2019年4月ACT小說部分選自女性作家達芙妮·默金(Daphne Merkin)緬懷父親赫爾曼·默金(Hermann Merkin)的悼詞，該篇考題文章沒有收錄原文章的開端“My father died last March, at the age of 91, in his own bed, surrounded by his family; it was a sober, patriarchal, even old-world death, befitting his life. He had been ailing for close to two years, from heart failure and then lymphoma, but it still came as a surprise to see him yielding at last instead of rallying, as he had so many times before. My mother took the most extraordinary care of him, which included packing him off to the office for a few hours every day, right up until the week of his death. ”開頭部分，非常清晰地交待文章的寫作背景：“去年3月，91歲的父親在床上溘然長逝，死時家人圍繞在其身邊;這是一種莊重的、父權(quán)式的、甚至是老派的死亡，與他的一生及其相稱。他因心力衰竭和淋巴瘤病了近兩年，沒有像曾經(jīng)無數(shù)次那樣重振旗鼓而最終屈服于病魔的事讓我一度十分驚訝。我的母親對他的照顧無微不至，包括每天都送他到辦公室呆幾個小時，直至他去世的那一周。”緊接著作者在第一段中介紹了父親的正統(tǒng)派猶太教出身以及慈善家的身份。

　　選篇中第三段是比較重要的段落，主要介紹了作者與父親之間的關(guān)系：父親對作者及其兄弟姐妹的關(guān)心很少且關(guān)心的方式也不是作者渴望的，父親的形象也不是作者理想的，從電視電影上拼湊出的對孩子關(guān)懷備至、與孩子嬉戲打鬧又能給予睿智忠告的父親。易錯題第9題和第10題皆出題自本段，第9題題干問題“The narrator makes clear that compared to her interest in exploring feelings when she was a girl, her interest in exploring feelings at the time the passage was written was:”這道題的難點是定位問題，抓住古今對比以及情感這一細(xì)節(jié)，將答案定位至第三段中的33至35行“He hadn't much use for feelings, which were what interested me the most, then as now.” (他生前不太表達情感，但情感是讓我最感興趣的東西，即使現(xiàn)在也是如此。)在這句信息周邊，作者非常詳細(xì)地交待了父親與她這個女兒情感交流的方式，以及大家長式的父親形象。第九題的答案應(yīng)該選C.about the same.(作者從過去到現(xiàn)在對情感的洞悉一直很感興趣。)

　　第10題題干“The narrator characterizes the talks she and her father had in his study about he life problems as:”這道題的題干根據(jù)考題考察父親與女兒的關(guān)系以及書房這一細(xì)節(jié)，可以將答案定位至第三段的38至42行：“On those infrequent times when I would officially meet with him in his study -- a room that bordered on the sacrosanct -- to discuss some girlhood difficulty, I would invariably find myself cut off at the pass by his decisiveness. ”(他的書房是一個近乎神圣的地方，我少有地會在那里與他正式會面，討論一些少女時代的困難，但每次我都因為他的決斷而無法暢所欲言。)對應(yīng)J選項中的occasional,prearranged meetings that had a serious tone.(偶爾且預(yù)先安排的，嚴(yán)肅語氣交談的會面) 其中infrequent=occasional，officially meet=prearranged.而F選項中的“impromptu即興的”，“G選項中的weekly每周一次的”以及“H選項中的once-a-year一年一次的”都不夠準(zhǔn)確。