Function of a Word: Example Questions | Reading for ACT PDF Download

Example 1.
This passage is adapted from “Flagship Species and Their Role in the Conservation Movement” (2020)
Until recently, two schools of thought have dominated the field of establishing “flagship” endangered species for marketing and awareness campaigns. These flagship species make up the subset of endangered species conservation experts utilize to elicit public support - both financial and legal - for fauna conservation as a whole.
The first concerns how recognizable the general public, the audience of most large-scale funding campaigns, finds a particular species, commonly termed its “public awareness.” This school of thought was built on the foundation that if an individual recognizes a species from prior knowledge, cultural context, or previous conservational and educational encounters (in a zoo environment or classroom setting, for instance) that individual would be more likely to note and respond to the severity of its endangered status. However, recently emerging flagship species such as the pangolin have challenged the singularity of this factor.
Alongside public awareness, conservation experts have long considered a factor they refer to as a “keystone species” designation in the flagstone selection process. Keystone species are those species that play an especially vital role in their respective habitats or ecosystems. While this metric is invaluable to the environmentalists in charge of designating funds received, recent data has expressed the more minor role a keystone species designation seems to play in the motivations of the public.
Recent scholarship has questioned both the singularity and the extent to which the above classifications impact the decision making of the general public. Though more complicated to measure, a third designation, known as a species’ “charisma,” is now the yardstick by which most flagship species are formally classified. Addressing the charisma of a species involves establishing and collecting data concerning its ecological (interactions with humans/the environments of humans),  aesthetic (appealing to human emotions through physical appearance and immediately related behaviors), and corporeal (affection and socialization with humans over the short- and long-terms) characteristics. This process has been understandably criticized by some for its costs and failure to incorporate the severity of an endangered species’ status into designation, but its impact on the public has been irrefutable. While keystone and public awareness designations are still often applied in the field because of their practicality and comparative simplicity, charisma is now commonly accepted as the most accurate metric with which to judge a species’ flagship potential.

Q. The author of the passage uses the word “understandably” in paragraph four in order to
(a) Point out the existence of drawbacks in the use of charisma to designate flagship species
(b) Contrast claims made in earlier paragraphs
(c) Abandon the idea that charisma is currently considered the most effective method of identifying flagship species
(d) Side with critics and claim that the charisma method is prohibitively expensive

Correct Answer is Option (a)
In this question, it’s important to note that while the author concedes (admits) that there are some reasonable complaints about the system, the author continues on to tell readers that it is still “commonly accepted as the most accurate metric with which to judge a species’ flagship potential.” So, the author is noting that the method isn’t flawless (pointing out that there are drawbacks), but is still the best method currently available.

Example 2.
The following passage is adapted from a speech delivered by Susan B. Anthony in 1873. The speech was delivered after Anthony was tried and fined $100 for voting in the 1872 presidential election.
Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last Presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen’s rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any State to deny.
The preamble of the Federal Constitution says: “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people— women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government—the ballot.
For any State to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people is a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their female posterity. To them this government had no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the right govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured, but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household—which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord and rebellion into every home of the nation.
Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office. The one question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no State has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women are citizenswomen in the constitutions and laws of the several States is today null and void, precisely as is every one against African Americans.

Q. The author uses the word “alleged” in the first paragraph to:
(a) show how she had been mistreated.
(b) highlight the irony of her arrest for voting.
(c) indicate that she had not yet been convicted.
(d) emphasize that she had done nothing wrong.

Correct Answer is Option (d)
In the first paragraph, Anthony uses the word alleged to address that she is not willing to refer to the “crime” as a crime, since according to her argument, she was just exercising her constitution-given rights. So, she calls the crime “alleged,” not because she has not yet been convicted, (we can see from the italicized context that this is not the case,) but to “emphasize that she has done nothing wrong.”

Example 3.
The passage is excerpted from Ngonghala CN, et. al’s “Poverty, Disease, and the Ecology of Complex Systems” © 2014 Ngonghala et al.
Nonetheless, for the billion people who still languish in chronic extreme poverty, Malthus’s ideas about the importance of biophysical and biosocial feedback (e.g., interactions between human behavior and resource availability) to the dynamics of economic systems still ring true. Indeed, while they were based on observations of human populations, Malthus ideas had reverberations throughout the life sciences. His insights were based on important underlying processes that provided inspiration to both Darwin and Wallace as they independently derived the theory of evolution by natural selection. Likewise, these principles underlie standard models of population biology, including logistic population growth models, predator-prey models, and the epidemiology of host-pathogen dynamics.

Q. The author uses the word “reverberations” in the highlighted sentence primarily in order to
(a) show that Malthus’s work was primarily audial in nature
(b) insinuate that the works of Malthus did very little to impact the field of social science
(c) draw attention to the lack of recognition of Malthus’s ideas in the works of social scientists
(d) emphasize the impact of Malthus’s work on the works of social scientists and scholars

Correct Answer is Option (d)
The term “reverberations” in its context is used in a figurative sense to express that the works of Malthus had an impact on the life sciences as a whole. This aligns with our correct answer: “emphasize the impact of Malthus’s work on the works of social scientists and scholars.” The term reverberations is not used in a literal sense in this context, nor does it suggest that Malthus’s work did very little to impact the field. Additionally, while indications that Malthus’s works were sometimes overlooked appear elsewhere in the passage, the surrounding context of the term “reverberations” does not accomplish this task.