Work through one question at a time. Explain your approach, check the worked answer, then move on. Use scratch paper for calculations.
0 of 12 checked · 0 correct.
Progress is saved in this browser. These original study questions do not produce an official AFQT score.
Question 1: Main idea
Question 1 · Main idea · medium
Inside the demonstration carriage, I first noticed the row of overhead straps. Then I saw shorter rails beside the seats and vertical poles near the doors. A seated rider reached one rail without standing; a taller passenger used a strap, while someone moving toward the exit took hold of a pole. The designer had not simply repeated one handle throughout the space. The available gripping points changed with the position and reach of the people who would use them, even though all served the familiar task of providing something to hold.
Which statement best expresses the main idea?
Worked answer and explanation
Answer: C. Several arrangements can serve the same function while accommodating users in different positions.
The straps, rails and poles share a function but differ in placement according to how people occupy and move through the carriage. Overhead straps remain among the available gripping points. A seated rider uses a rail, and the passage assigns a practical role to every type. The observations emphasize different arrangements for different positions and reaches.
Question 2: Main idea
Question 2 · Main idea · easy
My first notebook had lines stretching almost to the edge of each page. When I returned to an entry, I struggled to squeeze a correction beside the sentence it concerned. In the next notebook I ruled a wide margin before writing anything. Later questions, new dates and corrected names could then sit beside the original notes. What looked like unused paper on the first day became a place where each entry could continue to develop.
What is the main idea of the passage?
Worked answer and explanation
Answer: C. Leaving space beside an entry can make later additions and corrections easier to use.
The comparison between cramped corrections and useful later additions shows the value of planning room for information that arrives afterward. The writer deliberately leaves space for later use. The margins provide a place for corrections; they do not prevent the need for them. The additions remain beside the entries they concern.
Question 3: Main idea
Question 3 · Main idea · medium
The recipe card says to add flour until the dough “feels right.” My aunt knows what that means because she has stood beside its writer and watched the mixture change. I first followed the card alone and had no such memory to guide my hand. When my aunt joined me, she pressed a piece of finished dough into my palm and let me compare it with mine. The card’s few words had seemed complete to the relatives who shared that experience; to a newcomer, they left an important part of the instruction unstated.
What is the main idea of the passage?
Worked answer and explanation
Answer: D. Instructions that work within a group’s shared experience may omit information a newcomer needs.
The aunt’s prior experience explains why the short instruction works for her, while the narrator’s need for a physical example exposes what the card leaves unstated. The writer’s identity is secondary to the unstated experience needed to interpret the instruction. The aunt helps by making a direct tactile comparison within the same recipe. She supplies an example of the intended texture, not a replacement ingredient.
Question 4: Main idea
Question 4 · Main idea · medium
The two maps cover the same valley and place its villages in the same locations. On the walker’s sheet, paths stand out and symbols mark gates and drinking-water points. On the landscape artist’s sheet, shaded bands distinguish slopes while small paths are faint or absent. A reader looking for a gate can use the first sheet more readily; a reader trying to picture the shape of the hills can use the second. Neither sheet attempts to give equal prominence to every feature in the valley.
What is the main idea of the passage?
Worked answer and explanation
Answer: A. Maps of the same place may emphasize different features to serve different purposes.
The comparison links each map’s visual emphasis to a different reader’s task while preserving agreement about the place itself. The opening explicitly places the villages in the same locations on both maps. Gates and paths are emphasized on the walker’s sheet, while the artist’s sheet emphasizes slopes. The passage describes useful specialized maps that select different features for emphasis.
Question 5: Main idea
Question 5 · Main idea · medium
In the shop’s earlier tally book, a clerk made one short stroke for every tied parcel sent out. Long rows of similar marks were difficult to check after an interruption. In a later book from the same shop, groups of ten parcels receive a small ring, with separate strokes for any remainder. A note on the cover explains the system. The number of parcels can still be recovered, but the clerk no longer has to recount every stroke from the beginning to distinguish a large total from a slightly larger one.
What is the main idea of the passage?
Worked answer and explanation
Answer: B. Grouping repeated units can make a record easier to check while preserving its numerical information.
The two systems record parcel counts, but grouped notation reduces the number of separate marks that must be recounted. A ring represents each group of ten, with additional groups and remainders still recorded. The change concerns how totals are recorded, not the contents of shipments. Its strokes represent individual parcels; the problem described is cumbersome checking, not absence of meaning.
Question 6: Main idea
Question 6 · Main idea · medium
I knew the market street by its noon sounds: shoppers calling, bus doors opening and cups striking saucers outside the café. Before sunrise, the same corners had different voices. A delivery driver counted crates at the bakery; a cleaner pushed water toward a drain; metal shutters rattled upward one after another. I recognized every doorway but had to listen differently to recognize what was happening. By the time the first shopping bags appeared, several kinds of work had already given the street a morning of their own.
What is the main idea of the passage?
Worked answer and explanation
Answer: B. A familiar place can reveal a different pattern of activity when observed at another time of day.
The contrast between the familiar noon scene and the recognized but differently active early street makes time of observation the central difference. The narrator recognizes every doorway; the change is in activity and sound. The early visit adds a distinct part of the day that the noon experience omits. Deliveries, cleaning and raised shutters accompany the period before shoppers arrive, with no effort to prevent opening.
Question 7: Main idea
Question 7 · Main idea · hard
The converted factory’s new visitors usually notice the high windows before the small bell above the door. Its rope hangs beside photographs of the machines that once filled the hall. During an open day, a former worker asked permission to ring it: two strokes, a pause, then one more. Another retired worker, standing across the room, laughed and reached instinctively for the lunch bag she no longer carried. The guide added that pattern to his notes. Later, when visitors asked about the polished machinery in the photographs, he invited them to listen to the bell before describing what the machines had made.
Which statement best expresses the passage’s main idea?
Worked answer and explanation
Answer: B. A surviving everyday signal helps reveal the working routines behind a building’s preserved appearance.
The remembered pattern, the spontaneous lunch-related gesture, and the guide’s decision to let visitors hear it connect an ordinary object with the former workers’ daily experience. Those visual details set the scene, but the workers’ response and guide’s changed approach center on a remembered routine. The pattern prompts a lunch-related response; it does not identify the machines’ products. No photograph is identified as inaccurate or removed; the bell adds another kind of experience to the existing display.
Question 8: Main idea
Question 8 · Main idea · medium
The printed timetable gives a departure at eight each morning. Beside several dates, a station clerk later wrote notes such as “bridge closed” or “left after freight cleared.” The printed columns let a reader reconstruct the service that had been planned. The dated handwriting supplies a different account: on particular mornings, that plan met a closed route or another train. A researcher studying promised connections might begin with the columns, while one examining the week’s interruptions would need to read along the margins as well.
Which statement best summarizes the passage?
Worked answer and explanation
Answer: B. The printed schedule and later annotations preserve different kinds of information about the same service.
The columns record intended service while the dated notes record particular departures from that plan, so each serves a different research question. Notes beside several dates document particular interruptions, not changes to every departure. The passage identifies a separate research use for the notes about interruptions. The notes record specific events such as closures and delays; no replacement regular schedule is described.
Question 9: Main idea
Question 9 · Main idea · easy
For her shadow play, Lio held a small cardboard bird between a lamp and a screen. The lamp and screen stayed in place. When she moved the bird toward the lamp, its shadow spread across more of the screen; when she moved it back toward the screen, the shadow became smaller. She used the same cutout throughout. To make the bird seem enormous in one scene, she changed its position rather than cutting a larger bird.
What is the main idea of the passage?
Worked answer and explanation
Answer: A. The arrangement of the same puppet and light can change the apparent size of the puppet’s shadow.
The two positions produce different shadow sizes without changing the cutout, illustrating how arrangement affects the image. Lio keeps the same cutout and changes its position to enlarge the shadow. The screen stays fixed while movement of the bird changes the image. The object itself stays the same; the changing size belongs to its shadow.
Question 10: Main idea
Question 10 · Main idea · easy
Under a dark sky, I searched for a faint star my companion had identified. When I stared straight at its position, I kept losing it. She suggested looking slightly to one side instead. The small point then became easier for me to notice, although no cloud had moved and we had not changed instruments. I tried the two ways of looking again. This time I understood that finding a faint object could depend partly on how I looked for it.
Which statement best expresses the main idea?
Worked answer and explanation
Answer: D. Changing the way one looks can make a faint object easier to notice.
The repeated comparison uses a different direction of gaze without changing the instrument or cloud cover, emphasizing a viewing technique. The change described concerns the observer’s ability to notice the star, not the star’s light output. No instrument change occurs during the comparison. The passage explicitly states that no cloud moves during the change in visibility.
Question 11: Main idea
Question 11 · Main idea · easy
Beneath the broad stone arch, Anya clapped and heard a clear answering sound. Near its open edge, another clap produced a much less distinct return. Her guide explained that sound can reflect from surrounding surfaces and reach the listener again. They tried both positions once more, keeping the claps as similar as they could. Anya began listening to the space around a sound, not only to the person making it.
What is the main idea of the passage?
Worked answer and explanation
Answer: D. The surroundings help shape what a listener hears after a sound is made.
The contrast between positions and the explanation of reflected sound make the surrounding space central to the listening experience. They use handclaps at different positions; no instrument or new playing technique is introduced. The returns differ between the position under the arch and its open edge. The comparison and reflection explanation draw attention to the surrounding surfaces as well.
Question 12: Main idea
Question 12 · Main idea · easy
A canal captain’s ledger records much more than the loads carried by his boat. Between lists of flour and timber are payments for mule feed, replacement harness straps, and repairs to the boat. Travel dates appear beside purchases made along the route. Reading only the cargo entries would leave out much of the work and expense needed to keep each journey going. The small purchases connect the movement of goods with the daily care of animals and equipment.
What is the main idea of the passage?
Worked answer and explanation
Answer: C. Moving cargo depended on recurring support work as well as on the boat and its load.
The feed, harness, and repair entries show the continuing animal and equipment care that supported the recorded cargo journeys. Feed appears as an expense supporting travel, not as a product the captain sells. The passage identifies several expenses recorded between the cargo lists. No abandoned journey or such restriction on repair entries is mentioned.