過去這個週末學生考了 2018 年 6 月的 ACT 考試。如果這是你最後一次考 ACT，恭喜你完成了一個艱難的任務！
我們整理了 2018 年 6 月 ACT 考試當中的 4 篇閱讀文章，幫助學生準備未來的考試。
這些閱讀文章可以如何的幫助你？
1. 這些文章可以讓你知道你的英文程度以及準備考試的程度
首先，讀這些文章。你覺得他們讀起來很簡單還是很難？裡面有沒有很多生字，尤其是那些會影響你理解整篇文章的生字？如果有的話，雖然你可能是在美國讀書或讀國際學校、也知道 “如何讀跟寫英文”，但你還沒有足夠的生字基礎讓你 “達到下一個階段” （也就是大學的階段）。查一下這一些字，然後把它們背起來。這些生字不見得會在下一個 ACT 考試中出現，但是透過真正的 ACT 閱讀文章去認識及學習這些生字可以大大的減低考試中出現不會的生字的機率。
2. 這些文章會告訴你平時應該要讀哪些文章幫你準備閱讀考試
在我們的 Ivy-Way Reading Workbook（Ivy-Way 閱讀技巧書）的第一章節裡，我們教學生在閱讀文章之前要先讀文章最上面的開頭介紹。雖然你的 ACT 考試不會剛好考這幾篇文章，但你還是可以透過這些文章找到它們的來源，然後從來源閱讀更多相關的文章。閱讀更多來自這些地方的文章會幫助你習慣閱讀這種風格的文章。
3. 這些文章會幫助你發掘閱讀單元的技巧（如果閱讀單元對你來說不是特別簡單的話）
如果你覺得閱讀單元很簡單，或是你在做完之後還有剩幾分鐘可以檢查，那麼這個技巧可能就對你來說沒有特別大的幫助。但是，如果你覺得閱讀很難，或者你常常不夠時間做題，一個很好的技巧是先理解那一種的文章對你來說比較難，然後最後做這一篇文章。ACT 的閱讀文章包含這五種類型：
- 社會研究：人類學，考古學，傳記，商業，經濟，教育，地理，歷史，政治學，心理學和社會學。
- 自然科學：解剖學，天文學，生物學，植物學，化學，生態學，地質學，醫學，氣象學，微生物學，自然史，生理學，物理學，技術和動物學。
- 散文小說：短篇小說或短篇小說的摘錄。
- 人文：回憶錄和個人散文，以及建築，藝術，舞蹈，倫理，電影，語言，文學批評，音樂，哲學，廣播，電視和戲劇等內容領域。
舉例來說，假設你覺得跟美國獨立相關的文章是你在做連續的時候覺得最難的種類，那你在考試的時候可以考慮使用的技巧之一是把這篇文章留到最後再做。這樣一來，如果你在考試到最後時間不夠了，你還是可以從其他比較簡單文章中盡量拿分。
所有 2018 年 6月 ACT 考試閱讀文章
Passage 1
his passage is adapted from the novel The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje (©2011 by Michael Ondaatje).
The ship Oronsay is departing from Colombo, Ceylon (a city in
what Is today Sri Lanka), in the early 1950s.
Michael was eleven years old that night when,
green as he could be about the world, he climbed
aboard the first and only ship of his life. It felt as if a
city had been added to the coast, better lit than any
town or village. He went up the gangplank, watching
only the path of his feet—nothing ahead of him
existed—and continued till he faced the dark harbour
and sea. There were outlines of other ships farther out,
beginning to turn on lights. He stood alone, smelling
everything, then came back through the noise and the
crowd to the side that faced land. A yellow glow over
the city. Already it felt there was a wall between him
and what took place there. Stewards began handing out
food and cordials. He ate several sandwiches, and after
that he made his way down to his cabin, undressed, and
slipped into the narrow bunk. He’d never slept under a
blanket before, save once in Nuwara Eliya. He was
wide awake. The cabin was below the level of the
waves, so there was no porthole. He found a switch
beside the bed and when he pressed it his head and
pillow were suddenly lit by a cone of light.
He did not go back up on deck for a last look, or to
wave at his relatives who had brought him to the harbour.
He could hear singing and imagined the slow and
then eager parting of families taking place in the
thrilling night air. I do not know, even now, why he
chose this solitude. Had whoever brought him onto the
Oronsay already left? In films people tear themselves
away from one another weeping, and the ship separates
from land while the departed hold on to those disappearing
faces until all distinction is lost.
I try to imagine who the boy on the ship was. Per-
haps a sense of self is not even there in his nervous
stillness in the narrow bunk, in this green grasshopper
or little cricket, as if he has been smuggled away accidentally,
with no knowledge of the act, into the future.
What had there been before such a ship in my life?
A dugout canoe on a river journey? A launch in Trincomalee
harbour? There were always fishing boats on our
horizon. But I could never have imagined the grandeur
of this castle that was to cross the sea. The longest jour-
neys I had made were car rides to Nuwara Eliya and
Horton Plains, or the train to Jaffna, which we boarded
at seven a.m. and disembarked from in the late after-
noon. We made that journey with our egg sandwiches, a
pack of cards, and a small Boy’s Own adventure.
But now it had been arranged I would be travelling
to England by ship, and that I would be making the
journey alone. No mention was made that this might be
an unusual experience or that it could be exciting or
dangerous, so I did not approach it with any joy or fear.
I was not forewarned that the ship would have seven
levels, hold more than six hundred people including a
captain, nine cooks, engineers, a veterinarian, and that
it would contain a ‘small jail and chlorinated pools that
would actually sail with us over two oceans. The departure
date was marked casually on the calendar by my
aunt, who had notified the school that I would be leav-
ing at the end of the term. The fact of my being at sea
for twenty-one days was spoken of as having not much
significance, so I was surprised my relatives were even
bothering to accompany me to the harbour. I had
assumed I would be taking a bus by myself and then
change onto another at Borella Junction.
There had been just one attempt to introduce me to
the situation of the journey. A lady named Flavia Prins,
whose husband knew my uncle, turned out to be making
the same journey and was invited to tea one afternoon
to meet with me. She would be travelling in First Class
but promised to keep an eye on me. I shook her hand
carefully, as it was covered with rings and bangles, and
she then turned away to continue the conversation I had
interrupted. I spent most of the hour listening to a few
uncles and counting how many of the trimmed
sandwiches they ate.
On my last day, I found an empty school examination
booklet, a pencil, a pencil sharpener, a traced map
of the world, and put them into my small suitcase.
As I got into the car, it was explained to me that
after I’d crossed the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea
and the Red Sea, and gone through the Suez Canal into
the Mediterranean, I would arrive one morning on a
small pier in England and my mother would meet me
there. It was not the magic or the scale of the journey
that was of concern to me, but that detail of how my
mother could know when exactly I would arrive in that
other country.
And if she would be there.
Passage 2
Passage A is adapted from “The Unified Theory of Gumbo” by Lolis Eric Elie (©2012 by Smithsonian Institution). Passage B is adapted from “The Borscht Belt” by Julia loffe (©2012 by Conde Nast).
Passage I
As the Cajun craze had its way with America in
the 1980s, I began to hear tourists, visitors and trans-
plants to New Orleans praising this or that gumbo for
its thickness and darkness. This was strange to me.
Gumbo was supposed to be neither thick nor dark. Even
more important, “dark” and “thick” were being used not
as adjectives, but as achievements. It was as if making a
dark gumbo was a culinary accomplishment on par with
making a featherlight biscuit or a perfectly barbecued
beef brisket. Naturally, I viewed these developments
with suspicion and my suspicion focused on the kitchen
of Commander’s Palace and its celebrated chef, Paul
Prudhomme.
Prudhomme hails from Cajun Country, near
Opelousas, Louisiana. He refers to his cooking not so
much as Cajun, but as “Louisiana cooking,” and thus
reflective of influences beyond his home parish. For
years I blamed him for the destruction of the gumbo
universe. Many of the chefs and cooks in New Orleans
restaurants learned under him or under his students.
Many of these cooks were not from Louisiana, and thus
had no homemade guide as to what good gumbo was
supposed to be. As I saw it then, these were young,
impressionable cooks who lacked the loving guidance
and discipline that only good home training can
provide.
My reaction was admittedly nationalistic, since
New Orleans is my nation. The Cajun incursion in and
of itself didn’t bother me. We are all enriched immeasurably
when we encounter other people, other languages,
other traditions, other tastes. What bothered me
was the tyrannical influence of the tourist trade. Tourist
trap restaurants, shops, cooking classes, and at times it
seemed the whole of the French Quarter, were given
over to providing visitors with what they expected to
find. There was no regard for whether the offerings
were authentic New Orleans food or culture. Suddenly
andouille sausage became the local standard even
though most New Orlea nians had never heard of it.
Chicken and andouille gumbo suddenly was on menus
all over town. This was the state of my city when I
moved back here in 1995.
Passage II
As a self-appointed guardian of authentic Russian
fare. Maksim Symikov, who has spent the past two
decades studying traditional Russian cuisine. has a
problem: Russians don’t hold Russian food in particularly
high esteem. When they eat out they favor more
exotic cuisines, like Italian or Japanese. The tendency
to find foreign food more desirable is a prejudice that
goes back centuries—to a time when the Russian aristocracy
spoke French, not Russian. Russian food is
pooh-poohed as unhealthy and unsophisticated.
Among the many things that annoy Symikov is the
fact that a good number of the despised Russian dishes
aren’t even Russian. “I did an informal survey of
eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds in Moscow and
St. Petersburg, and asked them. ‘Name some traditional
Russian dishes:” Symikov told me. “What they named
was horrible: borscht, which is Ukrainian. and potatoes.
which are an American plant. In the middle of the eigh-
teenth century. there were riots because people didn’t
want to grow potatoes.” He insists that real Russian
food contained no potatoes, no tomatoes, few beets, and
little meat. Instead, there were a lot of grains, fish, and
dairy, as well as honey, cucumbers, turnips, cabbage,
apples, and the produce of Russia’s vast forests—mush-
rooms and berries. Because of the climate, little of this
was eaten fresh; it was salted, pickled, or dried for the
long winter. Most of Russia ate this way until the
twentieth century.
By exploring the Russian food that existed before
potatoes. Syrnikov hopes to help Russians reacquaint
themselves with the country’s agrarian roots, and to
convince them that their national cuisine can be just as
flavorful as anything they might find in a sushi bar. He
spends his time travelling through the countryside in
search of old recipes. trying them himself. and blowing
about his experiences. Often, he is brought in as a con-
sultant on projects to make a restaurant authentically
Russian. Recently, he hatched a plan for a user-
generated database of folk recipes. “My idea is to send
out a call across all of Russia.” he told me. “If you have
a grandmother who makes shonishkr-disk-shaped
pastries—flake a picture of them, write down the
recipe. To me. it’s absolutely obvious that, if we don’t
wake up and find out from these old women and set it
down on paper. in twenty years we won’t have anyone
to ask. Russian culture will lose a very significant part
of itself.”
Passage 3
This passage is adapted from the article “An lnt rvie with C. E. Morgan” by Thomas Fabisiak (©2010 by University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill).
All the Living is C. E. Morgan’s debut novel. Set in rural Ken-
Unity In the 1980s. her novel follows a young couple’s struggles
as they take responsibility for a family farm.
Thomas Fabisiak: In what way does the fact that your
descriptive work in All the Living focuses on landscape
make it a political act?
C. FL Morgan: I think it’s akin to the moral force that’s
there in fiction in the presentation of character. Fiction
asks us to bring sustained attention to the Other: when a
reader chooses to continue reading a novel, regardless
of the likability of a character, the sustained attention to
that character has moral ramifications. Landscape writ-
ing—most especially when it’s done at length and in a
style that deviates from prose norms, so that it’s very
presentation is interruptive or “estranging” as the for-
malists might have said—encourages the reader to stop,
reread, listen, imagine, reconsider, admire, appreciate
with new eyes. The reader might complain that this
kind of writing draws attention to itself, but this kind of
writing doesn’t merely draw attention to its own aesthetic
strategies—it also draws attention to land. The
land is imperilled; we know that. Land is always imperilled
wherever the human puts his or her foot. The attention
paid to landscape in a narrative is. I believe,
attention that’s paid to land itself, not just to marks on a
page. Deep appreciation can result from an engagement
with that kind of beauty, and that can manifest in
action. That is how it might be seen as a political act to
do this kind of writing (particularly about a region,
such as this one, rural Kentucky, that is continuously
being ravaged by corporations that consumers unwit-
tingly feed).
Thomas Fabisiak: In addition to landscape. though, All
the Living also involves a sustained focus on work, and
specifically on work on the land, fanning, taking care
of animals, etc. Together these suggest an overarching
pastoral quality. Without wanting you to interpret All
the Living for readers, because you’ve told me that you
hate imposing yourself into people’s encounters with
the book, I’m wondering if you could say something
about your focus on work, and whether and to what
extent it is related to the focus on landscape more generally.
One thing that occurred to me repeatedly as I
was reading the book was that, as a writer, you work
very meticulously, and take “your work” as seriously,
perhaps, as “the work” itself in the sense of the finished
book, etc. Would I be wrong to think that there may be
a latent ethical, if not political, component to this
aspect of your writing as well, both in your own commitment
to hard work and in the ongoing presence of
the theme of work in the novel?
C. E. Morgan: Well, while there are many novels I
admire that depict working-class labor (Anna Karenina
and In the Skin of the Lion and Germinal are the first
that spring to mind), the presence of work-agrarian or
domestic—in All the Living was not a self-conscious
choice. For that matter, even though I conceptualize
landscape writing as overtly political, that doesn’t mean
I self-consciously insert it in a text where it doesn’t
belong. With All the Living, I don’t feel I made choices
in the first draft of the novel. It felt like the book just
came, and it came with an inborn temperament, tenor,
and set of characters and concerns. I obeyed the book.
Or perhaps, because a text is not a willful or sentient
being (though it sometimes feels like it!), it might be
more accurate to say I obeyed the hazy, deepest part of
the brain, which bypasses the intellect as it constructs
meaning via image, myth, poetry: our essential
languages.
For myself, though you’re right that I work intensely on
any project when I have one, I don’t think of my writ-
ing as a job. I think of it as a vocation. and as such,
there’s a huge gulf between what I do and capitalist
notions of productivity, though the work is disseminated
in the marketplace through a capitalist frame-
work. I’m very wary of rigorous work ethic for the sake
of rigorous work ethic—this idea that a writer should
produce a novel every year or two years, that they
should be punching a clock somehow. A lot of people
seem to buy into that; it’s hard not to in this culture.
But I don’t want to produce just to produce. I don’t
want to write just to write, or publish just to get a pay-
check. I see no value in that. Frankly. the world doesn’t
need more books; it needs better books. Vocation is tied
up with notions of service, and as an artist you serve
people by giving them your best, the work you produce
that you truly believe to be of value, not just what
you’re capable of producing if you work ten hours a
day every day for forty years.
Passage 4
his passage is adapted from Free Radicals by Michael Brooks (©2011 by Michael Brooks).
As the twentieth century began, Robert Milliken
was fast approaching forty. All around him, physics was
at its most exhilarating, yet Milliken bad done practically
nothing. So he decided to measure e. the charge
on the electron.
Millikan’s idea was simple. A droplet of water that
had been given an electric charge would be attracted to
a metal plate which carried an opposite charge. He
arranged his apparatus so that the electrical attraction
pulled the droplet up, while gravity pulled it down. This
gave him a way to measure e. First he would find the
mass of the droplet. Then he would measure the voltage
needed for the attraction to the metal plate to cancel out
the downward pull of gravity. From those two pieces of
information he could get a measure of the charge on the
droplet.
The experiment was far from simple to carry out.
however. Finding that the water droplets tended to
evaporate before any measurements could be made,
Milliken set to the task of trying the same trick with oil
droplets.
In 1910, at the age of forty-two, he finally published
a value for e. It was meant to be his career-
defining publication. Eventually, it was—but Milliken
still had years of difficult and dirty work ahead of him.
The Austrian physicist Felix Ehrenhaft refuted
Millikan’s results with a similar set of experiments that
seemed to show that electrical charge can be infinitely
small. There is no fundamental, minimum unit of
charge, Ehrenhaft said; there is no ‘electron’. The series
of experiments the desperate Milliken then performed
were to cast a lasting shadow over his scientific
integrity.
According to biologist Richard Lewontin, Milliken
‘went out of his way to hide the existence of inconvenient
data’. David Goodstein, a physics professor, says
Milliken ‘certainly did not commit scientific fraud’. So
where does the truth lie?
The debate hangs on a phrase in Millikan’s 1913
paper refuting Ehrenhaft and showing that every measurement
of electric charge gives a value of e or an integer
multiple of e. In his 1913 paper, Milliken says that
his data table ‘contains a complete summary of the
results obtained on all of the 58 different drops upon
which complete series of observations were made’. The
statement is written in italics, as if to give it special
weight. The notebooks for the 1913 paper show that
Milliken actually took data on 100 oil droplets. Did
Milliken cherry-pick the data in order to confirm his
original result and crush Ehrenhaft underfoot?
He certainly had motive. In Millikan’s 1910 paper
he had made the ‘mistake’ of full disclosure with statements
such as, ‘Although all of these observations gave
values of e within 2 percent of the final mean, the
uncertainties of the observations were such that … I
felt obliged to discard them’. This admirable honesty
about the selection of data points had given Ehrenhaft
ammunition that he used enthusiastically in his long
feud with Milliken. Perhaps, with the italicised state-
ment, Milliken was making sure that he gave his foe no
more.
That would certainly explain something that is
otherwise inexplicable. Milliken aborted the experimental
run on twenty-five of the droplets in the work
reported in the 1913 paper. According to Goodstein.
Milliken preferred to use droplets that showed a change
in charge, gaining or losing an electron (as he saw it)
during the measurement. Milliken may also have
judged some droplets to be too small or too large to
yield reliable data, Goodstein says. If they were too
large, they would fall too rapidly to be reliably
observed. Too small, and their fall (and thus the charge
result) would be affected by random collisions with air
molecules. Goodstein interprets the italicised statement
as an assertion that there were only fifty-eight ‘complete
enough’ sets of data.
But Goodstein undoes his defence by stating that
in order to make the `too large’ or ‘too small’ distinction,
all the data would need to have been taken in the
first place.
Milliken certainly did not convince his peers
straight away. The arguments with Ehrenhaft rumbled
on long enough for Millikan’s Nobel Prize to be
delayed for three years—it eventually came in 1923.
But here’s the point: Milliken was right about the
electron and its charge.•Few laboratories managed to
replicate Ehrenhaft’s results. but students now replicate
Millikan’s results all across the world. No one now
believes that the fundamental unit of charge is anything
other than Millikan’s e.
To get his Nobel Prize, Milliken had to play hard
and fast with what we might call ‘accepted practice’.
2018 年 6 月 ACT 考試閱讀題目
Ivy-Way 學生在上課的過程就會做到 2018 年 6 月以及其他的官方歷年考題。除此之外，我們也有讓學生來我們的教室或在家做模考的服務讓學生評估自己的學習進度並看到成績。如果你想預約時間來我們的教室或在家做模考，請聯繫我們！如果你想購買考題在家做，學生可以在Ivy-Way蝦皮商城、Ivy-Way臉書粉專、或 Line (ivyway) 直接購買喔！
