Question 1Easier
According to Passage A, what do the red lines on Tomas’s original map represent?
Show answer
Answer: B — Shortcuts people showed Tomas
Aunt Celia explains that Tomas added red marks after people showed him shortcuts.
Study on the flyACTReadingLocating and interpreting explicit details
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Locating and interpreting explicit details — ACT practice questions
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What this topic is
Stems that begin with the words according to the passage signal Locating and interpreting explicit details: the answer is stated in the text, not inferred.
The task is to find the right sentence and read it closely, since wrong choices often reuse the passage's own words while changing who did something, when, or why. Some items go a step further and ask what a described action shows about a character, which still rests on what the text says.
With paired passages, the stem names which passage to search. Line references help when given, but skimming for key nouns is usually faster than rereading everything.
Sample questions
Pick an answer to see whether it is right — nothing is saved, and nothing needs an account.
Passage A
LITERARY NARRATIVE: Passage A and Passage B both address the topic of “A Route in Pencil.”
On the final Saturday of my aunt’s
hardware store, I emptied the drawer
beneath the cash register. It held three
foreign coins, a button, and a folded
5
sheet of paper soft as cloth. Across it
ran a map of town drawn in blue and red
pencil. The blue lines followed streets.
The red ones crossed alleys, schoolyards,
and a footbridge I had forgotten existed.
10
The creases were shiny from years of
unfolding, and in those worn bands the
pencil had faded to a whisper, yet the
town was still legible. I smoothed it on
the counter among the last bins of screws,
15
afraid a tear might finish what time had
not.
Aunt Celia glanced at the map and said,
“That’s Tomas’s route.” Before delivery
vans, Tomas had carried urgent orders by
20
bicycle: a washer for the bakery sink, a
fuse for the cinema, lengths of rope for
the rowing club. He drew the blue route
during his first week. Red marks came
later, after people showed him shortcuts.
25
She said he used to spread the sheet on
her counter after a wet ride and ask which
alley still reached the river; whoever was
in the shop would point, and he would add
a line before the advice could dissolve.
30
I wanted to frame the map for the store’s
closing auction, but Aunt Celia shook her
head. “Routes belong to whoever still
travels them,” she said. She told me Tomas
now repaired bicycles in the next town. My
35
phone found his shop in seconds, along
with the quickest driving directions.
Still, I tucked the paper into my pocket
and rode my own bicycle. The phone could
tell me how to arrive; it could not tell
40
me what the red route had meant to the
people who had bent it.
At the footbridge, I met an elderly man
sanding the rail. When I showed him the
map, he tapped a red bend and told me he
45
had suggested it after seeing Tomas
struggle up Market Hill with a box of
nails. He treated the mark as a remembered
kindness rather than as property, and he
seemed glad the pencil had outlasted the
50
errand. I crossed on new boards that still
held the old angle of his advice.
By the time I reached the repair shop, the
map no longer looked like one person’s
clever plan. It looked like a conversation
55
conducted in turns and corners. Nothing on
it was signed, yet the page felt crowded
with speakers. Before knocking on the
repair-shop door, I traced the route once
with my finger, trying to separate the
60
line Tomas had drawn from the advice that
had bent it. I could not.
Passage B
The young woman arrived holding my old
delivery map as carefully as if it might
tear from being looked at. I recognized
Celia’s niece, though the last time I saw
5
her she had been small enough to sit in a
shopping cart among bags of potting soil.
She expected me to be astonished that the
map survived. I was more surprised by how
complete it appeared. I remembered drawing
10
only the blue streets and a few red
shortcuts. Now the page seemed crowded
with decisions. There was the narrow
passage beside the cinema, suggested by
its projectionist, and the path behind the
15
mill, shown to me by a gardener. The
footbridge route came from Mr. Ibarra, who
disliked watching me conquer Market Hill
by stubbornness.
The niece proposed donating the map to the
20
town archive. For a moment, I liked the
idea. Under glass, the pencil would not
fade further. Then I noticed that one red
line ended at a wall. A warehouse had
blocked that alley years ago. Another
25
crossed the schoolyard, which was now
locked except during community events.
Preserved without explanation, the map
might turn helpful knowledge into a set of
traps.
30
I laid tracing paper over the sheet.
Together we copied the routes that still
worked and marked the blocked ones with
dates. She added the mint-lined ditch,
which had never mattered to my deliveries.
35
I added a public water fountain installed
after my time. When we finished, the new
map looked less graceful than the old one.
It was also more honest.
We tested the copy by asking two customers
40
at my shop to plan a ride toward the old
mill. One noticed that our line did not
show where the pavement narrowed; the
other knew of a repair station installed
near the river. We added both notes in the
45
margin and drew a blank box for future
changes. Testing the map with people who
had not made it revealed assumptions that
seemed obvious only because we remembered
the route together.
50
I kept the original, not because the route
still belonged to me, but because it
carried the voices that had made my work
possible. The niece took the copy back to
town. She planned to pin it near the
55
hardware store door during the auction and
leave pencils on strings. I hoped nobody
would treat our lines as commands. A
useful map should be ready to listen.
Question 2Easier
In Passage A, Tomas’s practice of spreading the map on Celia’s counter and asking which alley still reached the river served primarily to:
Show answer
Answer: B — invite other people to keep revising the routes
B is correct. Tomas asked people for current route advice and added lines based on their suggestions. Spreading the map on the counter invited others to help revise it.
Question 3Easier
According to Passage A, what prompted the elderly man to suggest the shortcut represented by a red bend on the map?
Show answer
Answer: D — He saw Tomas struggling up Market Hill with a box of nails.
D is correct. The elderly man says he suggested the shortcut after seeing Tomas struggle up Market Hill with a box of nails; the red bend records his helpful advice.
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More ACT topics
Reading
- Central idea, theme, and main idea
- Summarizing information
- Inferences and logical conclusions
- Relationships — sequential, comparative, cause-effect
- Vocabulary in context (word and phrase meaning)
- Rhetorical word choice and tone
- Text structure
- Author's purpose and perspective
- Point of view
- Author's claims and arguments
- Fact vs. opinion
- Command of evidence and support
- Evaluating reasoning and argument construction
- Comparing paired passages
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