Humanities Passages

• Recognize the structure of humanities passages (often personal or reflective) and track how the author's perspective evolves
• Answer author's purpose questions and separate the author's views from those of people the author describes
• Text structure: name the job a paragraph does (introduce, give an example, concede, shift, conclude) and how the passage is organized overall
• Inference: choose the conclusion that is one small step beyond the text and reject choices that are extreme or unsupported
• Finish on one ACT-hard question and say what made it hard

The humanities passage is often a memoir, personal essay, or discussion of art, music, or philosophy. On the enhanced ACT an essay about the arts is labeled informational, while a memoir told as a story is labeled literary narrative; read the label and the source line before the passage. It can feel like a hybrid of fiction and social science. It may have a narrative quality but is ultimately making a point. Pay attention to the author's personal opinions and how they are supported. Questions often ask about the author's attitude toward a subject, the function of a particular anecdote, or how the author's perspective shifts. Unlike social science passages, the 'evidence' in humanities texts is often experiential rather than data-driven. Text structure questions ask what a paragraph or sentence is doing, not what it says: introducing the topic, giving an example, conceding a point, marking a shift in the author's view, or drawing the conclusion. Answer them by reading the sentence before and after the part in question and naming its job in a few words. Common overall structures are chronological, problem then solution, claim then support, and compare and contrast. Inference questions ask what can reasonably be concluded from the passage. The answer is not stated directly but is strongly supported by the text, and it is always conservative: one small step, never a leap. Choices with extreme language ('always,' 'never,' 'completely') are usually wrong, and every correct inference can be tied to a specific line. Word choice questions ask why the author used a particular word or phrase: name its effect in your own words first (it stresses how rare something is, it shows the narrator's doubt, it makes a task sound effortless), then match a choice. Perspective questions ask you to separate the author's view from views the author reports; a claim credited to 'critics' or 'some historians' is not the author's position unless the author endorses it. When a line or stem is dense, restate it in plain words, then restate each choice the same way; for informational text, keep a few-word gist after each chunk. Proof habit: before locking any answer, point to the line that supports it; if no line does, the choice is out. Name the reason each wrong choice fails: not stated in the passage, too narrow (fits one part only), a distorted detail (the right words with a changed meaning), extreme wording, or true but not an answer to this question. A plausibility filter helps too: a choice that makes a sweeping or insulting claim about a real person or group is rarely the credited answer. Last two choices: when two choices survive, compare them word by word and find the one word (a scope word, a strength word, or who did what) that the passage does not support; top scorers lose most of their Reading points here. At the hard end, a function question offers a choice that is true of the passage as a whole but is not what the cited lines are doing.

• Note whether the author is narrating their own experience or analyzing someone else's work. This affects the types of questions asked.
• For 'purpose of this paragraph' questions, name the paragraph's job in three or four words before reading the choices.
• For inference questions, the correct answer is one small step beyond what the text states, and you can point to the line that supports it.