ACT Preparation / Unit 16 ACT 1522 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
A Sequence Question
The idea
A sequence question is answered in three steps. First, list the events the question names. Second, find each in the passage and mark its time clues: dates, ages, words such as before, after and already, and changes of tense. Third, order the events by those clues, not by where they appear on the page, and check the order against the passage once more.
In practice
Worked example: an invented passage opens with Leo, aged sixty, closing his shop for good; recalls the day he signed the lease at twenty-five; then tells how a fire nearly ended the business when he was forty. Asked which came first, the closing, the fire or the lease: the lease, at twenty-five, then the fire, at forty, then the closing, at sixty, though the passage tells the closing first.
Where people slip
Ages and dates outrank position. A passage that begins at the end is telling its story out of order on purpose.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Unlocks
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