Workspace Reading Test 2
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OFFICIAL ACT Form 25MC1 · Annual 2025

Reading

18 questions ~9 min recommended
00:00
Score

This passage is adapted from the short story "Janus" by Ann Beattie (©1985 by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.). The bowl was perfect. Perhaps it was not what you'd select if you faced a shelf of bowls, and not the sort of thing that would inevitably attract a lot of attention at a crafts fair, yet it had real presence. It was as predictably admired as a mutt8 who has no reason to suspect he might be funny. Just such a dog, in fact, was often brought out (and in) along with the bowl.

This passage is from the book The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan. Originally cultivated in the Ottoman Empire, tulips were introduced to Europe at the end of the sixteenth century and became wildly popular in the seventeenth century. One crucial element of the beauty of the tulip that intoxicated the Dutch, the Turks, the French, and the English has been lost to us.

1. The point of view from which the passage is told is best described as that of a:

2. The passage as a whole can best be described as an exploration of the:

3. The passage most strongly suggests that a useful characteristic of the bowl, in terms of Andrea’s purpose for the object, is the bowl’s:

4. In lines 53–75, Andrea responds to an inquiry about her bowl and explains why her bowl was placed in a client’s home with statements that can best be described as:

5. In the passage, Andrea is characterized as believing that compared to most tricks used by real estate agents to impress potential buyers, her trick of placing the bowl in a home is:

6. According to the passage, the random placement of colors in the bowl’s glaze creates a surface that:

7. One main point of the fifth paragraph (lines 53–62) is that:

8. In the passage, the admiration the bowl receives is directly compared to the admiration received by:

9. The passage suggests that one reason prospective home buyers have difficulty sharing their thoughts about the bowl is that they realize:

10. The main purpose of the passage is to:

11. The main point of the second paragraph (lines 21–36) is that:

12. It can reasonably be inferred from the passage that some seventeenth-century tulip growers believed tulip breaks were mainly caused by:

13. The information in lines 57–64 primarily functions to:

14. The sixth paragraph (lines 79–85) differs from the rest of the passage in that it:

15. According to the passage, in the seventeenth century, the fact that broken tulip bulbs tended to produce fewer and smaller offsets compared to typical tulip bulbs resulted in:

16. In the passage, the author compares broken tulips as they are represented in Rembrandt’s paintings to:

17. The passage author most likely mentions that peach trees were a staple of seventeenth-century gardens to:

18. As it is used in line 80, the word abandon most nearly means: