Site icon Ivy-Way留學部落格 | 最即時、完整的美國大學升學資訊

2019 年 4 月 ACT 考題回顧:所有 4 篇閱讀文章!

2019年4月ACT回顧

過去這個週末學生考了 2019 年 4 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 2019 年 4 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:

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 2019 年 4月 ACT 考試閱讀文章

Passage 1

The following excerpt Is adapted from the short story “Unaccustomed Earth” by Jhumpa Lahiri (©2008 by Jhumpa Lahiri).

Ruma Is trying to decide whether to ask her lather, who is visit-

ing, to move In with her famity.

        “My dad’s planting flowers in the backyard,” she

told Adam that night on the phone.

        “Does he plan to be around to take care of them?”

        His flippancy irritated her, and she felt defensive

on her father’s behalf. “I don’t know.”

        “It’s Thursday, Ruma. How long are you going to

torture yourself?”

        She didn’t feel tortured any longer. She had

planned to tell Adam this, but now she changed her

mind. Instead she said. “I want to wait a few more days.

Make sure everyone gets along.”

        “For heaven’s sake, Rama.” Adam said. “He’s your

father. You’ve known him all your life.”

        And yet, until now, she had not known certain

things about him. She had not known how self-

sufficient he could be, how helpful, to the point where

she had not had to wash a dish since he’d arrived. At

dinner he was flexible, appreciating the grillcd fish and

chicken breasts she began preparing alter the Indian

food ran out, making do with a can of soup for lunch.

But it was her son Akash who brought out a side of her

father that surprised Ruma most. In the evenings her

father stood beside her in the bathroom as she gave

Akash his bath, scrubbing the caked-on dirt from his

elbows and knees. He helped put on his pajamas,

brush his teeth, and comb back his soft damp hair. When

Akash had fallen asleep one afternoon on the living-

room carpet, her father made sure to put a pillow under

his head, drape a cotton blanket over his body. By now

Akash insisted on being read to at night by her father,

sleeping downstairs in her father’s bed.

        The first night Akash slept with her father she

went downstairs to make sure he’d fallen asleep. She

saw a sliver of light under her father’s door and heard 

the sound of his voice, reading Green Eggs and Ham.

She imagined them both under the covers, their heads

reclining against the pillows, the book between them.

Akash turning the pages as her father read. It was obvi-

ous that her father did not know the book by heart. as

she did, that he was encountering it for the first time in

his life. He read awkwardly. pausing between the sentences,

his voice oddly animated as it was not in ordinary

speech. Still, his effort touched her, and as she

stood by the door she realized that for the first time in

his life her father had fallen in love. She was about to

knock and tell her father that it was past Akash’s bed-

time. that he should turn out the light. But she stopped

herself, returning upstairs, briefly envious of her own

son. 
        The garden was coming along nicely. It was

a futile exercise, he knew. He could not picture his

daughter or his son-in-law caring for it properly. noticing

what needed to be done. In weeks, he guessed. it

would be overgrown with weeds, the leaves chewed up

by slugs. Then again, perhaps they would hire someone

to do the job. He would have preferred to put in vegetables,

but they required more work than flowers. It was a

modest planting, some slow-growing myrtle and phlox

under the trees, two azalea bushes, a row of hostas, a

clematis to climb one of the posts of the porch, and in

honor of his wife, a small hydrangea. In a plot behind

the kitchen, unable to resist. he also put in a few toma-

toes. along with sonic marigolds and impatiens; there

was just time for a small harvest to come in by the fall.

He spaced out the delphiniums. tied them to stalks.

stuck some gladiola bulbs into the ground. He missed

working outside. the solid feeling of dirt under his

knees, getting into his nails, the smell of it lingering on

his skin even after he’d scrubbed himself in the shower.

It was the one thing he missed about the old house, and

when he thought about his garden was when he missed

his wile most keenly. She had taken that from him. For

years. after the children had grown, it had just been the

two of them. but she managed to use up all the vegetables.

putting them into dishes he did not know how to

prepare himself. In addition, when she was alive, they

regularly entertained, their guests marveling that the

potatoes were from their own backyard. taking away

bagfuls at evening’s end.

        He looked over at Akash’s little plot. the dirt care-

fully mounded up around his toys. pens and pencils

stuck into the ground. Pennies were there, too, all the

spare ones he’d had in his pocket.

        “When will the plants come out?” Akash called

out from the swimming pool, where he stood crouching

over a little sailboat. 
        “Soon.” 
        “Tomorrow?” 
        “Not so soon. These things take time, Akash. Do

 you remember what I taught you this morning?”

        And Mash recited his numbers in Bengali from

one to ten.


Passage 2

This passage is adapted from Me book Mantle by Senon Winchester (©2010 by Simon Winchester) 

 The Ifinown and Phoenicians are ancient cultures known for

sailing the Atediarranean See. The Pillars of Hercules are the

rocks on each side of the Strait 01 Gibraltar. which separates

Spam from Morocco.

        The Phoenicians were the first to build proper

ships and to brave the rough waters of the Atlantic.

        To be sure. the Minoans before them traded with

great vigor and defended their Mediterranean trade

routes with swift and vicious naval force. Their ships—

built with tools of sharp-edged bronze—were elegant

and strong: they were made of cypress trees, sawn in

half and lapped together, with white-painted and sized

linen stretched across the planks, and with a sail suspeded

from a mast of oak, and oars to supplement

their speed. But they worked only by day, and they voy-

aged only between the islands within a few days’ sail-

ing of Crete; never once did any Minoan dare venture

beyond the Pillars of Hercules. into the crashing waves

of the Sea of Perpetual Gloom.

         The Minoans, like most of their rival thalassocracies,

accepted without demur the legends that enfolded

the Atlantic, the stories and the sagas that conspired to

keep even the boldest away. The waters beyond the Pil-

lars, beyond the known world, beyond what the Greeks

called the oekumen, the inhabited earth. were simply

too fantastic and frightful to even think of braving.

There might have been some engaging marvels: close

inshore, the Gardens of the Hesperides. and somewhat

farther beyond, that greatest of all Greek philosophical

wonderlands. Atlantis. But otherwise the ocean was a

place wreathed in terror: I can find no way whatever of

getting our of this gray surf, Odysseus might well have

complained, no way out of this gray sea. The winds

howled too fiercely. the storms blew up without warning.

the waves were of a scale and ferocity never seen

in the Mediterranean. 

        Nevertheless, the relatively peaceable inland sea of

the Western classical world was to prove a training

ground, a nursery school, for those sailors who in time,

and as an inevitable part of human progress, would

prove infinitely more daring and commercially ambitious

than the Minoans. At just about the time that Santorini

erupted and. as many believe. gave the final fatal

blow to Minoan ambitions, so the more mercantile of

the Levantine. awoke. From their sliver of coastal

land—a sliver that, in lime, would become Lebanon.

Palestine. and Israel—the big Phoenician ships ventured

out and sailed westward, trading, battling,

dominating.

        When they came to the Pillars of Hercules. some

time around the seventh century B.C.. they, unlike all of

their predecessors, decided not to stop. Their captains,

no doubt bold men and true, decided to sail right

through, into the onrushing waves and storms, and see

before all other men just what lay beyond. 

        The men from the port of Tyre appear to have been

the first to do so. Their boats, broad-beamed,sickle-

shaped “round ships” or galloi—so called because of

the sinuous fat curves of the hulls, and often with two

sails suspended from hefty masts. one at midships and

one close to, the forepeak—were made of locally felled

and surprisingly skillfully machined cedar planks, fixed

throughout with monist and tenon joints and sealed

with tar. Most of the long-haul vessels from Tyre.

Byblos, and Sidon had oarsmen, too—double banks of

thirteen oarsmen on either side of the larger ships,

which gave them a formidable accelerative edge. Their

decorations were grand and often deliberately intimi-

dating—enormous painted eyes on the prow, many-

toothed dragons and roaring tigers tipped with metal

ram-blades. in contrast to the figureheads of women

later beloved by Western sailors.

        Phoenician ships were built for business. The

famous Bronze Age wreck discovered at Uluburun in

southern Turkey by a sponge diver in 1983 (and which.

while not definitely Phoenician, was certainly typical of

the period) displayed both the magnificent choice of

trade goods available in the Mediterranean and the vast

range of journeys to be undertaken. The crew on this

particular voyage had evidently taken her to Egypt, to

Cyprus, to Crete. to the mainland of Greece. and possibly

even as far as Spain. When they sank, presumably

when the cargo shifted in a sudden storm, the holds of

la the forty-five-foot-long galloi contained a bewildering

and fatally heavy amassment of delights, far more than

John Masefield. who wrote a poem about ships’ car-

goes, could ever have fancied. There were ingots of

copper and tin. blue glass and ebony, amber, ostrich

eggs, an Italian sword, a Bulgarian axe, figs, pomegranates.

a gold scarab with the image of Nefertiti. a set of

bronze tools, a ton of terebinth rosin. hosts of jugs and

vases and Greek storage jars, silver and gold earrings,

and innumerable lamps.


Passage 3

assage A is adapted from the article “Heroes and Wretches” by Suzie Mackenzie (©2004 by Guardian News and Media Limited). Passage B is adapted from the article “Alice Neel: The Art Modernism Neglected” by Jeremy Lewison (©2010 by Telegraph Media Group Limited) 

Passage I

         Francis Bacon used to say that no artist in their

lifetime can possibly know whether or not he/she is any

good. Only time. he said, could sort out the twin perils

that beset every artist: theory, by which “most people

enter a painting”. and fashion—what an audience feels

it should or should not be moved by. Bacon reckoned

this “sort ow” period to be somewhere between 75 and

100 years. by which time the artist would most likely be

dead. For this reason, he also said, success in an anises

lifetime is no indicator of greatness—on the contrary.

Every artist works within a void and will never know”.

         In this sense, if no other, the American portrait

artist Alice Neel can be said to have been lucky. She can

never have had any expectations, because to be a

woman and an artist on the cusp of the 20th century

was to cast yourself into a void. Neel was born in 1900,

into a middle-class Philadelphia family, at a time when,

as Henry James had observed only 19 years earlier, to

he a lady was to he a portrait. She worked all her long

 life: against the prevailing theory of what it was to be a

woman, that it was not becoming for a woman to be an

artist, to have a public life, that women were framed for

the interior. And against fashion: she remained a figurative

artist when the rest of the New York art establishment

was in the grip of abstract expressionism. Neel

doesn’t seem ever to have had any notion of “becoming”

an artist, or even “being” an artist. She simply was

an artist. Even after the mid-1970s, when she finally

did become “fashionable”—helped by a major retrospective

at New York’s Whitney Museum of American

Art in 1974—Ned rarely took commissions. She

painted for herself.

         At the Victoria Miro Gallery in London is the first

ever solo exhibition of Neel’s work in Europe—a col-

 lection spanning three decades, conned by Jeremy

Lewison. Looking back now. 20 years after Neel’s

death, it is possible to see how she took a quintessentially

bourgeois form—the portrait—and radically

transformed it. while making the innate constraints of

portraiture work for her. Hers are not portraits as advertising,

they don’t flatter the sitter or inspire envy in the

viewer. You don’t look at a Neel painting and recognise

power, affluence, beauty—though these ingredients

may he there. Her greatest gift as a portraitist. Lewison

says, is her psychological acuity.

Passage II

        Neel had a natural flair for paint. She painted thick

and thin, dry and wet, and in the later stages of her

career ignored any conventions of finish, rather deciding

for herself when a work was complete enough. At

times she felt that a painting had reached a point where

to go further would spoil it. In some instances she

painted a second version. Ultimately what mattered to

Neel was to keep the painting fresh and alive.

        In our present era portraiture has been relegated to

a minor art. The portrait survives largely in the wooden

paintings commissioned by academic colleges or

national portrait galleries from artists who have facility

but little flair or psychological understanding or vision.

        Photography has replaced painting as the means of

choice for portraiture but photography is concerned

with capturing the moment. Painting is about the syn-

thesis of time. Moreover a photograph, with its smooth

reflective surface, printed by a chemical reaction or

digitally manipulated with no material depth or

presence, is entirety tlitlerent from a painted portrait.

        Neel’s work is an assimilation of many different

moments  and moods, a distillation of many hours of

scrutiny of the subject that concludes in a single summarising

image where the impressions captured over

time are related not simply through an image but

through the material quality of paint, the flicks of the

wrist and the movements of an arm, paint laid on

hastily and contours outlined slowly.

        Neel’s art displays a range of marks made in the

service of communicating an image rather than at the

behest of any conceptual programme, for Neel is a natural

painter and apparently unselfconscious.

        Looking at Neel’s work now is to see a review of

the twentieth century in New York. She represents

changes in fashion and social mores, racial and gender

issues. class differential, political agendas, feminist

advances: in short her work effortlessly reflects a century

of change as much as that of any photographer

from the same era. With the abandonment of the modernist

project, museums and galleries now make room

for multiple voices to he heard, to uncover the art of

those whom modernism neglected.


Passage 4

This passage is adapted lrom Lost Dis­ coveries; The Ancient Roots of Modern Science-from the Babylonians to the Maya by Dick Teresi (©2002 by Dick Teresi)

         Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) was a

financier,established a system of weights and measures

that led to the metric system, lived through the early

turmoil of the French Revolution, and was a pioneer in

scientific agriculture. He has been called the father of

modem chemistry, and, in the course of his busy life, he

brought Europe out of the dark ages of that science.

         One of Lavoisier’s early contributions resulted

from his boiling water for long periods of time. In

eighteenth-century Europe. many scientists believed in

transmutation. They thought. for instance, that water

could be transmuted into earth, among other things.

Chief among the evidence for this was water boiling in

a pot. Solid residue forms on the inside surface.

Scienlists proclaimed this to be water turning into a new

element. Robert Boyle, the great seventeenth-century

British chemist and physicist who flourished a hundred

years before Lavoisier, believed in transmutation.

Having watched plums grow by snaking up water, he

concluded, as many had before him, that water can be

transformed into leaves, flowers, and berries. In the

words of chemist Harold Goldwhite. of California State

University. Los Angeles. “Boyle was on active

alchemist.” 
         Lavoisier noticed that weight was the key, and that

measurement was critical. He poured distilled water

into a special “tea kettle” called a pelican. an enclosed

pot with a spherical cap, which caught the water vapor

and returned it to the base of the pot via two handlelike

tubes. He boiled the water for 101 days and found sub-

stantial residue. He weighed the water. the residue, and

the pelican. The water weighed exactly the same. The

pelican weighed slightly less, an amount equal to the

weight of the residue. Thus, the residue was not a trans-

mutation. but part of the pot—dissolved glass, silica,

and other matter. 

         As scientists continued to believe that water was a

basic element, Lavoisier performed another crucial

experiment. He invented a device with two nozzles and

squirted different gases from one into the other, to see

what they made. One day, he mixed oxygen with hydro-

gen, expecting to get acid. He got water. He percolated

the water through a gun barrel filled with hot iron rings,

splitting the water back into hydrogen and oxygen and

confirming that water was not an element.

         Lavoisier measured everything, and on each occasion

that he performed this experiment, he got the same

numbers. Water always yielded oxygen and hydrogen in

a weight proportion of 8 to 1. What Lavoisier saw was

that nature paid strict attention to weight and proportion.

Ounces or pounds of matter did not disappear or

appear at random, and the same ratios of gases always 

yielded the same compounds. Nature was predictable …

and therefore malleable. 

         Ancient Chinese alchemy. circa 300 to 200 B.C..

was built around the concept of two opposing principles.

These could be, for example.,active and passive,

male and female, or sun and moon. The alchemists saw

nature as having a circular balance. Substances could

be transformed from one principle to another, and then

rendered back to their original state.

         A prime example is cinnabar, known commonly

today as mercuric sulfide, a heavy red mineral that is

the principal ore of mercury. Using fire, these early

alchemists decomposed cinnabar into mercury and

sulfur dioxide. Then they found that mercury would

combine with sulfur to form a black substance called

metacinnabar, “which then can he sublimed into its

original state, the bright red cinnabar, when once more

 heated.” according to science historian Wang Kuike.

Both mercury’s liquid quality and the cyclic transformation

from cinnabar to mercury and back again gave it

magical qualities. Kuike calls mercury “huandan, a

cyclically transformed regenerative elixir” associated

with longevity. These ancient practitioners became

familiar with the concept that substances could be

transformed and then come full circle to their original

state. They developed exact proportions of the amounts

of mercury and sulfur, as well as recipes for the exact

length and intensity of the heating required. Most

important, according to Kuike, these operations could

be performed “without the slightest loss of the total

weight”.

         It would appear that the ancient Chinese

alchemists were empirically familiar with the conserva-

tion of mass fifteen hundred years before Lavoisier’s

experiment. He and his alchemist precursors discovered

that the weight of the products in a chemical reaction

equal the weight of the reactants.


2019 年 4 月 ACT 考試閱讀題目

Ivy-Way 學生在上課的過程就會做到 2019 年 4 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!

Exit mobile version