preference for an early design into a general principle the narrator does not endorse. C overstates the effort to recover function, since the sixth paragraph explicitly limits the display’s claim to reconstruct a performance. D mistakes unresolved historical questions for an inability to make responsible decisions, although the completed display demonstrates otherwise.

D paraphrases the second paragraph’s statement that Pell would retain and document later paint if removing it would injure earlier paint. A substitutes missing documentation for the physical condition Pell actually specified. B makes a worker’s recollection a requirement that Pell’s initial plan never imposed. C turns the photograph’s proposed use in identifying additions into an unsupported plan to reconstruct early paint.

A is supported by the fifth paragraph, which explains that the photograph might depict either an earlier version of the donated backdrop or another backdrop from the same studio. B transfers the third paragraph’s discussion of viewing conditions to a problem with the photograph that the passage never identifies. C treats the ambiguous note as a contradiction, although it neither confirms nor refutes Veer’s recollection. D reverses the inventory evidence: several scenes had dimensions close to those of the donated canvas.

C paraphrases the sixth paragraph, where the label separates what the canvas shows from what Veer remembers and the recording is identified as a recollection. A confuses Veer’s discussion of scenic effects with an account of the studio’s original material choices. B assigns chronological certainty to a memory whose production and date remain uncertain in the fourth paragraph. D reverses the explicit distinction between the recording and a missing inventory page.

B follows from lines 74–77: Pell stops using the photograph to justify removal but does not treat uncertainty as proof that an alteration is valuable. A invents a general ranking of memories above photographs, whereas the fourth and fifth paragraphs identify limitations in both. C removes Pell’s continuing distinction between an alteration’s uncertain history and its demonstrated value. D mistakes the withdrawal of one unreliable guide for abandonment of her interest in the early design.

D combines the fourth paragraph’s recognition that Veer remembers the bridge’s use more securely than its production with the sixth paragraph’s inclusion of that qualified memory in the display. A overlooks the questions about date and origin that Veer’s firsthand experience leaves unresolved. B confuses the vividness that initially impressed the narrator with demonstrated accuracy. C contradicts the museum’s decision to include the recollection despite its chronological limits.

A is supported by lines 101–108, which qualify the display’s openness by acknowledging that its arrangement inevitably guides attention. B reverses the preceding statement that the display makes disagreement available to visitors. C imposes a hierarchy on viewing positions that lines 101–102 explicitly decline to establish. D turns an acknowledgment of the museum’s choices into a recommendation about visitor control that the passage never makes.

C follows from the sixth paragraph’s pairing of a theatrically lit view with an enlargement exposing brushwork, read alongside the third paragraph’s explanation of how viewing conditions separate illusion from visible strokes. A mistakes evidence of painting technique for verification of historical lighting, which the sixth paragraph says can be reconstructed only partly. B assigns documentary priority to the theatrical view despite the paragraph’s refusal to present either as a historical performance. D confuses differences in viewing conditions with successive stages of physical decay.

B is supported by the final paragraph’s painting metaphor, which turns the narrator’s original confidence into an admission that the proposed repair would have concealed interpretive uncertainty. A preserves the narrator’s initial impatience with Pell from the fourth paragraph while ignoring the later appreciation of restraint. C contradicts the final paragraph’s acknowledgment of a question the museum cannot answer. D redirects the phrase’s criticism from the narrator’s own proposal to visitors, whose responses are never ridiculed.

The narrator gradually attends to Mr. Dace’s achievement, Mrs. Hobb’s schedule, and Mrs. Marr’s changes alongside their pianos. Preserving Pell’s routines fails when the narrator assumes Mrs. Hobb wants a leisurely visit. Independence from Pell’s approval is not the central conflict, since he neither evaluates nor directs her work during the week. Receiving equal recognition describes an early concern that the narrator increasingly sets aside.

Mrs. Marr watches the narrator notice the missing roof and later asks for time, while the narrator responds with a scale and worries about her credentials. Friday reveals that removing the roof expresses a longstanding preference Mrs. Marr is willing to discuss. No exchange connects her behavior to repair costs. She neither expresses regret about Pell nor demonstrates musical progress during Monday’s visit.

The narrator originally interprets the empty periods as time reserved to absorb travel delays. Nothing suggests that the notebook records regular payments. The passage does not connect the blank periods to discounted prices. No general requirement is identified from which the roads would justify an exemption.

Mrs. Hobb needs timely service, so her visit complicates the apparent lesson of Mr. Dace’s desire for an audience. The paragraph gives no evidence that the narrator’s technical work suffers. Pell’s finances are never discussed. Mrs. Hobb inspects the keys, which provides no basis for treating her limited time as indifference to the piano.

The narrator reports Mrs. Marr’s gestures while interpreting the encounter through worries about training, and Friday provides grounds for reconsideration. Her immediate reaction is explicit in her dislike of the emphasis and rehearsal of her credentials. The narration never enters Mrs. Marr’s private thoughts. The passage suggests an initial misunderstanding rather than a deliberate refusal of a correctly understood request.

Turning the piano changes what Mrs. Marr can see while playing, independently of the increased light from removing the roof. The softened pages concern the book’s condition rather than the room’s arrangement. The post marks are consequences of the roof’s removal, not evidence of an additional change. Replacing the screw restores the rack but does not establish a changed setting for her playing.

The notebook omits both Mr. Dace’s playing and Mrs. Marr’s porch, prompting the narrator to reconsider the purpose of its apparently unused time. Nothing establishes that her driving estimates were inaccurate. The missing screw was already recorded, and no newly discovered repair backlog causes the change. Mrs. Hobb’s response has shown why reproducing the same leisurely routine at every house would be inappropriate.

The narrator’s inaccurate explanation for being nearby, especially after Mrs. Marr minimizes the repair’s urgency, indicates an additional reason for returning. Consulting Pell about the screw is fully explained by the repair itself. Installing the screw likewise demonstrates completion of the stated task without establishing another motive. Carrying boards shows consideration once she arrives but is weaker evidence about why she arranged the return.

The narrator has refrained from supplying the notes and now responds to Mrs. Marr’s remark with a small practical adjustment that leaves her playing in the foreground. The tools have just served their proper purpose in repairing the rack, so they are not rejected as professionally useless. Moving the case allows more of the newly available light rather than restoring the former room. The quiet action supports Mrs. Marr’s activity rather than displaying superior judgment.

The author connects the Moon’s iron content, the system’s motion, and evidence of heating while acknowledging a serious isotopic challenge. The claim about a uniquely established heating event contradicts the stated limits of the samples. The claim that the explanation chiefly demonstrates possibility understates the continuing force of the combined constraints. The claim that support has shifted toward alternative origins reverses the direction of the final paragraph.

Earlier segregation placed metal inside the bodies, allowing outer rocky material to supply the Moon while much of the impactor’s metal joined Earth. The heating explanation introduces a mechanism for metal removal that the passage does not give. The core-as-debris explanation reverses the described destinations of metal and rock. The initial-iron explanation replaces the passage’s selective redistribution with an unsupported difference in starting composition.

The third paragraph adds sample evidence and simulations but explicitly limits their ability to identify a unique event or recover its details. The ranking of samples above calculations reverses the passage’s assignment of mechanical demonstration to simulations. The confirmation of collision details contradicts the qualifications about both heating and simulated features. The claim about competing explanations invents a shift away from the collision account that the paragraph does not make.

The collision explanation gains acceptance because it connects previously separate problems, so an intellectual foothold fits the context. A financial acquisition would require an exchange or ownership absent here. A mechanical advantage concerns force and machinery rather than the explanation’s persuasiveness. A physical handhold literalizes the image even though the subject is an explanation.

The author argues that explaining oxygen alone may leave other isotope similarities unexplained and separately allows that Earth and the impactor began alike. Failure to transfer titanium would not itself identify Earth as the source of the debris. Treating oxygen agreement as a complete solution ignores the passage’s explicit extension of the problem to other elements. Favoring an initially similar impactor would not eliminate the independent requirement to account for angular momentum.

The exchange proposal alters the relationship between materials after impact, while rapid rotation can increase the terrestrial contribution to the debris. Requiring initial similarity reverses the purpose of exchange, which is to reduce initial differences. Removing surplus motion is a separate requirement discussed for some energetic variants, not the stated role of exchange. Changing the colliding bodies’ masses belongs to another proposed encounter, not to mantle–disk exchange.

The author asks what a reconstruction predicts beyond the resemblance it was designed to explain and insists that angular momentum also be accounted for. The claim that chemical agreement becomes less important confuses difficulty distinguishing models with a relaxation of their requirements. The claim that variety itself strengthens the explanation is a view the author reports and qualifies. Allowing chemistry to compensate for unexplained motion contradicts the example of a model that merely moves the difficulty.

Postimpact convergence and similarity before impact provide two distinct histories that could yield comparable final chemistry. Meteorite differences and impactor-dominated debris establish the original problem rather than alternative routes to resemblance. Titanium’s resistance and excess angular momentum identify constraints without describing histories that converge chemically. Similarities in two isotope systems establish the breadth of the resemblance but do not explain how different histories could produce it.

Passage A distinguishes mechanical credibility from recovery of the actual event and calls the isotope mismatch substantial; Passage B likewise rejects a calculation that produces the wrong material. Treating chemistry as secondary conflicts with both authors’ assessments of its importance. Full acceptance by Passage A’s author and wholesale rejection of simulations by Passage B’s author both exceed their positions. Neither passage makes a failed compositional prediction evidence for the specified alternative origins.