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Relationships — sequential, comparative, cause-effect — ACT practice questions

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Practice 80 Relationships — sequential, comparative, cause-effect questions in the app

What this topic is

Relationships — sequential, comparative, cause-effect questions track how events and ideas connect.

Sequence items ask what happened first or what followed a turning point, which matters in narratives that jump back in time. Comparison items ask how two things differ, often with a stem that begins compared with. Cause-effect items ask why something happened, and the reason stated in the text decides the answer.

Mixing up cause and effect is a frequent error, as is choosing a factor that occurred at the same time but is never linked as a cause. Signal words such as because, as a result, before and unlike help locate the relevant lines.

Sample questions

Pick an answer to see whether it is right — nothing is saved, and nothing needs an account.

NATURAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from the essay “The Fen That Rose at Noon.”

At Lumen Fen, a shallow wetland enclosed

by pale dunes, the ground appeared to

breathe. Broad carpets of stitch-reed lay

flat on the water at dawn. Near noon, some

carpets rose ten or twelve centimeters,

carrying snails, fallen leaves, and even

small stones upward. By nightfall they

settled again. The rise was too broad to

be a wave and too regular to be random.

From shore, the motion looked like a tide

arriving in the wrong direction.

I joined botanist Mara Venn there after

Ilya Sorn, the fen’s caretaker, reported

the movement. Ilya suspected a buried

spring. He proposed that a daily pulse of

groundwater bowed the reed carpets upward

and that any air beneath them was trapped

only after they rose. Venn reversed that

explanation. The reeds grew through a mesh

of threadlike algae, and she believed

oxygen produced by the algae gathered

inside the mesh. In her view, expanding

pockets of gas lifted the carpets; the

water underneath merely filled the space

they left.

To test both ideas, we selected six

similarly sized carpets. Beneath each one,

we placed a pressure gauge that would

detect a surge from below. We pushed

slender measuring stakes through the

carpets so that a change in height would

tilt them. Clear collection funnels caught

gas escaping from three carpets, while the

other three were covered by identical

frames that held removable shade cloth.

Finally, I released a narrow ribbon of

harmless violet dye under every carpet. A

spring pulse should move that dye before

the reeds rose, whereas gas forming within

the mesh might lift the reeds first.

The next morning, tiny beads appeared

among the algae soon after sunlight

reached the fen. At first, the stakes

remained upright. As the beads joined into

silvery pockets, several stakes began to

lean, showing that their carpets were

swelling. Only then did the violet ribbons

widen beneath them as surrounding water

flowed into the growing space. The

pressure gauges registered no surge.

Finally, the upper surfaces visibly

lifted, and gas began spilling into the

funnels. The order did not fit Ilya’s

prediction that water pushed upward first.

The carpets differed with age. Young ones,

woven from loosely crossing shoots,

released bubbles through many small

openings and scarcely moved. Mature

carpets contained dense layers of dead

stems beneath their living tops. Those

layers held about three times as much gas,

and the mature carpets rose much farther.

Yet age alone was insufficient: even an

old carpet remained low on an overcast

day. Its structure supplied storage, but

some other process had to supply the gas.

The shade experiment identified that

process more clearly. Shaded sections

produced few bubbles and stayed nearly

flat, while neighboring sections beneath

clear frames rose normally. When we

removed the cloth at midday, the shaded

sections lifted forty-seven minutes later.

Evidently, renewed light did not raise

them at once; the algae first had to

produce enough oxygen to fill the internal

spaces faster than it escaped. We also

pierced one raised carpet with hollow

needles. It sagged within minutes as gas

hissed out, although the pressure gauge

below it remained steady.

Rising altered more than the carpets’

height. When a mature mat lifted,

oxygen-rich water entered temporary

chambers underneath. Silver water-beetle

larvae moved into those chambers and fed

among the dangling algae. At dusk, gas

production slowed, bubbles escaped through

the reeds, and the carpet descended. The

larvae departed before the chambers

flattened. During six weeks of

observation, the same pattern returned on

bright days, though the youngest carpets

began participating only after their stems

thickened and accumulated a deeper layer

of debris.

The fen, then, was keeping two clocks. The

quick clock was daily: sunlight encouraged

oxygen production, stored gas increased

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buoyancy, and darkness allowed the carpets

to sink. The slower clock measured the

carpets’ development from leaky young

meshes into mature structures capable of

holding large pockets. Our tests strongly

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favored Venn’s explanation, though they

did not show that underground springs were

absent from the fen. What looked like

water lifting plants was chiefly a

community of plants and algae lifting

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itself—and briefly constructing habitat as

it did so.

Question 1Easier

The passage indicates that the previously shaded sections did not rise immediately after the shade cloth was removed because:

groundwater needed time to flow from the unshaded sections to the shaded sections.✗ Not this onethe measuring stakes initially prevented the loosely woven reeds from moving.✗ Not this onethe algae needed time to produce and accumulate enough oxygen to lift the sections.✓ Correctwater-beetle larvae had to leave the chambers before gas could enter them.✗ Not this one

Show answer

Answer: C — the algae needed time to produce and accumulate enough oxygen to lift the sections.

Once light returned, the algae resumed producing oxygen, but enough gas had to collect within the mesh before the sections could become buoyant and rise.

Question 2Easier

Compared with the young carpets, the mature carpets generally:

retained more gas and rose farther.✓ Correctreceived less sunlight and sank earlier.✗ Not this onecontained fewer dead stems and leaked more readily.✗ Not this oneproduced less oxygen but experienced stronger spring pulses.✗ Not this one

Show answer

Answer: A — retained more gas and rose farther.

Mature carpets had dense layers that held about three times as much gas, allowing them to rise farther than the loosely woven young carpets.

Every question is picked for where you are right now, wrong answers come back until they stick, and it all works offline.

Practice 80 Relationships — sequential, comparative, cause-effect questions in the app

Relationships — sequential, comparative, cause-effect — ACT practice questions

What this topic is

Sample questions

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