ACT Compass Reading Practice Test - Question List

16.

The U.S. Congress (Government and Civics 3­)

Did you ever wonder where federal laws come from? For example, who proposed that it be illegal to (1) operate a vehicle without a driver’s license? Who is responsible for making decisions about war? In the United States rules and decisions that affect its citizens (and visitors) are proposed and put into effect by what is known as the U.S. Congress.

The U.S. Congress is made of up two (2) bodies: the Senate and the House of Representatives. Both representatives and senators are elected by voters. Congress has 535 members: 435 members in the House of Representatives and 100 members in the Senate. Each member of the House of Representatives serves two-year terms and each state in the union has at least one representative. Each of the 50 states has two senators; therefore, there are 100 senators in Congress, and each member of the Senate serves a six-year (3) term.

Congress works together to create (4) bills that are then later signed into law by the President of the United States. It also has power over financial concerns. It is the Congress who has the authority to make and collect taxes. Congress also plays an important role in the decisions of the national defense. It alone has the power to (5) wage war on another country.

So, next time your hear someone say they dislike a President’s decision to go to war with another country, you can tell them that Congress has the ultimate say, and not the President, in how the country is run.

Which of following is true according to the passage?

17. There have been many famous political firsts in the history of the United States. Jeannette Pickering Rankin is no exception. She was the first woman elected to the United States Congress in 1917. Interestingly, she was a member of Congress before the U.S. Constitutional Amendment XIX granting women the right to vote was ratified.

Jeannette Rankin was born near Missoula, Montana on June 11, 1880. Her father was a rancher and her mother was a schoolteacher. Jeannette was their first child. She attended public schools in Montana, and graduated from the University of Montana at Missoula in 1902 with a Bachelor of Science degree in biology. She began promoting the women’s suffrage movement - an effort to secure women’s voting rights - in 1910.

After working for the New York Women Suffrage Party and the American Woman Suffrage Association, Jeannette Rankin returned to Montana. She continued her working on women’s suffrage through speaking engagements and organization efforts. Rankins involvement helped Montanan women gain the right to vote in 1914.

Rankin decided to run as a Republican for the United States House of Representatives in 1916. Her brother a prominent businessman supported her financially. Some people thought that her campaign would sour the fight for women’s voting rights. Her victory on August 29, 2016 sealed her place in history; she became the first women elected to U.S. Congress.

Jeannette Rankin was officially sworn in as a member of 65th Congress on April 2, 1917. One of her first votes was against declaring war on Germany, which marked the United States’s entry into World War I. She continued supporting women’s suffrage, and she is appointed to a committee formed to examine the issue. In 1918, she opened debate in the U.S. House of Representatives on a resolution to grant women the right to vote. It was the precursor to the eventual constitutional amendment ratified two years later.

Rankin did not run for reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives. Instead, she sought election to the United States Senate. Her bid was very unsuccessful. She left Montana and moved to Georgia, where she purchased a farm. Despite the move, she maintained her status as a Montana resident. More than 20 years after her first term in Congress, Rankin won the 1940 election for the 77th Congress as a Montana Representative. In her second term she was an outspoken opponent of World War II. After leaving Congress in 1943, she continued to advocate for women’s rights and world peace until her death in 1973.

What is the main idea of this passage?

18.

Spanish in the U.S.

Did you know that the United States has the second largest Spanish-speaking population in the world? With over 37 million speakers the age of five and older the U.S. alone has more inhabitants that speak Spanish than the whole country of Venezuela.

Spanish students don’t have to study abroad to get a good look into Latin-American culture. There are many cities here in the U.S. with (1) thriving Latino (2) districts that any student of Spanish can visit to practice speaking. Miami, for example, is home to a multitude of diverse Hispanics from all over Latin America and Europe. When walking down the streets of Little Havana (one of the predominantly Hispanic barrios, or neighborhoods) you will hear the Cuban Spanish (3) language variety. In Chicago, the place to hear Mexican Spanish is La Villita.

Since Spanish-speaking U.S. citizens are the fastest growing linguistic group in the United States, it is common to find Spanish-language television channels (such as Univisión and Telemundo) in larger cities. In fact, it’s thanks to these mass media that there are people (although few) that spend their whole lives in the United States without ever having to learn or speak English. The governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, even commented once that Hispanics in the U.S. need to “turn off the TV in Spanish” in order to learn English more quickly.

But Governor Schwarzenegger ought to know that, according to linguistic research on (4) bilingualism, families of Hispanic heritage (as well as other non-English speaking families) produce English dominant (or English only) speakers by the third generation after their immigration. That means, it is more common than not that the grandchildren of the Mexican immigrant cannot communicate with their grandparent in Spanish. Thus, the Spanish language does not seem to (5) pose a threat in the U.S. society, contrary to what many politicians often suggest in their political rhetoric.

In paragraph 4, why does the author mention that speakers from families of Hispanic heritage often become English dominant by the third generation?

19.

The Northern Cities Vowel Shift and Speakers That Adopt It

“The Northern Cities Vowel Shift” is not adopted by all speakers that live in the geographic regions where it is in progress. Studies (1) illustrate that it is mostly European Americans who show evidence of taking on the shift; however, there is little to no research indicating that speakers of African American Vernacular English employ the shift in their speech. Canadians that share proximity to the Great Lakes with speakers that live in the United States also show no evidence of adopting the shift.

This shift, also called “The Northern Cities Shift” (NCS), is a (2) linguistic phenomenon that occurs in the northern geographic area of the United States known as the Inland North, which includes such cities as Rochester, Buffalo, Detroit, and Chicago. Although prominent among some urban inhabitants of the region, NCS is not considered the standard. (3) Linguists describe one change that occurs in speakers of NCS in which the vowel in milk (4) “shifts” down and back (the tongue is lowered and travels back) from a short “i” to a short “e” that could be represented as melk.

William Labov, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is one of the largest contributors to research on the subject of the NCS. His theory is that the shift possibly started when speakers from different (5) language varieties were brought together in the early 1800’s when the Erie Canal was being constructed. People from the East Coast moved to the Great Lakes region, and their dialects mixed resulting in an ongoing shift. However, not all speakers of the Great Lakes region participate in this linguistic variation.

The concept “language varieties”, bolded after the (5) in the third paragraph, is closet in meaning to

20.

The Northern Cities Vowel Shift and Speakers That Adopt It

“The Northern Cities Vowel Shift” is not adopted by all speakers that live in the geographic regions where it is in progress. Studies (1) illustrate that it is mostly European Americans who show evidence of taking on the shift; however, there is little to no research indicating that speakers of African American Vernacular English employ the shift in their speech. Canadians that share proximity to the Great Lakes with speakers that live in the United States also show no evidence of adopting the shift.

This shift, also called “The Northern Cities Shift” (NCS), is a (2) linguistic phenomenon that occurs in the northern geographic area of the United States known as the Inland North, which includes such cities as Rochester, Buffalo, Detroit, and Chicago. Although prominent among some urban inhabitants of the region, NCS is not considered the standard. (3) Linguists describe one change that occurs in speakers of NCS in which the vowel in milk (4) “shifts” down and back (the tongue is lowered and travels back) from a short “i” to a short “e” that could be represented as melk.

William Labov, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is one of the largest contributors to research on the subject of the NCS. His theory is that the shift possibly started when speakers from different (5) language varieties were brought together in the early 1800’s when the Erie Canal was being constructed. People from the East Coast moved to the Great Lakes region, and their dialects mixed resulting in an ongoing shift. However, not all speakers of the Great Lakes region participate in this linguistic variation.

According to paragraphs 2 and 3, all of the following statements are true of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift EXCEPT: