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Locating and interpreting explicit details — ACT practice questions

On the ACT Reading test, Locating and interpreting explicit details means finding facts, descriptions, and stated reasons the passage actually gives. A student must scan back to the relevant lines, read them closely, and choose a paraphrase of what is written rather than an inference. Items often name a passage and ask what a map marking represents, what prompted a suggested shortcut, or what a character's habit of checking the map primarily served to do. Choices look like nearby restatements; the usual trap is a plausible extra inference or a true detail from the wrong part of the text.

  • Section: Reading 36 questions on the paper
  • 145 practice questions in the app

Sample questions

A Route in Pencil

LITERARY NARRATIVE: Passage A and Passage B both address the topic of “A Route in Pencil.”
On the final Saturday of my aunt’s
hardware store, I emptied the drawer
beneath the cash register. It held three
5
foreign coins, a button, and a folded
sheet of paper soft as cloth. Across it
ran a map of town drawn in blue and red
pencil. The blue lines followed streets.
The red ones crossed alleys, schoolyards,
10
and a footbridge I had forgotten existed.
The creases were shiny from years of
unfolding, and in those worn bands the
pencil had faded to a whisper, yet the
town was still legible. I smoothed it on
15
the counter among the last bins of screws,
afraid a tear might finish what time had
not.
 
Aunt Celia glanced at the map and said,
“That’s Tomas’s route.” Before delivery
20
vans, Tomas had carried urgent orders by
bicycle: a washer for the bakery sink, a
fuse for the cinema, lengths of rope for
the rowing club. He drew the blue route
during his first week. Red marks came
25
later, after people showed him shortcuts.
She said he used to spread the sheet on
her counter after a wet ride and ask which
alley still reached the river; whoever was
in the shop would point, and he would add
30
a line before the advice could dissolve.
 
I wanted to frame the map for the store’s
closing auction, but Aunt Celia shook her
head. “Routes belong to whoever still
travels them,” she said. She told me Tomas
35
now repaired bicycles in the next town. My
phone found his shop in seconds, along
with the quickest driving directions.
Still, I tucked the paper into my pocket
and rode my own bicycle. The phone could
40
tell me how to arrive; it could not tell
me what the red route had meant to the
people who had bent it.
 
At the footbridge, I met an elderly man
sanding the rail. When I showed him the
45
map, he tapped a red bend and told me he
had suggested it after seeing Tomas
struggle up Market Hill with a box of
nails. He treated the mark as a remembered
kindness rather than as property, and he
50
seemed glad the pencil had outlasted the
errand. I crossed on new boards that still
held the old angle of his advice.
 
By the time I reached the repair shop, the
map no longer looked like one person’s
55
clever plan. It looked like a conversation
conducted in turns and corners. Nothing on
it was signed, yet the page felt crowded
with speakers. Before knocking on the
repair-shop door, I traced the route once
60
with my finger, trying to separate the
line Tomas had drawn from the advice that
had bent it. I could not.

Question 1

According to Passage A, what do the red lines on Tomas’s original map represent?

  1. AStreets closed to bicycles
  2. BShortcuts people showed Tomas
  3. CLocations of urgent deliveries
  4. DRoutes added by Celia’s niece
Show answer

Answer: B — Shortcuts people showed Tomas

Aunt Celia explains that Tomas added red marks after people showed him shortcuts.

Question 2

In Passage A, Tomas's practice of spreading the map on Celia's counter and asking which alley still reached the river served primarily to:

  1. Aprotect Tomas’s original sheet from further handling
  2. Binvite other people to keep revising the routes
  3. Cidentify the author of each red shortcut
  4. Dreplace the town archive’s need for donations
Show answer

Answer: B — invite other people to keep revising the routes

B is correct. Tomas asked people for current route advice and added lines based on their suggestions. Spreading the map on the counter invited others to help revise it.

Question 3

According to Passage A, what prompted the elderly man to suggest the shortcut represented by a red bend on the map?

  1. AHe wanted Tomas to deliver supplies to the footbridge.
  2. BHe noticed that the bakery's sink needed a replacement washer.
  3. CHe learned that the cinema had closed its usual entrance.
  4. DHe saw Tomas struggling up Market Hill with a box of nails.
Show answer

Answer: D — He saw Tomas struggling up Market Hill with a box of nails.

D is correct. The elderly man says he suggested the shortcut after seeing Tomas struggle up Market Hill with a box of nails; the red bend records his helpful advice.

Practice 145 Locating and interpreting explicit details questions in the app

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