hard · Enhanced ACT reading
The river does not so much flow as negotiate. Where the engineers laid their straight concrete channel, the water obeyed for a season, then began, grain by grain, to deposit silt against one wall and scour the other, until a curve reappeared where they had forbidden one. They dredged; it returned. What they read as the river's defiance was only the river's memory of every floodplain it had ever crossed, a memory written in sediment that no straightedge could erase. In time the city stopped fighting the bend and built a park along it.
The phrase 'the river's memory' as used in the passage most nearly refers to:
- the city's eventual decision to preserve the river's natural curve.
- the long-accumulated physical tendencies that lead the river to reshape any straight channel.
- the engineers' written records of where the river had flooded in the past.
- a sentimental human attachment to the river's older, wilder course.
Sign up free to see the explanation and track your rank →
More Enhanced ACT reading practice
- What is the main idea of the paragraph?
- Which of the following is the central point of the paragraph?
- Which choice best summarizes the main idea of the passage?
- What date was written on the map ?
- what time did Elias check his watch?
- The passage indicates that the economist responds to her critics primarily by:
- The passage most strongly suggests that the keeper's true motivation for his long service
- The author includes the examples of opening jars and carrying coconut shells primarily in