The ACT Humanities Passage
What is it all about?
It's about the "human experience"
- The passages tend to deal with the human experience.
- The range of topics include art, language, literature, communication, religion, and philosophy, music, memoirs
- Expect to read about people who have different opinions.
- You will be asked to determine the strengths and weaknesses of those arguments.
- How does the opinions of the author compare with the opinions of others referred to in the passages.
As you read . . .
- Keep track of facts, dates, and key ideas.
- Understanding of the different viewpoints from the passages.
- Find the overall main idea
- Determine how the author feels about the topic
- Determine the relationships between the characters and the entities
Answering the questions . . .
- You will be asked what is the main idea of the passage or of a certain paragraph
- Identify or interpret a detail – these questions will often have question stems such as According to the passage ….. & The author states ……
- Specific points in the passage may not always have line references mentioned in the question.
- The answer is not necessarily word for word in the passage, but you still need to be able to justify the answer based on the passage.
- Many of the questions will ask about your understanding of the different viewpoints found in the passage.
- Questions may ask you how the author would respond to the concept mentioned in the passage.