Workspace▸ Reading▸ Test 49
← Back to Reading
OFFICIAL ACT Form Z14 · February 2025

Reading

30 questions ~9 min recommended
⏱ 00:00
Score
—
=== Song for My Father ===
It is unlike any other book I own. On the cover is a color photograph of my father. In the photograph, taken sometime in the 1960s, my father’s head is turned to his left, his mouth slightly open in a relaxed smile. Even behind heavy-framed glasses, his eyes appear to be seeing something clearly. It seems he might be saying something soon, something thoughtful, or maybe playful. His skin, still smooth and full, tells me he was a young man not that many years before the picture was taken. But his visage—knowing, kind, self-aware—tells me he has already become the man I knew as Baba. That picture is why I keep the paperback at my bedside. It keeps my father close, sets his gaze upon me as I sleep. The book was compiled by several of my father’s childhood friends after he died in 1991. This wasn’t, as far as I know, some sort of Chinese tradition, publishing a memorial book for a departed chum. It was just an act of loyalty; of love, if I may say that. In part, the book is a record of grief, containing the obituary from the Poughkeepsie Journal, my eulogy, an elegiac essay by my mother. But for most of its 198 pages, it is actually a prose reunion, a memoir of the idyllic adolescence of a band of boys in post–World War II Taiwan. There are pieces in the book, written by my father and his brothers and his classmates, about high school life, about a favorite teacher, about camping and fishing trips, about picaresque adventures where nary an adult appears. There are photographs too; in many of them, Dad and his friends are wearing their school uniforms, baggy and vaguely military. One snapshot I remember vividly. Eight or nine of them are walking up a dirt road, jesting and smiling. And there’s my father at the end of this happy phalanx—khaki hat a bit too big, arm pumping jauntily and foot raised in mid-march, singing a song. The face is my father’s, but the stance, so utterly carefree, is hardly recognizable. I stared at that picture for a long time when I first got the book. So it is, I sometimes think, with my father’s life. On the one hand, it’s easy to locate my father and my family in the grand narrative of “the Chinese American experience.” On the other hand, it doesn’t take long for this narrative to seem more like a riddle than a fable. Leafing through the pages of the memorial book, staring dumbly at their blur of ideographs, I realize just how little I know about those years of Baba’s life before he arrived in America, and before I arrived in the world. I sense how difficult it is to be literate in another man’s life, how opaque an inheritance one’s identity truly is. I begin to perceive my own ignorance of self. It’s through these photographs that I’ll read the book every so often, searching the scenes for new revelations. That’s partly because the photographs are so.

=== Becoming Mona Lisa: The Making of a Global Icon ===
The popularity of the Mona Lisa is not just modern hype. This is an innovative and revolutionary painting... [full passage text]

=== Dinosaurs' Living Descendants ===
A Chinese farmer, Li Yingfang, made one of the greatest fossil finds of all time... [full passage text]

=== Investigating Europa ===
On Jupiter’s moon Europa, liquid water may be present beneath the outer layer of frozen water... [full passage text]

1. Which of the following statements best captures a main theme of the passage?

2. Which of the following quotations from the passage contains details that clearly convey what the narrator refers to as his father’s 'idyllic adolescence' (lines 23–24)?

3. Details in the first paragraph make clear that the narrator views the color photograph of his father with:

4. It can most reasonably be inferred that the narrator stared for a long time at the snapshot of his father that’s discussed in the third paragraph (lines 26–39) because:

5. The main idea of the fifth paragraph (lines 53–64) is that the narrator’s attempt to read the text in the memorial book was:

6. In the passage, as the narrator looks through the memorial book and considers his father’s life before his father came to the United States, the narrator becomes increasingly:

7. The last paragraph primarily serves to:

8. In terms of learning the Chinese language, the narrator characterizes himself as someone who has:

9. In regard to the memorial book, the narrator indicates that his mother has:

10. The narrator states that in terms of Chao-hua Liu’s cultural identity, late in his life Chao-hua Liu had become:

11. Based on the passage, the choice Leonardo made regarding how to depict Mona Lisa’s gaze could be considered:

12. As it is used in line 3, the word deployed most nearly means:

13. According to the passage, in traditional Renaissance portraiture, what role did the landscape behind the sitter generally play?

14. According to the passage, the background of the Mona Lisa differs from traditional fifteenth-century portrait backgrounds in that it depicts:

15. According to the passage, the technique Leonardo perfected in the Mona Lisa that makes a subject appear to be in motion had often been used before in paintings that:

16. The passage directly refers to the use of the contrapposto position today by:

17. Based on the passage, which of the following descriptions best captures what it means for a figure in a painting to be in the contrapposto position?

18. In the passage, Leonardo’s 'lengthy artistic itinerary' (lines 64–65) is a reference to:

19. According to the passage, during the time Leonardo was creating works of art, egg yolks were used in paint to:

20. It can most reasonably be inferred from the passage that oil paint appealed to artists who were perfectionists because oil paint:

21. The overall structure of the passage is best described as an account of a unique fossil discovery followed by:

22. In the context of the passage, the phrase 'turn paleontology on its head' (lines 17–18) most nearly refers to the way that Li’s fossil discovery would cause paleontologists to:

23. The passage suggests that one reason fossils of feathered dinosaurs are significant is that they may offer information about:

24. In the context of the passage, the information about Xu in lines 43–47 primarily serves to:

25. The idea that feathers helped dinosaurs scramble up tree trunks is most nearly presented in the passage as:

26. The main idea of the second paragraph (lines 10–14) is that Li’s fossil was:

27. The passage indicates that many feathered dinosaurs could not have used feathers to:

28. As it is used in line 42, the word forged most nearly means:

29. According to the passage, dinosaurs typically couldn’t climb well because:

30. The passage author claims that being better able to escape predators and reach new food sources may have been instrumental in helping feathered dinosaurs:

Next test →
Jump to