ACT Preparation / Unit 16 ACT 1532 review, 2 to 3 minutes
A Literary Narrative Passage
The idea
Key-ideas questions ask what a passage says and what it supports, and the method is the same for every passage. Read the heading, then the whole passage, noting each paragraph's point. Name the central idea in your own words before looking at the choices. For a detail, find the lines and match their meaning exactly. For an inference, choose the conclusion the lines support, and nothing more. For a character or a theme, gather the evidence across the passage, not from one moment.
In practice
Worked passage, a literary narrative invented for the course: "The piano had come with the house. Nora's father wanted it gone the first week; it filled half the front room, and two keys stuck. But every evening, after the dishes, Nora's mother lifted the lid and played the one song she knew, slowly, stopping where the stuck keys fell. Nora, eleven and furious about the move, listened from the stairs and pretended not to. In October, her father came home with a small paper bag. He did not explain it. That night the stuck keys rang clear, and her mother played the song straight through for the first time. Nora came down two steps, then three, and sat." Question one: what did the bag most likely hold? The passage never says, but that night the keys rang clear, so it supports something to repair them, not a gift for Nora. Question two: what does the father's action suggest? He wanted the piano gone, yet he fixed it, so his care for his wife outweighed his dislike of the piano. Question three: what does Nora's movement on the stairs show? Coming down step by step, then sitting, she is beginning to give up her resistance to the new home.
Where people slip
Three habits carry forward. Answer from the lines, never from what might be true elsewhere. Read a character from every action, as the father's change shows. And state a theme as an idea, here that small acts of care can make a strange place home. The next two passages are informational.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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