ACT English Practice Test 1

Passage I
My Old Fashioned Father

My father, though he is only in his early fifties, is stuck in his old-fashioned ways. He has a (1) general mistrust of any innovation or technology that he can’t immediately grasp and he always tells us, that (2) if something isn’t broken, then you shouldn’t fix it.

He has run (3) a small grocery store in town, and if you were to look at a snapshot of his back office taken when he opened the store in 1975, you would see that not much has changed since. (4) He is the most disorganized person I know and still uses a pencil and paper to keep track of his inventory. (5) His small office is about to burst with all the various documents, notes, and receipts he has accumulated over the years, his filing cabinets (6) have long since been filled up. The centerpiece of all the clutter is his ancient typewriter, which isn’t even electric. In the past few years, Father’s search for replacement typewriter ribbons has become an increasingly difficult task, because they are no longer being produced. He is perpetually tracking down the few remaining places that still have these antiquated ribbons in their dusty inventories. When people ask him why he doesn’t upgrade his equipment, he tells them, “Electric typewriters won’t work in a blackout. All I need is a candle and some paper, and I’m fine.” Little does Father know, however, is that (7) the “upgrade” people are speaking of is not to an electric typewriter but to a computer.

[1] Hoping to bring Father out of the dark ages, my sister, and I (8) bought him a brand new computer for his fiftieth birthday. [2] We offered to help him to transfer all of his records onto it and to teach him how to use it. [3] Eagerly, (9) we told him about all the new spreadsheet programs that would help simplify his recordkeeping and organize his accounts; and (10) emphasized the advantage of not having to completely retype any document when he found a typo. [4] Rather than offering us a look of joy for the life-changing gift we had presented him, however, he again brought up the blackout scenario. [5] To Father, this is a concrete argument, never mind the fact that (11) our town hasn’t had a blackout in five years, and that one only lasted an hour or two. (12)

My father’s state-of-the-art computer now serves as a very expensive bulletin board for the hundreds of adhesive notes he uses to keep himself organized. Sooner than later, (13) we fully expect it will completely disappear under the mounting files and papers in the back office. In the depths of that disorganized office, the computer will join the cell phone my mom gave him a few years ago. (14) Interestingly enough, every once in a while, that completely forgotten cell phone will ring from under the heavy clutter of the past. (15)